After the small beer was put into the pan to boil, we found to our great mortification, that there were no eggs in the house, and Benjie was sent out with a candle to the hen house, to see if any of the hens had laid since gloaming, and fetch what he could get. In the middle of the mean time, I was expatiating to Mungo on what taste it would have, and how he had never seen anything finer than it would be, when in ran Benjie, all out of breath, and his face as pale as a dishclout. "What's the matter, Benjie, what's the matter?" said I to him, rising up from my chair in a great hurry of a fright--"Has onybody killed ye? or is the fire broken out again? or has the French landed? or have ye seen a ghost? or are--" "Eh, crifty!" cried Benjie, coming till his speech, "they're a' aff--cock and hens and a'--there's naething left but the rotten nest-egg in the corner!" This was an awful dispensation, of which more hereafter. In the midst of the desolation of the fire--such is the depravity of human nature--some ne'er-do-weels had taken advantage of my absence to break open the hen-house door; and our whole stock of poultry, the cock along with our seven hens--two of them tappit, and one muffed--were carried away bodily, stoop and roop. On this subject, howsoever, I shall say no more in this chapter, but merely observe in conclusion, that as to our het-pint, we were obligated to make the best of a bad bargain, making up with whisky what it wanted in eggs; though our banquet could not be called altogether a merry one, the joys of our escape from the horrors of the fire being damped, as it were by a wet blanket, on account of the nefarious pillaging of our hen-house. CHAPTER TWENTY--MANSIE'S ADVENTURES IN THE SPORTING LINE The situation of me and my family at this time affords an example of the truth of the old proverb, that "ae evil never comes its lane"; being no sooner quit of our dread concerning the burning, than we were doomed by Providence to undergo the disaster of the rookery of our hen-house. I believe I have mentioned the number of our stock--to wit, a cock and seven hens, eight in all; but I neglected, on account of their size, or somehow overlooked, the two bantams, than which two more neat or curiouser-looking creatures were not to be seen in the whole country-side. The hennie was quite a conceit of a thing, and laid an egg not muckle bigger than my thimble; while, for its size, the bit he-ane was, for spirit in the fechting line, a perfect wee deevil incarnate.