There was no time to be lost: this was the Saturday. The next rising sun would shine on the Sabbath. Ah, what a case I was in! I could mostly have drowned myself, had I not been frighted. What could I do? My love had vanished like lightning; but oh, I was in a terrible gliff! Instead of gundy, I sold my thrums to Mrs Walnut for a penny, with which I bought at the counter a sheet of paper and a pen; so that in the afternoon I wrote out a letter to the minister, telling him what I had been given to hear, and begging him, for the sake of mercy, not to believe Jess's word, as I was not able to keep a wife, and as she was a leeing gipsy. CHAPTER V.--CURSECOWL. From his red poll a redder cowl hung down; His jacket, if through grease we guess, was brown; A vigorous scamp, some forty summers old; Rough Shetland stockings up his thighs were roll'd; While at his side horn-handled steels and knives Gleam'd from his pouch, and thirsted for sheeps' lives. ODOHERTY'S _Miscellanea Classica_. But, losh me! I have come on too far already, before mentioning a wonderful thing that happened to me when I was only seven years old. Few things in my eventful life have made a deeper impression on me than what I am going to relate. It was the custom, in those times, for the different schools to have cock- fighting on Fastern's E'en; and the victor, as he was called, treated the other scholars to a football. Many a dust have I seen rise out of that business--broken shins and broken heads, sore bones and sound duckings--but this was none of these.