Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our
arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.
When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and
so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before
we got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't
we all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like
fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all
reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight.
They see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man--courage,
endurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very different from a
love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making
gain by their pluck. A boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if
he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would run off
with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and not wicked interest,
that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.
Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye
at a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could
not see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid
induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a crowd
masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman,
fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her
hands freely upon the men, as so many "brutes;" it is a crowd annular,
compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its
heads all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus.
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small thoroughbred,
white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog,
unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it;
the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his
pastoral enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a
great courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the
Game Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up,
took his final grip of poor Yarrow's throat--and he lay gasping and
done for. His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from
Tweedsmuir, would have liked to have knocked down any man, would
"drink up Esil, or eat a crocodile," for that part, if he had a
chance: it was no use kicking the little dog; that would only make him
hold the closer. Many were the means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the
best possible ways of ending it. "Water!" but there was none near, and
many cried for it who might have got it from the well at Blackfriars
Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
man, more desirous than wise, with some struggle got the bushy end of
_Yarrow's_ tail into his ample mouth, and bit it with all his might.
This was more than enough for the much-enduring, much-perspiring
shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over his broad visage, delivered a
terrific facer upon our large, vague, benevolent, middle-aged
friend--who went down like a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far off. "Snuff! a pinch of
snuff!" observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass
in his eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and
glaring. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck but with
more urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a
mull which may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and
presented it to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of
snuff take their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!
The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his
arms--comforting him.
But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips
the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off. The boys, with
Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our
small men, panting behind.
There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in
his pockets: he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland
bull, and has the Shakespearian dewlaps shaking as he goes.
The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our
astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold
himself up, and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar.
How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is muzzled_! The bailies
had proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength
and economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made
apparatus, constructed out of the leather of some ancient _breechin_.
His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage--a
sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the
darkness, the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole
frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all
round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of
anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen granite.
We soon had a crowd: the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a
cobbler gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous
head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise--and the bright
and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A solemn pause:
this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little
fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by
the small of the back like a rat, and broken it.
He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed
him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round
and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John, we'll bury
him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made
up the Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He
turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.
There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen thin, impatient,
black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking
about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick
at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe
with more agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk
dismayed under the cart--his ears down, and as much as he had of tail
down too.
What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail. The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his
neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always
thought, and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone
were worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and
condescended to say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,"--whereupon the stump
of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were
comforted; the two friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of
the whip were given to Jess; and off went the three.
Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a
tea) in the back-green of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with
considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad,
and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.
* * * * *
Six years have passed--a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is
off to the wars; I am a medical student and clerk at Minto House
Hospital.
Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday and we had much pleasant
intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his
huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would
plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that butt of a
tail, and looking up, with his head a little to one side. His master I
occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic
as any Spartan.
One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital when I saw the
large gate open, and in walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter
of his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like
the Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory
and peace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and
in it a woman, carefully wrapped up--the carrier leading the horse
anxiously, and looking back. When he saw me, James (for his name was
James Noble) made a curt and grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John,
this is the mistress; she's got a trouble in her breest--some kind o'
an income we're thinkin'."
By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled
with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat with its
large white metal buttons over her feet.
I never saw a more unforgettable face--pale, serious, _lonely_,
delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked
sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her
silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes--eyes such as one
sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also
of the overcoming of it: her eyebrows black and delicate, and her
mouth firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.
As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance or one more
subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,
doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared
to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all
his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate he
could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a
gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie
his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen,
worldly face to hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something
wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything
that might turn up--were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even
me. Ailie and he seemed great friends.
"As I was sayin' she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor;
wull ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all
four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if
cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same
terms. Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief
round her neck, and without a word, showed me her right breast. I
looked at and examined it carefully--she and James watching me, and
Rab eyeing all three. What could I say? there it was, that had once
been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so
"full of all blessed conditions,"--hard as a stone, a centre of horrid
pain, making that pale face with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and
its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering
overcome. Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable,
condemned by God to bear such a burden?
I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James. "_You_ may;
and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that,
doctor;" and in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen
him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I
have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair
short, hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set like a
little bull--a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have
been ninety pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head;
his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth
or two--being all he had--gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His
head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of
fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as
was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of
two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a
tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an
old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it
could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long--the
mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and
surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings, the
intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the
oddest and swiftest.
Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought
his way along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his
own line as Julius Cæsar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the
gravity of all great fighters.
You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab
without thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller. The
same large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance,
the same deep inevitable eye, the same look--as of thunder asleep, but
ready--neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.
Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no doubt
it must kill her, and soon. It could be removed--it might never
return--it would give her speedy relief--she should have it done. She
curtsied, looked at James, and said, "When?" "To-morrow," said the
kind surgeon--a man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired.
I noticed that he and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate
everything in each other. The following day, at noon, the students
came in, hurrying up the great stair. At the first landing-place, on a
small well-known blackboard, was a bit of paper fastened by wafers,
and many remains of old wafers beside it. On the paper were the
words--"An operation to-day. J.B. _Clerk_."
Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places: in they crowded, full
of interest and talk. "What's the case?" "Which side is it?"
Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than you
or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper
work--and in them pity--as an _emotion_, ending in itself or at best
in tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a _motive_,
is quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human
nature that it is so.
The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the
cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants
is there. In comes Ailie: one look at her quiets and abates the eager
students. That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit
down, and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power
of her presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in
her mutch, her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black
bombazine petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her
carpet-shoes. Behind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the
distance, and took that huge and noble head between his knees. Rab
looked perplexed and dangerous; forever cocking his ear and dropping
it as fast.
Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table as her
friend the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at
James, shut her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The
operation was at once begun; it was necessarily slow; and
chloroform--one of God's best gifts to his suffering children--was
then unknown. The surgeon did his work. The pale face showed its pain,
but was still and silent. Rab's soul was working within him; he saw
that something strange was going on--blood flowing from his mistress,
and she suffering; his ragged ear was up, and importunate; he growled
and gave now and then a sharp impatient yelp; he would have liked to
have done something to that man. But James had him firm, and gave him
a _glower_ from time to time, and an intimation of a possible
kick;--all the better for James, it kept his eye and his mind off
Ailie.
It is over: she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the
table, looks for James; then, turning to the surgeon and the students,
she curtsies--and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has
behaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like children; the surgeon
happed her up carefully--and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to
her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy
shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them
carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o'yer
strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot
on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and
clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed,
snell, peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he
seldom slept; and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the
darkness, fixed on her. As before, they spoke little.
Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he
could be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was
demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day,
generally to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined
doing battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to
sundry indignities; and was always very ready to turn, and came faster
back, and trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight
to that door.
Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weather-worn cart, to Howgate,
and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions,
on the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from
the road and her cart.
For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first
intention;" for as James said, "Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to
beil." The students came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed.
She said she liked to see their young, honest faces. The surgeon
dressed her, and spoke to her in his own short kind way, pitying her
through his eyes, Rab and James outside the circle--Rab being now
reconciled, and even cordial, and having made up his mind that as yet
nobody required worrying, but, as you may suppose, _semper paratus_.
So far well: but, four days after the operation, my patient had a
sudden and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw her
soon after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek coloured; she was
restless, and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had
begun. On looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret: her
pulse was rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself,
as she said, and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we
could; James did everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never
out of it; Rab subsided under the table into a dark place, and was
motionless, all but his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got
worse; began to wander in her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in
her ways to James, rapid in her questions, and sharp at times. He was
vexed, and said, "She was never that way afore; no, never." For a time
she knew her head was wrong, and was always asking our pardon--the
dear, gentle old woman: then delirium set in strong, without pause.
Her brain gave way, and then came that terrible spectacle--
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way."
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely
odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the
bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in
a "fremyt" voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if
he were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard; many eager
questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and
on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood.
It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad.
James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as
ever; read to her when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms,
prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way,
showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and
doating over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie
wee dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula, vagula, hospes,
comesque_, was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for
sixty years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must
all enter--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff
were comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in
bed, and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held
it eagerly to her breast--to the right side. We could see her eyes
bright with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle
of clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening
out her night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding
over it, and murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his
mother comforteth, and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and
strange to see her wasted dying look, keen and yet vague--her immense
love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked back and
forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her
infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin' it's
that bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie,
and she's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true:
the pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered,
ruined brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the
uneasiness of a breast full of milk and then the child; and so again
once more they were together and she had her ain wee Mysie in her
bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but as,
she whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the
final darkness. After having for some time lain still--her eyes shut,
she said "James!" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm,
clear, beautiful eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly
but shortly, looked for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her
husband again, as if she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes,
and composed herself. She lay for some time breathing quick, and
passed away so gently, that when we thought she was gone, James, in
his old-fashioned way, held the mirror to her face. After a long
pause, one small spot of dimness was breathed out; it vanished away,
and never returned, leaving the blank clear darkness of the mirror
without a stain. "What is our life? it is even a vapour, which
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away."
Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward
beside us: Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down, it
was soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at
her, and returned to his place under the table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time--saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the
table, and putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe,
pulled them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather
latchets, and muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that
afore!"
I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly, and
pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up and
settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John,
ye'll wait for me," said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness,
thundering downstairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window;
there he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing
like a shadow.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab,
and being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside.
It was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was _in
statu quo_; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never
moved. I looked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for
the sun was not up--was Jess and the cart--a cloud of steam rising
from the old mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door,
and came up the stairs and met me. It was less than three hours since
he left, and he must have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full
nine miles off; yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He
had an armful of blankets and was streaming with perspiration. He
nodded to me, spread out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets
having at their corners, "A.G., 1794," in large letters in red
worsted. These were the initials of Alison Græme, and James may have
looked in at her from without--himself unseen but not unthought
of--when he was "wat, wat, and weary," and after having walked many a
mile over the hills, may have seen her sitting, while "a' the lave
were sleepin';" and by the firelight working her name on the blankets
for her ain James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the
blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face
uncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and
with a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage,
and downstairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he
didn't need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in
the calm frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped
him, but I saw he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and
did not need it. He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had
lifted her out ten days before--as tenderly as when he had her first
in his arms when she was only "A.G."--sorted her, leaving that
beautiful sealed face open to the heavens; and then taking Jess by the
head, he moved away. He did not notice me, neither did Rab, who
presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and
turned up Nicholson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through
the streets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of
that company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the
morning light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking
ghosts; then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted
Woodhouselee"; and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,
and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take
the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and,
having put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.
James buried his wife, with his neighbours mourning, Rab inspecting
the solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole
would look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of
white. James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill,
and took to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A
sort of low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of
sleep, his exhaustion, and his misery, made him apt to take it. The
grave was not difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made
all things white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home
to the stable.
And what of Rab? I asked for him next week of the new carrier who got
the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her
cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's
_your_ business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's
Rab?" He, getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair,
said, "'Deed, sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel,
sir," said he, getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I
had to brain him wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay
in the treviss wi' the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail
and meat, but he wad tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the
beast, and he was aye gur gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I
was laith to make awa wi' the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this
and Thornhill--but, 'deed, sir, I could do naething else." I believed
him. Fit end for Rab, quick and complete. His teeth and his friends
gone, why should he keep the peace, and be civil?