yed his part so well that he came out of it in a daze, had
Corp at heel from that hour. He told him what a rogue he had been in
London, and Corp cried admiringly, "Oh, you deevil! oh, you queer little
deevil!" and sometimes it was Elspeth who was narrator, and then Tommy's
noble acts were the subject; but still Corp's comment was "Oh, the
deevil! oh, the queer little deevil!" Elspeth was flattered by his
hero-worship, but his language shocked her, and after consulting Miss
Ailie she advised him to count twenty when he felt an oath coming, at
the end of which exercise the desire to swear would have passed away.
Good-natured Corp willingly promised to try this, but he was never
hopeful, and as he explained to Tommy, after a failure, "It just made me
waur than ever, for when I had counted the twenty I said a big Damn,
thoughtful-like, and syne out jumpit three little damns, like as if the
first ane had cleckit in my mouth."

It was fortunate that Elspeth liked Corp on the whole, for during the
three years now to be rapidly passed over, Tommy took delight in his
society, though he never treated him as an equal; Corp indeed did not
expect that, and was humbly grateful for what he got. In summer, fishing
was their great diversion. They would set off as early as four in the
morning, fishing wands in hand, and scour the world for trout, plodding
home in the gloaming with stones in their fishing-basket to deceive
those who felt its weight. In the long winter nights they liked best to
listen to Blinder's tales of the Thrums Jacobites, tales never put into
writing, but handed down from father to son, and proved true in the
oddest of ways, as by Blinder's trick of involuntarily holding out his
hands to a fire when he found himself near one, though he might be
sweating to the shirt and the time a July forenoon. "I make no doubt,"
he told them, "as I do that because my forbear, Buchan Osler (called
Buchan wi' the Haap after the wars was ower), had to hod so lang frae
the troopers, and them so greedy for him that he daredna crawl to a fire
once in an eight days."

The Lord of the Spittal and handsome Captain Body (whose being "out"
made all the women anxious) marched through the Den, flapping their
wings at the head of a fearsome retinue, and the Thrums folk looked so
glum at them that gay Captain Body said he should kiss every lass who
did not cheer for Charlie, and none cheered, but at the same time none
ran away. Few in Thrums car