All that happened Duck Davie I can't tell you;--it must only be a bit here and there, and with that I hope you'll content yourself; or may be you don't like him, and the less you hear of him the better plazed you'll be.--Maybe, though, you're like me: I don't like the man much, but his story don't displaze me; so I'll go to the next thing I recollect hearing of him.--I mustn't pass on though without mentioning how surprised Duck was not to find any mark of the blow he got in the field: he expected his back was well wealed, and so he might;--but it wasn't. “Here's the bump on my head,” says he to himself, “from the ladle, and here's the mark of the edge of the sleeve-board; but where's that of the switch, as the ould woman called it?--Now I'm sure she's a witch, or else why wouldn't her blow mark me, as well as them that I got from my master and mistress?” After this, Duck was as quiet as ould Alice would let him be for a month or more; but then he began again, and you'll hear how it was:--his mistress was well to do in the world, and had her house filled with what's useful; and to tell the truth of her, though stingy in some things, a good housewife--so she was. Duck had a power of fellow-'prentices, for his master did half the work of the town he lived in; and the boys was destructive, as boys will be,--won't they?--Alice was proud of her plates; but they broke them away about this time, at such a rate, by accident and what not, that she was determined to put a stop to it: so what does she do but give orders that no one should use a sound plate, but ate off the broken ones! And when she found one of the boys doing wrong this way, he got a crack on the head with the ladle for his disobadience. One day, Duck wouldn't give himself the pains to look for a broken plate; it was a mischievous moment with him, and ould Alice had just before threatened him for something; so he took down a whole plate from the dresser, and qualified it for his use, by breaking a piece off its edge. The moment he did it, Duck felt a very disagreeable sensation in his shoulders. You'll guess the witch kept her word, and that it was the switch touched him. Faith! then, you're right; there stood the weapon, with its evil-looking head, at Duck's back, though no sign of the old crature herself could he see. And what does the switch do, after Duck had stared at it a little, but make him a polite reverence, face about, jump head foremost out of the window that was open, and hop off down the garden walk, like a man would who had but one leg and that a wooden one.