In the middle of auntie Bell's game, she heard an unco noise in the byre; and, knowing that she had neglected her charge, she ran round the gable, and opened the door in a great hurry; when, seeing the beastie, she pulled it to again, and fleeing, half out of breath, into the kitchen, cried--"Come away, come away, mother, as fast as ye can. Eh, lyst, the cow's cauffed,--and it's a cuddie!" CHAPTER II.--MY OWN FATHER. The weaver he gied up the stair, Dancing and singing; A bunch o' bobbins at his back, Rattling and ringing. _Old Song_. My own father, that is to say, auld Mansie Wauch with regard to myself, but young Mansie with reference to my granfather, after having run the errands, and done his best to grannie during his early years, was, at the age of thirteen, as I have heard him tell, bound a prentice to the weaver trade, which from that day and date, for better for worse, he prosecuted to the hour of his death:--I should rather have said to within a fortnight of it, for he lay for that time in the mortal fever, that cut through the thread of his existence. Alas! as Job says, "How time flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a tall, thin, lowering man, blackaviced, and something in the physog like myself, though scarcely so weel-faured; with a kind of blueness about his chin, as if his beard grew of that colour--which I scarcely think it would do--but might arise either from the dust of the blue cloth, constantly flying about the shop, taking a rest there, or from his having a custom of giving it a rub now and then with his finger and thumb, both of which were dyed of that colour, as well as his apron, from rubbing against, and handling the webs of checkit claith in the loom.