t, the folks behind being obliged to mount the back
benches to get a sight. Right to the forehand of us was a large green
curtain, some five or six ells wide, a good deal the worse of the wear,
having seen service through two-three summers; and, just in the front of
it, were eight or ten penny candles stuck in a board fastened to the
ground, to let us see the players' feet like, when they came on the
stage--and even before they came on the stage--for the curtain being
scrimpit in length, we saw legs and sandals moving behind the scenes very
neatly; while two blind fiddlers they had brought with them played the
bonniest ye ever heard. 'Od, the very music was worth a sixpence of
itself.

The place, as I said before, was choke-full, just to excess; so that one
could scarcely breathe. Indeed, I never saw any part so crowded, not
even at a tent preaching, when the Rev. Mr Roarer was giving his
discourses on the building of Solomon's Temple. We were obligated to
have the windows opened for a mouthful of fresh air, the barn being as
close as a baker's oven, my neighbour and me fanning our red faces with
our hats, to keep us cool; and, though all were half stewed, we certainly
had the worst of it, the toddy we had taken having fermented the blood of
our bodies into a perfect fever.

Just at the time that the two blind fiddlers were playing the Downfall of
Paris, a handbell rang, and up goes the green curtain; being hauled to
the ceiling, as I observed with the tail of my eye, by a birkie at the
side, that had hold of a rope. So, on the music stopping, and all
becoming as still as that you might have heard a pin fall, in comes a
decent old gentleman at his leisure, well powdered, with an old-fashioned
coat on, waistcoat with flap-pockets, brown breeches with buckles at the
knees, and silk stockings with red gushats on a blue ground. I never saw
a man in such distress; he stamped about, and better stamped about,
dadding the end of his staff on the ground, and imploring all the powers
of heaven and earth to help him to find out his runaway daughter, that
had decamped with some ne'er-do-weel loon of a half-pay captain, that
keppit her in his arms from her bedroom-window, up two pair of stairs.

Every father and head of a family must have felt for a man in his
situation, thus to be robbed of his dear bairn, and an only daughter too,
as he told us over and over again, as the salt, salt tears ran gushing
down his withered face