steels and knives
Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted for sheeps' lives.

ODOHERTY'S _Miscellanea Classica_.

But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a
wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few
things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what
I am going to relate.

It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock-
fighting on Fastern's E'en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the
other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise out of that
business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound
duckings--but this was none of these.

Our next neighbour was a flesher; and right before the window was a large
stone, on which old wives with their weans would sometimes take a rest;
so what does I, when I saw the whole hobble-shaw coming fleeing down the
street, with the kick-ba' at their noses, but up I speels upon the stone,
(I was a wee chap with a daidley, a ruffled shirt, and leather cap edged
with rabbit fur,) that I might see all the fun. This one fell, and that
one fell, and a third was knocked over, and a fourth got a bloody nose:
and so on; and there was such a noise and din, as would have deaved the
workmen of Babel--when, lo! and behold! the ball played bounce mostly at
my feet, and the whole mob after it. I thought I should have been dung
to pieces; so I pressed myself back with all my might, and through went
my elbow into Cursecowl's kitchen. It did not stick long there. Before
you could say Jack Robison, out flew the flesher in his killing-clothes;
his face was as red as fire, and he had his pouch full of bloody knives
buckled to his side. I skreighed out in his face when I looked at him,
but he did not stop a moment for that. With a girn that was like to rive
his mouth, he twisted his nieve in the back of my hair, and off with me
hanging by the cuff of the neck, like a kittling. My eyes were like to
loup out of my head, but I had no breath to cry. I heard him thraw the
key, for I could not look down, the skin of my face was pulled so tight;
and in he flang me like a pair of old boots into his booth, where I
landed on my knees upon a raw bloody calf's skin. I thought I would have
gone out of my wits, when I heard the door locked upon me, and looked
round me in such an unearthly place. It had only one sparred window, and
there was a garden behind; but how was I to g