et out? I danced round and
round about, stamping my heels on the floor, and rubbing my begritten
face with my coat sleeve. To make matters worse, it was wearing to the
darkening. The floor was all covered with lappered blood, and sheep and
calf skins. The calves and the sheep themselves, with their cuttit
throats, and glazed een, and ghastly girning faces, were hanging about on
pins, heels uppermost. Losh me! I thought on Bluebeard and his wives in
the bloody chamber!

And all the time it was growing darker and darker, and more dreary; and
all was as quiet as death itself. It looked, by all the world, like a
grave, and me buried alive within it; till the rottens came out of their
holes to lick the blood, and whisked about like wee evil spirits. I
thought on my father and my mother, and how I should never see them more;
for I was sure that Cursecowl would come in the dark, tie my hands and
feet thegither, and lay me across the killing-stool. I grew more and
more frightened; and it grew more and more dark. I thought all the sheep-
heads were looking at one another, and then girn-girning at me. At last
I grew desperate; and my hair was as stiff as wire, though it was as wet
as if I had been douking in the Esk. I began to bite through the wooden
spars with my teeth, and rugged at them with my nails, till they were
like to come off--but no, it would not do. At length, when I had greeted
myself mostly blind, and cried till I was as hoarse as a corbie, I saw
auld Janet Hogg taking in her bit washing from the bushes, and I reeled
and screamed till she heard me.--It was like being transported into
heaven; for, in less than no time, my mother, with her apron at her eyes,
was at the door; and Cursecowl, with a candle in the front of his hat,
had scarcely thrawn the key, when out I flew; and she lifted up her foot,
(I dare say it was the first and last time in her life, for she was a
douce woman,) and gave him such a kick and a push, that he played bleach
over, head foremost, without being able to recover himself; and, as we
ran down the close, we heard him cursing and swearing in the dark, like a
devil incarnate.

CHAPTER VI.--PUSHING MY FORTUNE.

Oh, love, love, lassie,
Love is like a dizziness,
It winna let a puir bodie
Gang about their business.

JAMES HOGG.

The days of the years of my prenticeship having glided cannily over on
the working-board of my respected maister, James Ho