r, such as me, and fit for the Sunday's wear of
some fashionable Don of the first water. However, not to part uncivilly,
and be as good as my word, I brought ben Nanse's bottle, and gave him a
cawker at the shop counter; and, after taking a thimbleful to myself, to
drink a good journey to him, I bade him take care of his feet, as the
causeway was frozen, and saw the auld flunkie safely over the strand with
a candle.

Ye may easily conceive that Nanse got a surprise, when I paraded ben to
the room with the grand coat and waistcoat on, cocking up my head,
putting my hands into the haunch pockets, and strutting about more like a
peacock than a douce elder of Maister Wiggie's kirk; so just as, thinking
shame of myself, I was about to throw it off, I found something bulky at
the bottom of the side pocket, which I discovered to be a wheen papers
fastened together with green tape. Finding they were written in a real
neat hand, I put on my spectacles, and sending up the close for James
Batter, we sat round the fireside, and read away like nine-year-aulds.

The next matter of consideration was, whether, in buying the coat as it
stood, the paper belonged to me, or the old flunkie waiting-servant with
the peaked hat. James and me, after an hour and a half's argle-bargleing
pro and con, in the way of Parliament-house lawyers, came at last to be
unanimously of opinion, that according to the auld Scotch proverb of

"He that finds keeps,
And he that loses seeks,"

whatever was part or pendicle of the coat at the time of purchase, when
it hung exposed for sale over the white-headed Welshman's little finger,
became according to the law of nature and nations, as James Batter wisely
observed, part and pendicle of the property of me, Mansie Wauch, the
legal purchaser.

Notwithstanding all this, however, I was not sincerely convinced in my
own conscience; and I daresay if the creature had cast up, and come
seeking them back, I would have found myself bound to make restitution.
This is not now likely to happen; for twenty long years have come and
passed away, like the sunshine of yesterday, and neither word nor wittens
of the body have been seen or heard tell of; so, according to the course
of nature, being a white-headed old man, with a pigtail, when the bargain
was made, his dust and bones have, in all likelihood, long ago mouldered
down beneath the green turf of his own mountains, like his granfather's
before him. This be