I would na hae been that sorry if it had choked him, and I felt in my mind that the man would surely come to shame and want. Aweel, when the mistress showed me the room I was to sleep in, I could na get this man’s ill face out o’ my mind, and I asked her if the men that were drinking at the table were to bide all night. ‘Some of them might,’ she said, ‘and some might not; but I need not be frightened, for my friend the pedlar was to sleep in the next room to me, and there was a door through frae my room to his. You see,’ she said, ‘there is only a latch to it, for the key has been lost; but as he is an honest man nae doubt, and your friend, you will no mind that; but this is a decent house, and you need fear no disturbance;’ and wi’ that she left me. I had not been long in bed afore I heard the pedlar, honest man, snoring soundly. I was weary, weary, and yet for a lang time I could no get to sleep, for the fiddle seemed aye sounding in my ears, and the bit bairnies dancing afore me, and that man’s ill face aye taking anither look at me, but after a time I heard steps passing up the stairs, and the front door was barred in, and quietness fell upon the house; and then, though it was no just sleep that came over me, it was a kind o’ a dover, and how lang it lasted I canna tell, but suddenly it seemed to me as if I heard a step in the passage and some one stopping at my door,--I started up in my bed and listened; a lock turned, but it was na in my room, but in the next; and then I saw a light under the door that had the latch. I sprang up and looked through the key-hole; the ill face o’ that awfu’ man seemed glaring on me, I could scarcely breathe, for I felt sure he saw me, but he turned away and went straight up to the bed; he seemed to listen for a moment, bending over it, then softly lifting up a worsted plaid that was lying over a chair by the bed-side, he seized the pack which the plaid was covering, and turned to the door again. He had his back to me then; I lifted the latch and sprang in, and the next moment I had him by the throat, the ill rascal, wi’ a scream that wakened the whole house. He let fall the pack, shook me off as if I had been a feather, and darted along the passage. He took me for a ghaist, nae doubt; for, for decency’s sake, I had put the white sheet about me. Aweel, we looked for him all over the house, but saw naething but a window wide open, and doubtless out o’ that window the ill-conditioned creature had gone on his evil way. It was na muckle sleep that either the pedlar or me got that night, I reckon, for I heard nae mair snoring.” “Oh, Peggy!” more than one voice exclaimed, “how frightful and how interesting; but go on, go on, tell us more.”