mble a mouse below a firlot. With some persuasion,
however, there being but small difference in the value of the cloths, the
one being a west of England bottle-green, and the other a Manchester
blue, I caused them to niffer, and hushed up the business, which, had
they been obstreperous, would have made half the parish of Dalkeith stand
on end.

After poor Mungo had been beneath the mools, I daresay a good month,
Benjie, as he was one forenoon diverting himself dozing his top in the
room where they sleeped, happened to drive it in below the bed, where,
scrambling in on his hands and feet, he found a half sheet of paper
written over in Mungo's hand-writing, the which he brought to me; and, on
looking over it, I found it jingled in metre like the Psalms of David.

Having no skeel in these matters, I sent up the close for James Batter,
who, being a member of the fifteenpence a-quarter subscription book-club,
had read a power of all sorts of things, sacred and profane. James, as
he was humming it over with his specs on his beak, gave now and then a
thump on his thigh, "Prime, prime, man; fine, prime, good, capital!" and
so on, which astonished me much, kenning who had written it--a callant
that had sleeped with our Benjie, and could not have shaped a pair of
leggins though we had offered him the crown of the three kingdoms.

Seeing what it was thought of by one who knew what was what, and could
distinguish the difference between a B and a bull's foot, I judged it
necessary for me to take a copy of it; which, for the benefit of them
that like poems, I do not scruple to tag to the tail of this chapter.

Oh, wad that my time were ower but,
Wi' this wintry sleet and snaw,
That I might see our house again
I' the bonny birken shaw!--
For this is no my ain life,
And I peak and pine away
Wi' the thochts o' hame, and the young flow'rs
I' the glad green month o' May.

I used to wauk in the morning
Wi' the loud sang o' the lark,
And the whistling o' the ploughmen lads
As they gaed to their wark;
I used to weir in the young lambs
Frae the tod and the roaring stream;
But the warld is changed, and a' thing now
To me seems like a dream.

There are busy crowds around me
On ilka lang dull street;
Yet, though sae mony surround me,
I kenna ane I meet.
And I think on kind, kent faces,
And o' blythe and cheery days,
When I wande