floor, hearing the causeway all in an uproar of voices; and seeing the
flichtering of the flames glancing on the houses in the opposite side of
the street, all the windows of which were filled with the heads of
half-naked folks, in round-eared mutches or Kilmarnocks; their mouths
open, and their eyes staring with fright; while the sound of the
fire-engine, rattling through the streets like thunder, seemed like the
dead-cart of the plague, come to hurry away the corpses of the deceased
for interment in the kirk-yard.
Never such a spectacle was witnessed in this world of sin and sorrow
since the creation of Adam. I pulled up the window and looked out--and,
lo and behold! the very next house to our own was all in a low from
cellar to garret; the burning joists hissing and cracking like mad; and
the very wind that blew along, as warm as if it had been out of the mouth
of a baker's oven!!
It was a most awful spectacle! more by token to me, who was likely to be
intimately concerned with it; and beating my brow with my clenched nieve,
like a distracted creature, I saw that the labour of my whole life was
likely to go for nought, and me to be a ruined man; all the earnings of
my industry being laid out on my stock in trade, and on the plenishing of
our bit house. The darkness of the latter days came over my spirit like
a vision before the prophet Isaiah; and I could see nothing in the years
to come but beggary and starvation; myself a fallen-back old man, with an
out-at-the-elbows coat, a greasy hat, and a bald pow, hirpling over a
staff, requeeshting an awmous--Nanse a broken-hearted beggar wife, torn
down to tatters, and weeping like Rachel when she thought on better
days--and poor wee Benjie going from door to door with a meal-pock on his
back.
The thought first dung me stupid, and then drove me to desperation; and
not even minding the dear wife of my bosom, that had fainted away as dead
as a herring, I pulled on my trowsers like mad, and rushed out into the
street, bareheaded and barefoot as the day that Lucky Bringthereout
dragged me into the world.
The crowd saw in the twinkling of an eyeball that I was a desperate man,
fierce as Sir William Wallace, and not to be withstood by gentle or
semple. So most of them made way for me; they that tried to stop me
finding it a bad job, being heeled over from right to left, on the broad
of their backs, like flounders without respect of age or person; some old
women that were obstrapulous being gey sore hurt, and one of them with a
pain in her hainch even to this day. When I had got almost to the
door-cheek of the burning house, I found one grupping me by the back like
grim death; and, in looking over my shoulder, who was it but Nanse
herself, that, rising up from her faint, had pursued me like a whirlwind.
It was a heavy trial, but my duty to myself in the first place, and to my
neighbours in the second, roused me up to withstand it; so, making a
spend like a grey-hound, I left the hindside of my shirt in her grasp,
like Joseph's garment in the nieve of Potiphar's wife, and up the stairs
head-foremost among the flames.
Mercy keep us all! what a sight for mortal man to glowr at with his
living eyes! The bells were tolling amid the dark, like a summons from
above for the parish of Dalkeith to pack off to another world; the drums
were beat-beating as if the French were coming, thousand on thousand, to
kill, slay, and devour every maid and mother's son of us; the fire-engine
pump-pump-pumping like daft, showering the water like rainbows, as if the
windows of heaven were opened, and the days of old Noah come back again;
and the rabble throwing the good furniture over the windows like onion
peelings, where it either felled the folk below, or was dung to a
thousand shivers on the causey. I cried to them, for the love of
goodness, to make search in the beds, in case there might be any weans
there, human life being still more precious than human means; but not a
living soul was seen but a cat, which, being raised and wild with the
din, would on no consideration allow itself to be catched. Jacob Dribble
found that to his cost; for, right or wrong, having a drappie in his
head, he swore like a trooper that he would catch her, and carry her down
beneath his oxter; so forward he weired her into a corner, crouching on
his hunkers. He had much better have left it alone; for it fuffed over
his shoulder like wildfire, and scarting his back all the way down,
jumped like a lamplighter head-foremost through the flames, where, in the
raging and roaring of the devouring element, its pitiful cries were soon
hushed to silence for ever and ever, Amen!
