lay at the
baker's feet, who had just raised his spoke, probably to give me the
_coup de grace_,--it was an awful moment. Just then I heard a shout and
a rushing sound. A wild-looking figure is descending the hill with
terrible bounds; it is a lad of some fifteen years; he is bare-headed,
and his red uncombed hair stands on end like hedgehogs' bristles; his
frame is lithy, like that of an antelope, but he has prodigious breadth
of chest; he wears a military undress, that of the regiment, even of a
drummer, for it is wild Davy, whom a month before I had seen enlisted on
Leith Links to serve King George with drum and drumstick as long as his
services might be required, and who, ere a week had elapsed, had smitten
with his fist Drum-Major Elzigood, who, incensed at his own inaptitude,
had threatened him with the cane; he has been in confinement for weeks,
this is the first day of his liberation, and he is now descending the
hill with horrid bounds and shoutings; he is now about five yards
distant, and the baker, who apprehends that something dangerous is at
hand prepares himself for the encounter; but what avails the strength of
a baker, even full grown?--what avails the defence of a wicker shield?
what avails the wheel-spoke, should there be an opportunity of using it,
against the impetus of an avalanche or a cannon ball?--for to either of
these might that wild figure be compared, which, at the distance of five
yards, sprang at once with head, hands, feet and body, all together, upon
the champion of the New Town, tumbling him to the earth amain. And now
it was the turn of the Old Town to triumph. Our late discomfited host,
returning on its steps, overwhelmed the fallen champion with blows of
every kind, and then, led on by his vanquisher who had assumed his arms,
namely, the wheelspoke and wicker shield, fairly cleared the brae of
their adversaries, whom they drove down headlong into the morass.

CHAPTER VIII.

Meanwhile I had become a daring cragsman, a character to which an English
lad has seldom opportunities of aspiring; for in England there are
neither crags nor mountains. Of these, however, as is well known, there
is no lack in Scotland, and the habits of individuals are invariably in
harmony with the country in which they dwell. The Scotch are expert
climbers, and I was now a Scot in most things, particularly in language.
The castle in which I dwelt stood upon a rock, a bold and craggy one,
which, at f