The names of the two Eirishers were John Dochart and Dennis Flint, both,
according to their own deponement, from the county of Tipperary; and weel-
a-wat the place has no great credit in producing two such bairns. Often,
after that, did I look through that part of the Advertizer newspapers,
that has a list of all the accidents, and so on, just above the births,
marriages, and deaths, which I liked to read regularly. Howsoever, it
was two years before I discovered their names again, having it seems,
during a great part of that period, lived under the forged name of Alias;
and I saw that they were both shipped off at Leith, for transportation to
some country called the Hulks, for being habit and repute thieves, and
for having made a practice of coining bad silver. The thing, however,
that condemned them, was for having knocked down a drunk man, in a
beastly state of intoxication, on the King's highway in broad daylight;
and having robbed him of his hat, wig, and neckcloth, an upper and under
vest, a coat and great-coat, a pair of Hessian boots which he had on his
legs, a silver watch with four brass seals and a key, besides a snuff-box
made of box-wood, with an invisible hinge, one of the Lawrencekirk breed,
a pair of specs, some odd halfpennies, and a Camperdown pocket-napkin.
But of all months of the year--or maybe, indeed, of my blessed
lifetime--this one was the most adventurous. It seemed, indeed, as if
some especial curse of Providence hung over the canny town of Dalkeith;
and that, like the great cities of the plain, we were at long and last to
be burnt up from the face of the earth with a shower of fire and
brimstone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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