ht lead away ourselves to be
gutting our fish before we get them."

"Mind then," said Nanse, "about your promise to me, concerning the silk
gown, and the pair"--

"Wheesht, wheesht, gudewifie," answered I. "There's a braw time coming.
We must not be in ower great a hurry."

I then bade the woman sit down by the ingle cheek, and our wife to give
her a piece of cold beef, and a shave of bread, besides twopence out of
my own pocket. Some, on hearing siccan sums mentioned, would have
immediately struck work, but, even in the height of my grand
expectations, I did not forget the old saying, that "a bird in the hand
is worth two in the bush;" and being thrang with a pair of leggins for
Eben Bowsie, I brushed away ben to the workshop, thinking the woman, or
witch, or whatever she was, would have more freedom and pleasure in
eating by herself.--That she had, I am now bound to say by experience.

Two days after, when we were sitting at our comfortable four-hours, in
came little Benjie, running out of breath--just at the individual moment
of time my wife and me were jeering one another, about how we would
behave when we came to be grand ladies and gentlemen, keeping a flunkie
maybe--to tell us, that when he was playing at the bools, on the
plainstones before the old kirk, he had seen the deaf and dumb spaewife
harled away to the tolbooth, for stealing a pair of trowsers that were
hanging drying on a tow in Juden Elshinder's back close. I could
scarcely credit the callant, though I knew he would not tell a lie for
sixpence; and I said to him, "Now be sure, Benjie, before ye speak. The
tongue is a dangerous weapon, and apt to bring folk into trouble--it
might be another woman."

It was real cleverality in the callant. He said, "Ay, faither, but it
was her; and she contrived to bring herself into trouble without a tongue
at a'."

I could not help laughing at this, it showed Benjie to be such a genius;
so he said,

"Ye needna laugh, faither; for it's as true's death it was her. Do you
think I didna ken in a minute our cheese-toaster, that used to hing
beside the kitchen fire; and that the sherry-offisher took out frae
beneath her grey cloak?"

The smile went off Nanse's cheek like lightning, and she said it could
not be true; but she would go to the kitchen to see. I'fegs it was too
true; for she never came back to tell the contrary.

This was really and truly a terrible business, but the truth for all
that; the ch