At long and last, a woman's howl was heard on the street, lamenting, like
Hagar over young Ishmael in the wilderness of Beersheba, and crying that
her old grannie, that was a lameter, and had been bedridden for four
years come the Martinmas following, was burning to a cinder in the
fore-garret. My heart was like to burst within me when I heard this
dismal news, remembering that I myself had once an old mother, that was
now in the mools; so I brushed up the stair like a hatter, and burst open
the door of the fore-garret--for in the hurry I could not find the sneck,
and did not like to stand on ceremony. I could not see my finger before
me, and did not know my right hand from the left, for the smoke; but I
groped round and round, though the reek mostly cut my breath, and made me
cough at no allowance, till at last I catched hold of something cold and
clammy, which I gave a pull, not knowing what it was, but found out to be
the old wife's nose. I cried out as loud as I was able for the poor
creature to hoise herself up into my arms; but, receiving no answer, I
discovered in a moment that she was suffocated, the foul air having gone
down her wrong hause; and, though I had aye a terror at looking at, far
less handling a dead corpse, there was something brave within me at the
moment, my blood being up; so I caught hold of her by the shoulders, and
harling her with all my might out of her bed, got her lifted on my back
heads and thraws, in the manner of a boll of meal, and away as fast as my
legs could carry me.
There was a providence in this haste; for, ere I was half-way down the
stair, the floor fell with a thud like thunder; and such a combustion of
soot, stour, and sparks arose, as was never seen or heard tell of in the
memory of man since the day that Samson pulled over the pillars in the
house of dragon, and smoored all the mocking Philistines as flat as
flounders. For the space of a minute I was as blind as a beetle, and was
like to be choked for want of breath; however, as the dust began to clear
up, I saw an open window, and hallooed down to the crowd for the sake of
mercy to bring a ladder, to save the lives of two perishing
fellow-creatures, for now my own was also in imminent jeopardy. They
were long of coming, and I did not know what to do; so thinking that the
old wife, as she had not spoken, was maybe dead already, I was once
determined just to let her drop down upon the street; but I knew that the
so doing would have cracked every bone in her body, and the glory of my
bravery would thus have been worse than lost. I persevered, therefore,
though I was fit to fall down under the dead weight, she not being able
to help herself, and having a deal of beef in her skin for an old woman
of eighty; but I got a lean, by squeezing her a wee between me and the
wall.
I thought they would never have come, for my shoeless feet were all
bruised, and bleeding from the crunched lime and the splinters of broken
stones; but at long and last, a ladder was hoisted up, and having
fastened a kinch of ropes beneath her oxters, I let her slide down over
the upper step, by way of a pillyshee, having the satisfaction of seeing
her safely landed in the arms of seven old wives, that were waiting with
a cosey warm blanket below. Having accomplished this grand manoeuvre,
wherein I succeeded in saving the precious life of a woman of eighty,
that had been four long years bedridden, I tripped down the steps myself
like a nine-year-old, and had the pleasure, when the roof fell in, to
know that I for one had done my duty; and that, to the best of my
knowledge, no living creature except the poor cat had perished within the
jaws of the devouring element.
But, bide a wee; the work was, as yet, only half done. The fire was
still roaring and raging, every puff of wind that blew through the black
firmament, driving the red sparks high into the air, where they died away
like the tail of a comet, or the train of a skyrocket; the joisting
crazing, cracking, and tumbling down; and now and then the bursting cans
playing flee in a hundred flinders from the chimney-heads. One would
have naturally enough thought that our engine could have drowned out a
fire of any kind whatsoever in half a second, scores of folk driving
about with pitcherfuls of water, and scaling half of it on one another
and the causey in their hurry; but woe's me! it did not play puh on the
red-het stones, that whizzed like iron in a smiddy trough; so, as soon as
it was darkness and smoke in one place, it was fire and fury in another.
My anxiety was great; seeing that I had done my best for my neighbours,
it behoved me now, in my turn, to try and see what I could do for myself;
so, notwithstanding the remonstrances of my friend James Batter--whom
Nanse, knowing I had bare feet, had sent out to seek me, with a pair of
shoon in his hand; and who, in scratching his head, mostly rugged out
every hair of his wig with sheer vexation--I ran off, and mounted the
ladder a second time, and succeeded, after muckle speeling, in getting
upon the top of the wall; where, having a bucket slung up to me by means
of a rope, I swashed down such showers on the top of the flames, that I
soon did more good, in the space of five minutes, than the engine and the
ten men, that were all in a broth of perspiration with pumping it, did
the whole night over: to say nothing of the multitude of drawers of
water, men, wives, and weans, with their cuddies, leglins, pitchers,
pails, and water-stoups; having the satisfaction, in a short time, to
observe every thing getting as black as the crown of my hat, and the
gable of my own house becoming as cool as a cucumber.
