his velvet gown trailing for yards in the glaur
behind him--do what he likes to keep it up; or riding about the
streets--as Joey Smith the Yorkshire jockey, to whom I made a hunting-
cap, told me--in a coach made of clear crystal, and wheels of the beaten
gold.

It was an awful business; dog on it, I ay wonder yet how I got through
with it. There was no rest for soul or body, by night or day, with
police-officers crying, "One o'clock, an' a frosty morning," knocking
Eirishmen's teeth down their throats with their battons, hauling limmers
by the lug and horn into the lock-up-house, or over by to Bridewell,
where they were set to beat hemp for a small wage, and got their heads
shaved; with carters bawling, "Ye yo, yellow sand, yellow sand," with
mouths as wide as a barn-door, and voices that made the drums of your
ears dirl, and ring again like mad; with fishwives from Newhaven,
Cockenzie, and Fisherrow, skirling, "Roug-a-rug, warstling herring," as
if every one was trying to drown out her neighbour, till the very
landladies, at the top of the seventeen story houses, could hear, if they
liked to be fashed, and might come down at their leisure to buy them at
three for a penny; men from Barnton, and thereaway on the Queensferry
Road, halloing "Sour douk, sour douk;" tinklers skirmishing the edges of
brown plates they were trying to make the old wives buy--and what not. To
me it was a real hell upon earth.

Never let us repine, howsomever, but consider that all is ordered for the
best. The sons of the patriarch Jacob found out their brother Joseph in
a foreign land, and where they least expected it; so it was here--even
here, where my heart was sickening unto death, from my daily and nightly
thoughts being as bitter as gall--that I fell in with the greatest
blessing of my life, Nanse Cromie!

In the flat below our workshop lived Mrs Whitteraick, the wife of Mr
Whitteraick, a dealer in hens and hams in the poultry market, that had
been fallen in with, when her gudeman was riding out on his bit sheltie
in the Lauder direction, bargaining with the farmers for their ducks,
chickens, gaislings, geese, turkey-pouts, howtowdies, guinea-hens, and
other barn-door fowls; and, among his other calls, having happened to
make a transaction with her father, anent some Anchovy-ducks, he, by a
warm invitation, was kindly pressed to remain for the night.

The upshot of the business was, that, on mounting his pony to make the
best of hi