After a tremendous sound sleep, I was up betimes in the morning, though a wee drumly about the head, anxious to enquire at Tammie Bodkin, the head of the business department, me being absent, if any extraordinars had occurred on the yesterday; and found that the only particular customer making enquiries anent me was our old friend Cursecowl, savage for the measure of a killing-coat, which he wanted made as fast as directly. Though dreadfully angry at finding me from home, and unco swithering at first, he at length, after a volley of oaths enough to have opened a stone wall, allowed Tammie Bodkin to take his inches; but, as he swore and went on havering and speaking nonsense all the time, Tammie's hand shook, partly through fear, and partly through anxiety; and if he went wrong in making a nick in the paper here and there in a wrong place, it was no more than might have been looked for, from his fright and inexperience. In the twinkle of an eyelid, I saw that there was some mortal mistake in the measurement; as, unless Cursecowl had lost beef at no allowance, I knew, judging from the past, that it would not peep on his corpus by four inches. The matter was, however, now past all earthly remede, and there was nothing to be done but trusting to good fortune, and allowing the killing-coat to take its chance in the world. How the thing happened, I have bothered and beat my brains to no purpose to make out, and it remains a wonderful mystery to me to this blessed day; but, by long thought on the subject, both when awake and in my bed, and by multifarious cross-questionings at Tammie's self concerning the paper measurings, I am devoutly inclined to think, that he mistook the nicking of the side-seams and the shoulder-strap for the girth of the belly-band. CHAPTER XXIII.--CATCHING A TARTAR. _Fr. Sol._ O, prennez misericorde! ayez pitie de moy! _Pist._ Moy shall not serve, I will have forty moys; For I will fetch thy rim out at thy throat, In drops of crimson blood. HENRY V. From the first moment I clapped eye on the caricature thing of a coat, that Tammie Bodkin had, in my absence, shaped out for Cursecowl the butcher, I foresaw, in my own mind, that a catastrophe was brewing for us; and never did soldier gird himself to fight the French, or sailor prepare for a sea-storm, with greater alacrity, than I did to cope with the bull-dog anger, and buffet back the uproarious vengeance of our heathenish customer.