ould not
bide the sight of it, knowing whose hands it had been in, and reminding
me as it did of the depravity of human nature.

Verily, verily, this is a wonderfully wicked world. To find out the two
vagabonds would have been hopeless; unless I could have followed them to
the Back of Beyond, where the mare foaled the fiddler.

CHAPTER TWELVE--MANSIE ON THE OLD VOLUNTEERING DAYS

The sough of war and invasion flew over the face of the land, at this
time, like a great whirlwind; and the hearts of men died within their
persons with fear and trembling. The accounts that came from abroad were
just dreadful beyond all power of description. Death stalked about from
place to place, like a lawless tyrant, and human blood was spilt like
water; while the heads of crowned kings were cut off; and great dukes and
lords were thrown into dark dungeons, or obligated to flee for their
lives into foreign lands, and to seek out hiding-places of safety beyond
the waves of the sea. What was worst of all, our trouble seemed a
smittal one; the infection spread around; and even our own land, which
all thought hale and healthy, began to show symptoms of the plague-spot.
Losh me! that men, in their seven senses, could have ever shown
themselves so infatuated. Johnny Wilkes and liberty was but a joke to
what was hanging over the head of the nation, brewing like a dark tempest
which was to swallow it up. Bills were posted up through night, by hands
that durst not have been seen at the work through day; and the agents of
the Spirit of Darkness, calling themselves the Friends of the People,
held secret meetings, and hatched plots to blow up our blessed King and
Constitution.

Yet the business, though fearsome in the main, was in some parts almost
laughable. Everything was to be divided, and every one made alike:
houses and lands were to be distributed by lot; and the mighty man and
the beggar--the auld man and the hobble-de-hoy--the industrious man and
the spendthrift--the maimed, the cripple, and the blind, the clever man
of business and the haveril simpleton, made all just brethren, and alike.
Save us! but to think of such nonsense!!--At one of their meetings, held
at the sign of the Tappet Hen and the Tankard, there was a prime fight of
five rounds between Tammy Bowsie the snab, and auld Thrashem the dominie
with the boulie-back about their drawing cuts which was to get Dalkeith
Palace, and which Newbottle Abbey. Oh, sic riff-r