It would have been altogether impossible for any such man as Jock to carry on the war, if he had not had one howff,[4] above all others, where he enjoyed a little credit. This was an eating-house in the Canongate, kept by one Luckie Wishart, a decent widow of about forty, with four or five children, who had been pleased to cast an eye of particular favour upon the shining exterior of our hero. A pot sable upon a ground argent pointed out this house to the passers by, even if they had not been informed of its character by the savoury steam which always proceeded from it between the hours of one and five P. M., and certain spectral and unfinished pies which ran in a row along the sole of her little window, level with the street, as well as a larger display of the same article on a board half way down her somewhat steep and whitewashed stair. Luckie Wishart also sold liquors; but she was far too respectable a person to let Jock spend his wages at one bouse in her house. She always, as she said, shanked him off, whenever he came there of a Saturday night, and it was only when his pockets were empty, and no provisions to be had for the working days of the week, that he resorted to her. Generally about the Tuesdays, Jock came briskly down into her culinary Tartarus, quite sobered and hungry, sending his voice briskly along the passage before him, as if defending himself by anticipation from a shower of reproaches which he knew she would bestow upon him:—“Nothing of the kind,” he would cry; “nothing of the kind—all a mistake—’pon my honour.” There was generally, it may be supposed, fully as much scolding and railing as he could have anticipated; but the end of the jest always was, that Jock got snug into some corner of Luckie’s own particular den, where he was regaled with a plate of something or other, garnished always with a few last words of rebuke from the lady, like the droppings after a thunderstorm, which he always contrived, however, to stomach with his beef, without manifesting any very great degree of irritation. There is something ominous in the act of drawing in one’s stool at the fireside of a comfortable widow. It is apt to make a young man feel rather ticklish, even although he may never have thought of her before, except as a good cook. So it was with Jock, and the idea might have been fatal to his visits to Luckie Wishart’s (for, to speak the truth, she was no great beauty), if dire hunger, which tames lions, had not absolutely compelled him to continue the practice. In general, when Jock came in with his week’s gains, he flung a few shillings upon the dresser, as part payment of what he had ate and drank during the past few days, reserving the rest for the bouse-royal. But, notwithstanding all these occasional deposits to account, his score got always the longer the longer, until it at last went fairly off at the bottom of a cupboard door, and had to be “brought forward” on the end of a chest of drawers.