overloaded so with kindness, professions of friendship, and respect, that I believed he loved him as his own soul; and, after he was gone, as my master and I went out to the fields, I observed what a treasure it was to have so good and so valued a friend as he had in that neighbour of his. What was my astonishment to hear from the same tongue that had lauded him to the skies, that he was a cheat, a liar, and a scoundrel;--a greedy sordid wretch that robbed his own hinds, and such wandering pedlars as came by that road, not daring to venture on higher game; one who seduced men's wives and daughters indiscriminately; and was, in short, a perfect demon, and a pest to the whole neighbourhood. "But, master, why did you caress and commend him so much to his face?" "O! that is all very well; that goes all for nothing. He is to be sure a vile scoundrel!" "There are queer people in this world," thought I: "There is nothing for it, I see, but, _Tam, mind yoursel_." The farmer continued very kind to me in his own deceitful way; but the meat that we got was very bad. It consisted of lean beef, and venison as black as soot, with plenty of milk; but as for bread we had none of any description. So, from the day that I entered to his service, I determined to kill a lamb, or a sheep of any sort, the first time I could get one; but I never could get the least chance, and might as well have tried to get hold of a deer. I could not help thinking of the delicious feasting that I had in my little shieling, dear as it had like to have cost me; and every day my appetite for fat flesh became more insufferable, till at last, by a grand expedient, I got satisfaction of it. I had thirty fat stots in my herd, and I observed that, in hurrying them through a bog, they sunk, and stuck quite fast: so, having no other resource, I drove a few of them one day, when I was very hungry, into a mire in a wood, and rushing forward on them while they were struggling, I sticked the fattest among them to the heart, so that he floundered and bled to death in the slough. "Well done again, Marion's Jock!" said I to myself. "Here is feasting for you now! Here is a feast that will last you a twelve month at odd times, if you can but preserve it." I declare when I began to cut up that huge animal, I almost trembled at my atrocity; but these kind of feelings soon wear off. I was obliged to eat some collops that day without any cooking, and never relished ought better; I wish we saw such a meal again! My thin yellow beard was a little discoloured to be sure, but that was nothing; I washed it, and went home as boldly among the rest as if nothing wrong had been done.