ad-foremost.
Even in my sleep, howsoever, it appears that I like free-will, and ken
that there are no slaves in our blessed country; so I tried with all my
might to pull against him, and gave his arm such a drive back, that he
seemed to bleach over on his side, and raised a hullaballoo of a yell,
that not only wakened me, but made me start upright in my bed.

For all the world such a scene! My wife was roaring "Murder,
murder!--Mansie Wauch, will ye no wauken?--Murder, murder! ye've felled
me wi' your nieve,--ye've felled me outright,--I'm gone for evermair,--my
haill teeth are doun my throat. Will ye no wauken, Mansie Wauch?--will
ye no wauken?--Murder, murder!--I say murder, murder, murder, murder!!!"

"Who's murdering us?" cried I, throwing my cowl back on the pillow, and
rubbing my eyes in the hurry of a tremendous fright.--"Who's murdering
us?--where's the robbers?--send for the town-officer!!"

"O Mansie!--O Mansie!" said Nanse, in a kind of greeting tone, "I daursay
ye've felled me--but no matter, now I've gotten ye roused. Do ye no see
the haill street in a bleeze of flames? Bad is the best; we maun either
be burned to death, or out of house and hall, without a rag to cover our
nakedness. Where's my son?--where's my dear bairn Benjie?"

In a most awful consternation, I jumped at this out to the middle of the
floor, hearing the causeway all in an uproar of voices; and seeing the
flichtering of the flames glancing on the houses in the opposite side of
the street, all the windows of which were filled with the heads of half-
naked folks, in round-eared mutches or Kilmarnocks; their mouths open,
and their eyes staring with fright; while the sound of the fire-engine,
rattling through the streets like thunder, seemed like the dead-cart of
the plague, come to hurry away the corpses of the deceased for interment
in the kirk-yard.

Never such a spectacle was witnessed in this world of sin and sorrow
since the creation of Adam. I pulled up the window and looked out--and,
lo and behold! the very next house to our own was all in a low from
cellar to garret; the burning joists hissing and cracking like mad; and
the very wind that blew along, as warm as if it had been out of the mouth
of a baker's oven!!

It was a most awful spectacle! more by token to me, who was likely to be
intimately concerned with it; and beating my brow with my clenched nieve,
like a distracted creature, I saw that the labour of my whole life