Leper and his master went to a gentleman’s house to work, where there was a saucy house-keeper, who had more ignorance and pride than good sense and manners; she domineered over her fellow servants in a tyrannical manner. Leper resolved to mortify her pride; so he finds an ant’s nest, and takes their white eggs, grinds them to a powder, and puts them into the dish her supper sowns was to be put in. After she had taken her supper, as she was covering the table, the imnock powder began to operate, and she let a great f--: well done Margaret, said the Laird, your a-- would take a cautioner. Before she got out of the chamber door she let fly another crack; then she goes to order her fellow servant to give the Laird his supper, but before she could give the necessary directions, she gave fire again, which set them all a laughing; she runs into a room herself, and there she played away her one gun battery so fast, that you would have thought she had been besieging the Havannah. The Laird and Lady came to hear the fun, they were like to split their sides at proud Maggy. So next morning she left her place, to the great satisfaction of all her fellow servants. PART II. Leper’s landlady became very harsh to his master, and very often abused him exceedingly sore with her tongue and hands, and always called upon him for more money, and to have all the money in her keeping; which Leper was sorry for. It so happened on a day that the tailor had got a hearty drubbing both with tongue and tongs, that he pouched his thimble and was going to make a queen of her: when she saw that, she cried out, O! will you leave a poor tender dying woman. But Leper knowing the cause of her ill nature better than his master did, advised him to take her on a fine day, like a mile out of town, and give her a walk, and he would stay at home and study a remedy for her disorder.--Away they both go; but as she was always complaining for want of health, and that she was very weak, she cried frequently out, O! ’tis a crying sin to take a woman in my condition out o’er a door. During their absence, Leper goes and searches the bed, and below the bolster gets a bottle of rare whisky, of which he takes a hearty pull, and then pisses in it to make it up; gets a halfpenny worth of snuff, and puts it in also, shakes all together, and so sets it in its place again.--Home they came, and she was exceedingly distressed as a woman could be, and cried out, it was a horrid thing to take her out of the house. The tailor seeing her so bad, thought she would have died, ran as fast as he could for a dram, but she in her hypocrisy pretended she could not take it, and called on him to help her to bed, into which he lays her; she was not well gone when she fell to her bottle, taking two or three hearty gluts, then she roars out murder, I’m poisoned, I’m poisoned. Bocking and purging began, and the neighbours were called in; she lays her blood upon poor Leper, and