"The issue wasna long in doubt, for she was fairly _speerited_ awa between and that day three months. "Young as I was, my surprise was great, and so was that of the haill village, at the way my father took on when she died. 'She was ill to hersell, and no that guid till you, Saunders,' said the minister to him one day, by way of comforting him. 'And I can scrimp deny that same, minister, but for mony a day she was a leal and gude wife to me, before she fell away intil that evil propensity; and although it whiles surprises me mysell that I should miss an auld drucken wife sae muckle, yet lang custom, minister, makes ane even miss the very middenstead before the door, ye ken; at ony rate, I canna think o' her just yet, without a fullness at my heart, that I confess I am a wee bit ashamed o'." "When the steek in my father's purse, let down by my mother's spiritual propensities, was taken up once more by her death, we again began to float up into respectability and comparative riches; so that we gradually resumed the status in the small village from which we had declined. "I was at this time about twelve years of age, and my father sent me back to the school which my mother had drank me out of; and in the course of three years, I believe I may with a safe conscience say, that I knew as much as the master himself did; of whom the young laird, Mr Adderfang, used to say,--'He would be a clever chiel wha kenn'd _all the master didna_.' "About this time, old Durie Squake, the precentor, met with an accident which gave me temporary promotion in the kirk; for, coming into it one dark forenoon in the winter-time, after having oiled his chanter with a drap drink, he did not notice that the door of his wee poopit had been altered, so as to swing the contrary way to what it did before; and as it stood wide open, fronting him edgeways, it was as clean and invisible as if it had been the blade of a knife; so that although the blind body had as usual his twa paws extended and stuck out before him, one holding his Bible and the other his pitchpipe, he ran smack up against the edge, clipping the leaf of the door with an outspread arm on each side of it, and thereby received such a _devel_, that his nose was bashed, and the sneck sank into his forehead, as if he had been struck with a butcher's hatchet. Down fell auld Durie Squake, with a grunt and a squelch, on his back. 'Losh preserve me! I aye kenned I had a lang nose, but surely it's langer this blessed Sabbath than common!'