wer to a single question which was
speered at them. Howsoever, they paid for that at a heavy ransom, as ye
shall hear by and by.

Having been kept all night in the cold tolbooth on bread and water,
without either coal or candle to warm their toes, or let them see what
they were doing, they were harled out amid an immense crowd of young and
old, more especially wives and weans, at eleven o'clock on the next
forenoon, to the endurance of a punishment which ought to have afflicted
them almost as muckle as that of death itself.

When the key of the jail door was thrawn, and the two loons brought out,
there was a bumming of wonder, and maybe sorrow, among the terrible
crowd, to see fellow-creatures so left alone to themselves as to have
robbed an honest man's hen-house at the dead hour of night, when a fire
was bleezing next door, and the howl of desolation soughing over the town
like a visible judgment. One of them, as I said before, had a red pow
and a foraging cap, with a black napkin roppined round his weasand; a
jean jacket with six pockets, and square tails; a velveteen waistcoat
with plated buttons; corduroy breeches buttoned at the knees; rig-and-fur
stockings; and heavy, clanking wooden clogs. The other, who was little
and round-shouldered, with a bull neck and bushy black whiskers, just
like a shoebrush stuck to each cheek of his head, as if he had been a
travelling agent for Macassar, had on a low-crowned, plated beaver hat,
with the end of a peacock's feather stuck in the band; a long-tailed old
black coat, as brown as a berry, and as bare as my loof, to say nothing
of being out at both elbows. His trowsers, I dare say, had once been
nankeen; but as they did not appear to have seen the washing-tub for a
season or two, it would be rash to give any decided opinion on that head.
In short, they were two awful-like raggamuffins.

Women, however, are aye sympathizing and merciful; so, as I was standing
among the crowd, as they came down the tolbooth stair, chained together
by the cuffs of the coat, one said, "Wae's me! what a weel-faur'd fellow,
wi' the red head, to be found guilty of stealing folk's hen-houses."--And
another one said, "Hech, sirs! what a bonny blackaviced man that little
ane is, to be paraded through the strees for a warld's wonder!" But I
said nothing, knowing the thing was just, and a wholesome example;
holding Benjie on my shoulder to see the poukit hens tied about their
necks like keeking-g