"Did ye ever hear the like of that, Mansie? Weel, man, I'll explain the hail history of it to ye. Ye see--'Od! how sound that callant's sleeping," continued Isaac; "he's snoring like a nine-year-auld!" I was glad he had stopped, for I was like to sink through the ground with fear; but no, it would not do. "Dinna ye ken--sauf us! what a fearsome night this is! The trees will be all broken. What a noise in the lum! I daresay there's some auld hag of a witch-wife gaun to come rumble doun't. It's no the first time, I'll swear. Hae ye a silver sixpence? Wad ye like that?" he bawled up the chimney. "Ye'll hae heard," said he, "lang ago, that a wee murdered wean was buried--didna ye hear a voice?--was buried below that corner--the hearth-stane there, where the laddie's lying on?" I had now lost my breath, so that I could not stop him. "Ye never heard tell o't, didna ye? Weel, I'se tell't ye--Sauf us, what swurls of smoke coming doun the chimley--I could swear something no canny's stopping up the lum head--Gang out, and see!" At that moment a clap like thunder was heard--the candle was driven over--the sleeping laddie roared "Help!" and "Murder!" and "Thieves!" and, as the furm on which we were sitting played flee backwards, cripple Isaac bellowed out, "I'm dead!--I'm killed--shot through the head!--Oh! oh! oh!" Surely I had fainted away; for, when I came to myself, I found my red comforter loosed; my face all wet--Isaac rubbing down his waistcoat with his sleeve--the laddie swigging ale out of a bicker--and the brisk brown stout, which, by casting its cork, had caused all the alarm, whizz--whizz--whizzing in the chimley lug. CHAPTER ELEVEN--TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL: SCHOOL RECOLLECTIONS It was a clear starry night, in the blasty month of January, I mind it well. The snow had fallen during the afternoon; or, as Benjie came in crying, that "the auld wives o' the norlan sky were plucking their geese"; and it continued dim and dowie till towards the gloaming, when, as the road-side labourers were dandering home from their work, some with pickaxes and others with shools, and just as our cocks and hens were going into their beds, poor things, the lift cleared up to a sharp freeze, and the well-ordered stars came forth glowing over the blue sky. Between six and seven the moon rose; and I could not get my two prentices in from the door, where they were bickering one another with snow-balls, or maybe carhailling the folk on the street in their idle wantonness; so I was obliged for that night to disappoint Edie Macfarlane of the pair of black spatterdashes he was so anxious to get finished, for dancing in next day, at Souple Jack the carpenter's grand penny-wedding.