So much for plays and playactors--the first and last, I trust in grace, that I shall ever see. But indeed I could expect no better, after the warning that Maister Wiggie had more than once given us from the pulpit on the subject. Instead, therefore, of getting my grand reward for finding the old man's daughter, the whole covey of them, no better than a set of swindlers, took leg-bail, and made that very night a moonlight flitting, and Johnny Hammer, honest man, that had wrought from sunrise to sunset for two days, fitting up their place by contract, instead of being well paid for his trouble, as he deserved, got nothing left him but a ruckle of his own good deals, all dung to shivers. CHAPTER XVIII.--THE BARLEY-FEVER--AND REBUKE. Sages their solemn een may steek, And raise a philosophic reek, And, physically, causes seek, In clime and season; But tell me _Whisky's_ name in Greek, I'll tell the reason. BURNS. On the morning after the business of the playhouse had happened, I had to take my breakfast in my bed, a thing very uncommon to me, being generally up by cock-craw, except on Sunday mornings whiles, when each one, according to the bidding of the Fourth Commandment, has a license to do as he likes; having a desperate sore head, and a squeamishness at the stomach, occasioned, I jealouse in a great measure, from what Mr Glen and me had discussed at Widow Grassie's, in the shape of warm toddy, over our cracks concerning what is called the agricultural and manufacturing interests. So our wife, poor body, put a thimbleful of brandy, Thomas Mixem's real, into my first cup of tea, which had a wonderful virtue in putting all things to rights; so that I was up and had shaped a pair of lady's corsets, an article in which I sometimes dealt, before ten o'clock, though, the morning being rather cold, I did not dispense with my Kilmarnock. At eleven in the forenoon, or thereabouts, maybe five minutes before or after, but no matter, in comes my crony Maister Glen, rather dazed-like about the een; and with a large piece of white sticking-plaister, about half a nail wide, across one of his cheeks, and over the bridge of his nose; giving him a wauf, outlandish, and rather blackguard sort of appearance; so that I was a thought uneasy at what neighbours might surmise concerning our intimacy; but the honest man accounted for the thing in a very feasible manner, from the falling down on that side of his head of one of the brass candlesticks, while he was lying on his broadside before one of the furms in the stramash.