f; and whiles, when opportunity led him, or occasion
required, digging and delving away at the bit kail-yard, till moon and
stars were in the lift, and the dews of heaven that fell on his head,
were like the oil that flowed from Aaron's beard, even to the skirts of
his garment. But what will ye say there? Some are born with a silver
spoon in their mouths, and others with a parritch-stick. Of the latter
was my father; for, with all his fechting, he never was able much more
than to keep our heads above the ocean of debt. Whatever was denied him,
a kind Providence, howsoever, enabled him to do that; and so he departed
this life contented, leaving to my mother and me, the two survivors, the
prideful remembrance of being, respectively, she the widow, and me the
son, of an honest man. Some left with twenty thousand cannot boast as
much; so every one has their comforts.

[Picture: Mansie's wedding]

Having never entered much into public life, further than attending the
kirk twice every Sabbath--and thrice when there was evening service--the
days of my father glided over like the waters of a deep river that make
little noise in their course; so I do not know whether to lament or to
rejoice at having almost nothing to record of him. Had Buonaparte as
little ill to account for, it would be well this day for him:--but, losh
me! I had almost skipped over his wedding.

In the five-and-twentieth year of his age, he had fallen in love with my
mother, Marion Laverock, at the christening of a neighbour's bairn, where
they both happened to forgather; little, I daresay, jealousing, at the
time their eyes first met, that fate had destined them for a pair, and to
be the honoured parents of me, their only bairn. Seeing my father's
heart was catched as in the net of the fowler, she took every lawful
means, such as adding another knot to her cockernony, putting up her hair
in screw curls, and so on, to follow up her advantage; the result of all
which was, that, after three months' courtship, she wrote a letter out to
her friends at Loanhead, telling them of what was more than likely to
happen, and giving a kind invitation to such of them as might think it
worth their whiles to come in and be spectators of the ceremony.--And a
prime day I am told they had of it, having, by advice of more than one,
consented to make it a penny wedding; and hiring Deacon Laurie's
malt-barn at five shillings, for the express purpose