"Oho!" thinks I, "friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo, that's one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you're a Frenchy. Who kens keeps us all, but ye may be a Bonaparte himself in disguise, come over in a flat-bottomed boat, to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn's morning." It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man in the course of his lifetime to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal neuk, and have the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so while he kept rampaging, fuffing, stamping, and diabbling away I went in and brought out Benjie with a blanket row'd round him, and my journeyman, Tommy Bodkin--who, being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour boarder of, he sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen fire--to hold a consultation and be witness of the transaction. I got my musket, and Tommy Bodkin armed himself with the goose, a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it, and Benjie took the poker in one hand and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly to make the Frenchman that was locked up from the light of day in the coal house surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, he gave a knock to rouse him up and see if we could bring anything out of him by speering him cross-questions. Tammy and Benjie trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we make common sense of it all. I wonder wha edicates thae foreign creatures? It was in vain to follow him, for he just gab, gabbled away like ane o' the stone masons at the tower of Babel. At first I was completely bamboozled and amaist dung stupid, though I kent a word of French which I wantit to pit till him, so I cried through--"Canna you speak Frencha, Mounseer?" He hadna the politeness to stop and mak' answer, but just gaed on wi' his string of havers, without either rhyme or reason, which we could mak' neither tap, tail, nor main o'. It was a sair trial to us a', putting us to our wit's end, and hoo to come on was past all visible comprehension, when Tammy Bodkin, gi'eing his elbow a claw, said--"Od, maister, I wager something that he's broken loose frae Pennycuick. We have him like a rotten in a fa'." On Pennycuick being mentioned, we heard the foreign crature in the coal house groaning out, "Och" and "ohone," and "parbleu," and "Mysie Rabbie"--that, I fancy, was his sweetheart at hame, sum bit French queen that wondered he was never like to come frae the wars and marry her. I thocht on this, for his voice was mournfu', though I couldna understand the words; and, kenning he was a stranger in a far land, my bowels yearned within me with compassion towards him.