When the key of the jail door was thrawn, and the two loons brought out, there was a bumming of wonder, and maybe sorrow, among the terrible crowd, to see fellow-creatures so left alone to themselves as to have robbed an honest man's hen-house at the dead hour of night, when a fire was bleezing next door, and the howl of desolation soughing over the town like a visible judgment. One of them, as I said before, had a red pow and a foraging cap, with a black napkin roppined round his weasand; a jean jacket with six pockets, and square tails; a velveteen waistcoat with plated buttons; corduroy breeches buttoned at the knees; rig-and-fur stockings; and heavy, clanking wooden clogs. The other, who was little and round-shouldered, with a bull neck and bushy black whiskers, just like a shoebrush stuck to each cheek of his head, as if he had been a travelling agent for Macassar, had on a low-crowned, plated beaver hat, with the end of a peacock's feather stuck in the band; a long-tailed old black coat, as brown as a berry, and as bare as my loof, to say nothing of being out at both elbows. His trowsers, I dare say, had once been nankeen; but as they did not appear to have seen the washing-tub for a season or two, it would be rash to give any decided opinion on that head. In short, they were two awful-like raggamuffins. Women, however, are aye sympathizing and merciful; so, as I was standing among the crowd, as they came down the tolbooth stair, chained together by the cuffs of the coat, one said, "Wae's me! what a weel-faur'd fellow, wi' the red head, to be found guilty of stealing folk's hen-houses."--And another one said, "Hech, sirs! what a bonny blackaviced man that little ane is, to be paraded through the strees for a warld's wonder!" But I said nothing, knowing the thing was just, and a wholesome example; holding Benjie on my shoulder to see the poukit hens tied about their necks like keeking-glasses. But, puh! the fellows did not give one pinch of snuff; so off they set, and in this manner were drummed through the bounds of the parish, a constable walking at each side of them with Lochaber axes, and the town-drummer row-de-dowing the thief's march at their backs. It was a humbling sight.