homas Burlings]

"Twa mile and a bittock," answered Tammie. "But wait a wee.--Up cam the
two lights snoov-snooving, nearer and nearer; and I heard distinctly the
sound of feet that werena men's--cloven feet, maybe--but nae wheels. Sae
nearer it cam and nearer, till the sweat began to pour owre my een as
cauld as ice; and, at lang and last, I fand my knees beginning to gi'e
way; and, after tot-tottering for half a minute, I fell down, my staff
playing bleach out before me. When I cam to mysell, and opened my een,
there were the twa lights before me, bleez-bleezing, as if they wad blast
my sight out. And what did they turn out to be, think ye? The de'il or
spunkie, whilk o' them?"

"I'm sure I canna tell," said I.

"Naithing mair then," answered Tammie, "but twa bowets; ane tied to ilka
knee of auld Doofie, the half-crazy horse-doctor, mounted on his
lang-tailed naig, and away through the dark by himsell, at the dead hour
o' night, to the relief of a man's mare seized with the batts, somewhere
down about Oxenford."

I was glad that Tammie's story had ended in this way, when out came
another tramping on its heels.

"Do you see the top of yon black trees to the eastward there, on the
braehead?"

"I think I do," was my reply. "But how far, think ye, are we from home
now?"

"About a mile and a half," said Tammie.--"Weel, as to the trees, I'll
tell ye something about them.

"There was an auld widow-leddy lived langsyne about the town-end of
Dalkeith. A sour, cankered, curious body--she's dead and rotten lang
ago. But what I was gaun to say, she had a bonny bit fair-haired,
blue-ee'd lassie of a servant-maid that lodged in the house wi' her, just
by all the world like a lamb wi' an wolf; a bonnier quean, I've heard
tell, never steppit in leather shoon; so all the young lads in the
gate-end were wooing at her, and fain to have her; but she wad only have
ae joe for a' that. He was a journeyman wright, a trades-lad, and they
had come, three or four year before, frae the same place thegither--maybe
having had a liking for ane anither since they were bairns; so they were
gaun to be married the week after Da'keith Fair, and a' was settled. But
what, think ye, happened? He got a drap drink, and a recruiting party
listed him in the king's name, wi' pitting a white shilling in his loof.

"When the poor lassie heard what had come to pass, and how her sweetheart
had ta'en the bounty, she was like to gang distrackit,