et
their fingers scadded.

Having given the dominoes their due, and washed my hands free of gambling
I trust for evermore, I turned myself to a better business, which was the
going, leaf by leaf, back through our bit day-book, where I found a
tremendous sowd of wee outstanding debts. I daresay, not to tell a lee,
there were fifty of them, from a shilling to eighteenpence, and so on;
but small and small, reckoned up by simple addition, amount to a round
sum; while, to add to the misery of the matter, I found we were
entangling ourselves to work to a wheen ugly customers, skemps that had
not wherewithal to pay lawful debts, and downright rascals, raggamuffins,
and ne'er-do-weels. According to the articles of indenture drawn up
between me and Tommy Staytape, by Rory Sneckdrawer the penny-writer, when
he was bound a prentice to me for seven years, I had engaged myself to
bring him up to be a man of business. Though now a journeyman, I
reckoned the obligation still binding; so, tying up two dockets of
accounts with a piece of twine, I gave one parcel to Tommy, and the other
to Benjie, telling them, by way of encouragement, that I would give them
a penny the pound for what silver they could bring me in by hook or
crook.

After three days' toil and trouble, wherein they mostly wore their shoon
off their feet, going first up one close and syne down another, up trap-
stairs to garrets and ben long trances that led into dirty holes--what
think ye did they collect? Not one bodle--not one coin of copper! This
one was out of work;--and that one had his house-rent to pay;--and a
third one had an income in his nose;--and a fourth was bedridden with
rheumatics;--and a fifth one's mother's auntie's cousin was dead;--and a
sixth one's good-brother's nevoy was going to be married come
Martymas;--and a seventh one was away to the back of beyond to see his
granny in the Hielands;--and so on. It was a terrible business, but what
wool can ye get by clipping swine?

The only rational answers I got were two; one of them, Geggie Trotter, a
natural simpleton, told Tommy Staytape, "that, for part-payment, he would
give me a prime leg of mutton, as he had killed his sow last week."--And
what, said I to Benjie, did Jacob Truff the gravedigger tell ye by way of
news? "He just bad me tell ye, faither, that hoo could ye expect he
cou'd gie ye onything till the times grew better; as he hadna buried a
living soul in the kirkyard for mair nor a