publicly cried in the kirk, she clapped her affidavit against it.

"'Nicol,' said she, 'son as ye are o' mine, ye're a poor simple goniel.
There isna a bairn that I have among ye to mend another. Ye are your
faither owre again, every one o' ye--each one more simple than another.
Will ye marry a taupie that has nae recommendation but a doll's face, and
bring shame and sorrow to your door?'

"I flew into a rampaging passion wi' my mother, for levelling Jenny to
either shame or sorrow: but she maintained that married we should not be,
if she could prevent it; and she certainly said and did everything that lay
in her power to render me jealous. She might as weel have lectured to a
whinstane rock. I believed Jenny to be as pure as the dew that falleth upon
a lily before sunrise in May. But on the very night before we were to be
married, and when I went to fit on the gloves and the ring--to my horror
and inexpressible surprise, who should I see in the farm-yard, (for it was
a fine star-light night,) but my Jenny--my thrice cried bride--wi' her hand
upon the shouther o' the auldest son o' her faither's laird, and his arm
round her waist. My first impulse was to run into the stackyard where they
were, and to knock him down; but he was a strong lad, and, thinks I,
'second thoughts are best.' I was resolved, however, that my mother should
find I wasna such a simpleton as she gied me out to be--so I turned round
upon my heel and went home saying to mysel, as the song says--

'If this be the way of courting a wife,
I'll never look after another;
But I'll away hame and live single my lane,
And I'll away hame to my mother.'

When I went hame, and informed her o' what I had seen, and o' what I had
dune, the auld woman clapped me upon the shouther, and says she--'Nicholas,
my man, I am glad that yer ain een have been made a witness in the matter
of which your mother forewarned ye. Ye was about to bring disgrace upon
your family; but I trust ye have seen enough to be a warning to ye. O
Nicholas! they that marry a wife merely for the sake o' a bonny face, or
for being a smart dancer, or onything o' that kind, never repent it but
once, and that is for ever. Marriage lad, lifts the veil from the face o'
beauty, and causes it to be looked upon as an every-day thing; and even if
ye were short-sighted before, marriage will make ye see through spectacles
that will suit your sight, whither ye will or no. Dinna think that I