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 XI.--TAFFY WITH THE PIGTAIL. In the sweet shire of Cardigan, Not far from pleasant Ivor-hall, An old man dwells, a little man; I've heard he once was tall. A long blue livery coat has he, That's fair behind and fair before; Yet, meet him where you will, you see At once that he is poor. WORDSWORTH. 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. Seeing that little more good was to be expected till morning, I came to the resolution of shutting-in half-an-hour earlier than usual; so, as I was carrying out the shop-shutters, with my hat over my cowl, for it was desperately sharp, I mostly in my hurry knocked down an old man, that was coming up to ask me, "if I was Maister Wauch the tailor and furnisher."