weary place to mair
than ane. Twa-three year ago, some o' the collyer bodies were choked to
death down below wi' a blast of foul air; and a pour o' orphan weans they
left behint them on the cauldrife parish. But ye'll mind Hornem, the
sherry-officer wi' the thrawn shouther?"

"Ou, bravely; I believe he came to some untimeous end hereaway about?"

"Just in that spat," answered Tammie. "He was a drucken, blustering
chield, as ye mind; fearing neither man nor de'il, and living a wild,
wicked, regardless life; but, puir man, that couldna aye last. He had
been bousing about the countryside somehow--maybe harrying out of house
and hald some puir bodies that hadna the wherewith to pay their rents;
so, in riding hame fou--it was pitmirk, and the rain pouring down in
bucketfu's--he became dumfoundered wi' the darkness and the dramming
thegither; and, losing his way, wandered about the fields, hauling his
mare after him by the bridle. In the morning the beast was found
nibbling away at the grass owre by yonder, wi' the saddle upon its back,
and a broken bridle hinging down about its fore-legs, by the which the
folks round were putten upon the scent; for, on making search down yon
pit, he was fund at the bottom, wi' his brains smashed about him, and his
legs and arms broken to chitters!"

"Save us!" said I, "it makes a' my flesh grue."

"Weel it may," answered Tammie, "or the story's lost in the telling; for
the collyers that fand him shook as if they had been seized wi' the ague.
The dumb animal, ye observe, had far mair sense than him; for, when his
fitting gaed way, instead of following it had plunged back; and the bit
o' the bridle, that had broken, was still in his grup, when they spied
him wi' their lanterns."

"It was an awful like way to leave the world," said I.

"'Deed it was, and nae less," answered Tammie, "to gang to his lang
account in the middle of his mad thochtlessness, without a moment's
warning. But see, yonder's Cousland lying right forrit to the east
hand."

At this very nick of time Benjie was seized with a severe kink; so Tammie
stopped his cart, and I held his head over the side of it till the cough
went by. I thought his inside would have jumped out; but he fell sound
asleep in two or three minutes; and we jogged on till we came to the yill-
house door, where, after louping out, we got a pickle pease-strae to
Tammie's horse.

CHAPTER XIV.--MY LORD'S RACES.

Aff they a' went ga