Being a man of method, and acquainted with business, I could have liked
to have given a finishing stitch to my work before descending the ladder;
but, losh me! sic a whingeing, girning, greeting, and roaring, got up all
of a sudden, as was never seen or heard of since bowed Joseph raised the
meal-mob, and burned Johnnie Wilkes in effigy; and, looking down, I saw
Benjie, the bairn of my own heart, and the callant Glen, my apprentice on
trial, that had both been as sound as tops till this blessed moment,
standing in their nightgowns and their little red cowls, rubbing their
eyes, cowering with cold and fright, and making an awful uproar, crying
on me to come down and not be killed. The voice of Benjie especially
pierced through and through my heart, like a two-edged sword, and I could
on no manner of account suffer myself to bear it any longer, as I
jealoused the bairn would have gone into convulsion fits if I had not
heeded him; so, making a sign to them to be quiet, I came my ways down,
taking hold of one in ilka hand, which must have been a fatherly sight to
the spectators that saw us. After waiting on the crown of the causey for
half an hour, to make sure that the fire was extinguished, and all tight
and right, I saw the crowd scaling, and thought it best to go in too,
carrying the two youngsters along with me. When I began to move off,
however, siccan a cheering of the multitude got up as would have deafened
a cannon; and though I say it myself, who should not say it, they seemed
struck with a sore amazement at my heroic behaviour, following me with
loud cheers even to the threshold of my own door.
From this folk should condescend to take a lesson, seeing that, though
the world is a bitter bad world, yet that good deeds are not only a
reward to themselves, but call forth the applause of Jew and Gentile: for
the sweet savour of my conduct on this memorable night remained in my
nostrils for goodness knows the length of time, many praising my brave
humanity in public companies and assemblies of the people, such as
strawberry ploys, council meetings, dinner parties, and so forth; and
many in private conversation at their own ingle-cheek, by way of
two-handed crack; in stage-coach confab, and in causey talk in the
forenoon, before going in to take their meridians. Indeed, between
friends, the business proved in the upshot of no small advantage to me,
bringing to me a sowd of strange faces, by way of customers, both gentle
and semple, that I verily believe had not so muckle as ever heard of my
name before, and giving me many a coat to cut, and cloth to shape, that,
but for my gallant behaviour on the fearsome night aforesaid, would
doubtless have been cut, sewed, and shaped by other hands. Indeed,
considering the great noise the thing made in the world, it is no wonder
that every one was anxious to have a garment of wearing apparel made by
the individual same hands that had succeeded, under Providence, in saving
the precious life of an old woman of eighty, that had been bedridden,
some say, four years come Yule, and others, come Martinmas.
When we got to the ingle-side, and, barring the door, saw that all was
safe, it was now three in the morning; so we thought it by much the best
way of managing, not to think of sleeping any more, but to be on the
look-out--as we aye used to be when walking sentry in the volunteers--in
case the flames should, by ony mischancy accident or other, happen to
break out again. My wife blamed my hardihood muckle, and the rashness
with which I had ventured at once to places where even masons and
sclaters were afraid to put foot on; yet I saw, in the interim, that she
looked on me with a prouder eye--knowing herself the helpmate of one that
had courageously risked his neck, and every bone in his skin, in the
cause of humanity. I saw this as plain as a pikestaff, as, with one of
her kindest looks, she insisted on my putting on a better happing to
screen me from the cold, and on my taking something comfortable inwardly
towards the dispelling of bad consequences. So, after half a minute's
stand-out, by way of refusal like, I agreed to a cupful of het-pint, as I
thought it would be a thing Mungo Glen might never have had the good
fortune to have tasted; and as it might operate by way of a cordial on
the callant Benjie, who kept aye smally, and in a dwining way. No sooner
said than done--and off Nanse brushed in a couple of hurries to make the
het-pint.
