"Let us carry him down to my own bed," answered I; "I would not desert a fellow-creature in his dying hour! Help me down with him, and then flee the country as fast as you are able!" We immediately proceeded, and lifted the poor lad, who had now dwalmed away, upon our wife's hand-barrow--Blister taking the feet, and me the oxters, whereby I got my waistcoat all japanned with blood; so, when we got him laid right, we proceeded to carry him between us down the close, just as if he had been a sticked sheep, and in at the back door, which cost us some trouble, being narrow, and the barrow getting jammed in; but, at long and last, we got him streeked out above the blankets, having previously shooken Benjie, and wakened him out of his morning's nap. All this being accomplished and got over, Blister decamped, leaving me my leeful lane, excepting Benjie, who was next to nobody, in the house with the dying man. What a frightful face he had, all smeared over with blood and powder--and I really jealoused, that if he died in that room it would be haunted for evermair, he being in a manner a murdered man; so that, even should I be acquitted of art and part, his ghost might still come to bother us, making our house a hell upon earth, and frighting us out of our seven senses. But in the midst of my dreadful surmises, when all was still, so that you might have heard a pin fall, a knock-knock-knock, came to the door, on which, recovering my senses, I dreaded first that it was the death-chap, and syne that the affair had got wind, and that it was the beagles come in search of me; so I kissed little Benjie, who was sitting on his creepie, blubbering and greeting for his parritch, while a tear stood in my own eye as I went forward to lift the sneck to let the officers, as I thought, harrie our house, by carrying off me, its master; but it was, thank Heaven, only Tammie Bodkin, coming in whistling to his work, with some measuring papers hanging round his neck. "Ah, Tammie," said I to him, my heart warming at a kent face, and making the laddie, although my bounden servant by a regular indenture of five years, a friend in my need, "come in, my man. I fear yell hae to take charge of the business for some time to come; mind what I tell'd ye about the shaping and the cutting, and no making the goose ower warm; as I doubt I am about to be harled away to the tolbooth." Tammie's heart swelled to his mouth. "Ah, maister," he said, "ye're joking. What should ye have done that ye should be ta'en to sic an ill place?" "Ay, Tammie, lad," answered I, "it is but ower true." "Weel, weel," quo' Tammie--I really thought it a great deal of the laddie--"weel, weel, they canna prevent me coming to sew beside ye; and if I can take the measure of customers without, ye can cut the claith within. But what is't for, maister?" "Come in here," said I to him, "and believe your ain een, Tammie, my man."