addie roared "Help!" and "Murder!" and "Thieves!"
and, as the furm on which we were sitting played flee backwards, cripple
Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead!--I'm killed--shot through the head!--Oh!
oh! oh!"

Surely I had fainted away; for, when I came to myself, I found my red
comforter loosed; my face all wet--Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with
his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and the brisk brown
stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm,
whizz--whizz--whizzing in the chimley lug.

CHAPTER ELEVEN--TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL: SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS

It was a clear starry night, in the blasty month of January, I mind it
well. The snow had fallen during the afternoon; or, as Benjie came in
crying, that "the auld wives o' the norlan sky were plucking their
geese"; and it continued dim and dowie till towards the gloaming, when,
as the road-side labourers were dandering home from their work, some with
pickaxes and others with shools, and just as our cocks and hens were
going into their beds, poor things, the lift cleared up to a sharp
freeze, and the well-ordered stars came forth glowing over the blue sky.
Between six and seven the moon rose; and I could not get my two prentices
in from the door, where they were bickering one another with snow-balls,
or maybe carhailling the folk on the street in their idle wantonness; so
I was obliged for that night to disappoint Edie Macfarlane of the pair of
black spatterdashes he was so anxious to get finished, for dancing in
next day, at Souple Jack the carpenter's grand penny-wedding.

Seeing that little more good was to be expected till morning, I came to
the resolution of shutting-in half-an-hour earlier than usual; so, as I
was carrying out the shop-shutters, with my hat over my cowl, for it was
desperately sharp, I mostly in my hurry knocked down an old man, that was
coming up to ask me, "if I was Maister Wauch the tailor and furnisher."

Having told him that I was myself, instead of a better; and having asked
him to step in, that I might have a glimpse of his face at the candle, I
saw that he was a stranger, dressed in a droll auld-farrant green
livery-coat, faced with white. His waistcoat was cut in the Parly-voo
fashion, with long lappels, and a double row of buttons down the breast;
and round his neck he had a black corded stock, such like, but not so
broad, as I afterwards wore in the volunteers, when drilling under Big
Sam. He ha