After the small beer was put into the pan to boil, we found to our great
mortification, that there were no eggs in the house, and Benjie was sent
out with a candle to the hen house, to see if any of the hens had laid
since gloaming, and fetch what he could get. In the middle of the mean
time, I was expatiating to Mungo on what taste it would have, and how he
had never seen anything finer than it would be, when in ran Benjie, all
out of breath, and his face as pale as a dishclout.
"What's the matter, Benjie, what's the matter?" said I to him, rising up
from my chair in a great hurry of a fright--"Has onybody killed ye? or is
the fire broken out again? or has the French landed? or have ye seen a
ghost? or are--"
"Eh, crifty!" cried Benjie, coming till his speech, "they're a' aff--cock
and hens and a'--there's naething left but the rotten nest-egg in the
corner!"
This was an awful dispensation, of which more hereafter. In the midst of
the desolation of the fire--such is the depravity of human nature--some
ne'er-do-weels had taken advantage of my absence to break open the
hen-house door; and our whole stock of poultry, the cock along with our
seven hens--two of them tappit, and one muffed--were carried away bodily,
stoop and roop.
On this subject, howsoever, I shall say no more in this chapter, but
merely observe in conclusion, that as to our het-pint, we were obligated
to make the best of a bad bargain, making up with whisky what it wanted
in eggs; though our banquet could not be called altogether a merry one,
the joys of our escape from the horrors of the fire being damped, as it
were by a wet blanket, on account of the nefarious pillaging of our
hen-house.
CHAPTER TWENTY--MANSIE'S ADVENTURES IN THE SPORTING LINE
The situation of me and my family at this time affords an example of the
truth of the old proverb, that "ae evil never comes its lane"; being no
sooner quit of our dread concerning the burning, than we were doomed by
Providence to undergo the disaster of the rookery of our hen-house. I
believe I have mentioned the number of our stock--to wit, a cock and
seven hens, eight in all; but I neglected, on account of their size, or
somehow overlooked, the two bantams, than which two more neat or
curiouser-looking creatures were not to be seen in the whole
country-side. The hennie was quite a conceit of a thing, and laid an egg
not muckle bigger than my thimble; while, for its size, the bit he-ane
was, for spirit in the fechting line, a perfect wee deevil incarnate.
Most fortunately for my family in this matter, it so happened that, by
paying in half-a-crown a-year, I was a regular member of a society for
prosecuting all whom it might concern, that dabbled with foul fingers in
the sinful and lawless trade of thievery, breaking the eighth commandment
at no allowance, and drawing on their heads not only the passing
punishments of this world, by way of banishment to Botany Bay, or hanging
at the Luckenbooths, but the threatened vengeance of one that will last
for ever and ever.
Accordingly, putting on my hat about nine o'clock, or thereabouts, when
the breakfast things were removing from the bit table, I poppit out, in
the first and foremost instance, to take a vizzy of the depredation the
flames had made in our neighbourhood. Losh keep us all, what a spectacle
of wreck and ruination! The roof was clean off and away, as if a
thunderbolt from heaven had knocked it down through the two floors,
carrying every thing before it like a perfect whirlwind. Nought were
standing but black, bare walls, a perfect picture of desolation; some
with the bit pictures on nails still hanging up where the rooms were
like; and others with old coats hanging on pins; and empty bottles in
boles, and so on. Indeed, Jacob Glowr, who was standing by my side with
his specs on, could see as plain as a pikestaff, a tea-kettle still on
the fire, in the hearth-place of one of the gable garrets, where Miss
Jenny Withershins lived, but happened luckily, at the era of the
conflagration, to be away to Prestonpans, on a visit to some of her
far-away cousins, providentially for her safety, greviously, at that very
time, smitten with the sciatics.
Having satisfied my eyes with a daylight view of the terrible
devastation, I went away leisurely up the street with my hands in my
breeches-pockets, comparing the scene in my mind with the downfall of
Babylon the Great, and Sodom and Gomorrah, and Tyre and Sidon, and
Jerusalem, and all the lave of the great towns that had fallen to decay,
according to the foretelling of the sacred prophets, until I came to the
door of Donald Gleig, the head of the Thief Society, to whom I related,
from beginning to end, the whole business of the hen-stealing. 'Od he
was a mettle bodie of a creature; far north, Aberdeen-awa like, and
looking at two sides of a halfpenny; but, to give the devil his due, in
this instance he behaved to me like a gentleman. Not only did Donald
send through the drum in the course of half an hour, offering a reward
for the apprehension of the offenders of three guineas, names concealed,
but he got a warrant granted to Francie Deep, the sherry-officer, to make
search in the houses of several suspicious persons.
