the
bridle, and flapped up and down on the saddle when he tried a canter! The
second one had on a black velvet hunting-cap, and his coat stripped. I
wonder he was not feared of cold, his shirt being like a riddle, and his
nether nankeens but thin for such weather; but he was a brave lad; and
sorry were the folks for him, when he fell off in taking over sharp a
turn, by which old Pullen, the bell-ringer, who was holding the post, was
made to coup the creels, and got a bloody nose.--And but the last was a
wearyful one! He was all life, and as gleg as an eel. Up and down he
went; and up and down philandered the beast on its hind-legs and its fore-
legs, funking like mad; yet though he was not above thirteen, or fourteen
at most, he did not cry out for help more than five or six times, but
grippit at the mane with one hand, and at the back of the saddle with the
other, till daft Robie, the hostler at the stables, claught hold of the
beast by the head, and off they set. The young birkie had neither hat
nor shoon, but he did not spare the stick; round and round they flew like
mad. Ye would have thought their eyes would have loupen out; and loudly
all the crowd were hurraing, when young hatless came up foremost,
standing in the stirrups, the long stick between his teeth, and his white
hair fleeing behind him in the wind like streamers on a frosty night.

CHAPTER IV.--CALF-LOVE.

Bonny lassie, will ye go, will ye go, will ye go,
Bonny lassie, will ye go to the Birks of Aberfeldy?

BURNS.

For a tailor is a man, a man, a man,
And a tailor is a man.

_Popular Heroic Song_.

The long and the short is, that I was sent to school, where I learned to
read and spell, making great progress in the Single and Mother's
Carritch. No, what is more, few could fickle me in the Bible, being
mostly able to spell it all over, save the second of Ezra and the seventh
of Nehemiah, which the Dominie himself could never read through twice in
the same way, or without variations.

My father, to whom I was born, like Isaac to Abraham, in his old age, was
an elder in the Relief Kirk, respected by all for his canny and douce
behaviour, and, as I have observed before, a weaver to his trade. The
cot and the kail-yard were his own, and had been auld granfaither's; but
still he had to ply the shuttle from Monday to Saturday, to keep all
right and tight. The thrums were a perquisite of my own, which I
niffered with th