r my congratulations, which he
was at first far from receiving in the spirit of cordiality with which
they were offered. A heavy fit of coughing scarce permitted him breath
enough to express the broken hints which he threw out against my
sincerity.

"Uh! uh! uh! uh!--they say a friend--uh! uh!--a friend sticketh closer
than a brither--uh! uh! uh! When I came up here, Maister Osbaldistone, to
this country, cursed of God and man--uh! uh--Heaven forgie me for
swearing--on nae man's errand but yours, d'ye think it was fair--uh! uh!
uh!--to leave me, first, to be shot or drowned atween red-wad Highlanders
and red-coats; and next to be hung up between heaven and earth, like an
auld potato-bogle, without sae muckle as trying--uh! uh!--sae muckle as
trying to relieve me?"

I made a thousand apologies, and laboured so hard to represent the
impossibility of my affording him relief by my own unassisted exertions,
that at length I succeeded, and the Bailie, who was as placable as hasty
in his temper, extended his favour to me once more. I next took the
liberty of asking him how he had contrived to extricate himself.

"Me extricate! I might hae hung there till the day of judgment or I could
hae helped mysell, wi' my head hinging down on the tae side, and my heels
on the tother, like the yarn-scales in the weigh-house. It was the
creature Dougal that extricated me, as he did yestreen; he cuttit aff the
tails o' my coat wi' his durk, and another gillie and him set me on my
legs as cleverly as if I had never been aff them. But to see what a thing
gude braid claith is! Had I been in ony o' your rotten French camlets
now, or your drab-de-berries, it would hae screeded like an auld rag wi'
sic a weight as mine. But fair fa' the weaver that wrought the weft
o't--I swung and bobbit yonder as safe as a gabbart* that's moored by a
three-ply cable at the Broomielaw."

* A kind of lighter used in the river Clyde,--probably from the French *
_abare._

I now inquired what had become of his preserver.

"The creature," so he continued to call the Highlandman, "contrived to
let me ken there wad be danger in gaun near the leddy till he came back,
and bade me stay here. I am o' the mind," he continued, "that he's
seeking after you--it's a considerate creature--and troth, I wad swear he
was right about the leddy, as he ca's her, too--Helen Campbell was nane
o' the maist douce maidens, nor meekest wives neither, and folk say that
Rob himsell stan