The reward offered by tuck of drum failed, nobody making application to
the crier; but the search succeeded; as, after turning everything
topsy-turvy, the feathers were found in a bag, in the house of an old
woman of vile character, who contrived to make out a way of living by
hiring beds at twopence a-night to Eirish travellers--South-country
packmen--sturdy beggars, men and women, and weans of them--Yetholm
tinklers--wooden-legged sailors without Chelsea pensions--dumb
spaewomen--keepers of wild-beast shows--dancing-dog folk--spunk-makers,
and suchlike pick-pockets. The thing was as plain as the loof of my
hand; for, besides great suspicion, what was more, was the finding the
head of the muffed hen, to which I could have sworn, lying in a
bye-corner; the body itself not being so kenspeckle in its disjasket
state--as it hung twirling in a string by its legs before the fire, all
buttered over with swine's seam, and half roasted.
After some little ado, and having called in two men that were passing to
help us to take them prisoners, in case of their being refractory, we
carried them by the lug and the horn before a justice of peace.
Except the fact of the stolen goods being found in their possession, it
so chanced, ye observe, that we had no other sort of evidence whatsoever;
but we took care to examine them one at a time, the one not hearing what
the other said; so, by dint of cross-questioning by one who well knew how
to bring fire out of flint, we soon made the guilty convict themselves,
and brought the transaction home to two wauf-looking fellows that we had
got smoking in a corner. From the speerings that were put to them during
their examination, it was found that they tried to make a way of doing by
swindling folks at fairs by the game of the garter. Indeed, it was
stupid of me not to recognise their faces at first sight, having observed
both of them loitering about our back bounds the afternoon before; and
one of them, the tall one with the red head and fustian jacket, having
been in my shop in the fore part of the night, about the gloaming like,
asking me as a favour for a yard or two of spare runds, or selvages.
I have aye heard that seeing is believing; and that youth might take a
warning from the punishment that sooner or later is ever tacked to the
tail of crime, I took Benjie and Mungo to hear the trial; and two more
rueful faces than they put on, when they looked at the culprits, were
never seen since Adam was a boy. It was far different with the two
Eirishers, who showed themselves so hardened by a long course of sin and
misery, that, instead of abasing themselves in the face of a magistrate,
they scarcely almost gave a civil answer to a single question which was
speered at them. Howsoever, they paid for that at a heavy ransom, as ye
shall hear by and by.
Having been kept all night in the cold tolbooth on bread and water,
without either coal or candle to warm their toes, or let them see what
they were doing, they were harled out amid an immense crowd of young and
old, more especially wives and weans, at eleven o'clock on the next
forenoon, to the endurance of a punishment which ought to have afflicted
them almost as muckle as that of death itself.
When the key of the jail door was thrawn, and the two loons brought out,
there was a bumming of wonder, and maybe sorrow, among the terrible
crowd, to see fellow-creatures so left alone to themselves as to have
robbed an honest man's hen-house at the dead hour of night, when a fire
was bleezing next door, and the howl of desolation soughing over the town
like a visible judgment. One of them, as I said before, had a red pow,
and a foraging cap, with a black napkin roppined round his weasand; a
jean jacket with six pockets, and square tails; a velveteen waistcoat
with plated buttons; corduroy breeches buttoned at the knees; rig-and-fur
stockings; and heavy, clanking wooden clogs. The other, who was little
and round-shouldered, with a bull neck and bushy black whiskers, just
like a shoebrush stuck to each cheek of his head, as if he had been a
travelling agent for Macassar, had on a low-crowned, plated beaver hat,
with the end of a peacock's feather, stuck in the band; a long-tailed old
black coat, as brown as a berry, and as bare as my loof, to say nothing
of being out at both elbows. His trowsers, I dare say, had once been
nankeen; but as they did not appear to have seen the washing-tub for a
season or two, it would be rash to give any decided opinion on that head.
In short, they were two awful-like raggamuffins.