The Life of Mansie Wauch

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Abubeker loved the youth, assigning him a post of dignity, and all the
mighty host honoured him whom the Caliph delighted to honour. He was
clad in rich attire, and magnificently attended, and, to all eyes,
Demetrius seemed a person worthy of envy; yet, in the calm of thought,
his conscience upbraided him, and he was far less happy than he seemed to
be.

Ere yet the glow of novelty had entirely ceased to bewilder the
understanding of the renegade, preparations were made for the assault;
and after a fierce but ineffectual resistance under their gallant leaders
Thomas and Herbis, the Damascenes were obliged to submit to their
imperious conqueror, on condition of being allowed, within three days, to
leave the city unmolested.

When the gates were opened, Demetrius, with a heart over-flowing with
love and delight, was among the first to enter. He enquired of every one
he met of the fate of Isabelle; but all turned from him with disgust. At
length he found her out, but what was his grief and surprise--in a
nunnery! Firm to the troth she had so solemnly plighted, she had
rejected the proposition of her mercenary parent; and, having no idea but
that her lover had shared the fate of all Christian captives, she had
shut herself up from the world, and vowed to live the life of a vestal.

The surprise, the anguish, the horror of Isabelle, when she beheld
Demetrius in his Moslem habiliments, cannot be described. Her first
impulse, on finding him yet alive, was to have fallen into his arms; but,
instantly collecting herself, she shrunk back from him with loathing, as
a mean and paltry dastard. "No, no," she cried, "you are no longer the
man I loved; our vows of fidelity were pledged over the Bible; that book
you have renounced as a fable; and he who has proved himself false to
Heaven, can never be true to me!"

Demetrius was conscience-struck; too late he felt his crime, and foresaw
its consequences. The very object for whom he had dared to make the
tremendous sacrifice had deserted him, and his own soul told him with how
much justice; so, without uttering a syllable, he turned away,
heart-broken, from the holy and beautiful being whose affections he had
forfeited for ever.

When the patriots left Damascus, Isabelle accompanied them. Retiring to
Antioch, she lived with the sisterhood for many years; and, as her time
was passed between acts of charity and devotion, her bier was watered
with many a tear, and the hands of the grateful duly strewed her grave
with flowers. To Demetrius was destined a briefer career. All-conscious
of his miserable degradation, loathing himself, and life, and mankind, he
rushed back from the city into the Mahomedan camp; and entering, with a
hurried step, the tent of the Caliph, he tore the turban from his brow,
and cried aloud--"Oh, Abubeker! behold a God-forsaken wretch. Think not
it was the fear of death that led me to abjure my religion the religion
of my fathers--the only true faith. No; it was the idol of Love that
stood between my heart and heaven, darkening the latter with its shadow;
and had I remained as true to God as I did to the Maiden of my love, I
had not needed this." So saying, and ere the hand of Abubeker could
arrest him, he drew a poniard from his embroidered vest, and the heart-
blood of the renegade spouted on the royal robes of the successor of
Mahomet.

* * * * *

So grandly had James spooted this bloody story, that notwithstanding my
sleepiness, his words whiles dirled through my marrow like quicksilver,
and set all my flesh a grueing. In the middle of it, he was himself so
worked up, that twice he pulled his Kilmarnock from his head,
silk-napkin, bandage and all, and threw them down with a thump on the
table, which once wellnigh capsized the candlestick.

The porter and the stabbing, also, very nearly put me beside myself; and
I felt so queerish and eerie when I took my hat to wish him a
good-night--knowing that baith Nanse and Benjie would be neither to hold
nor bind, it being now half-past ten o'clock--that, had it not been for
the shame of the thing, and that I remembered being one of the King's
gallant volunteers, I fear I would have asked James for the lend of his
lantern, to show me down the dark close.

The reader will thus perceive that the adventure of the killing-coat,
stuck alike in the measurement and in the making by Tammie Bodkin, was
destined, in the great current of human events, to form a prominent
feature, not only in my own history, but in that of worthy James Batter.
To me it might be considered as a passing breeze--having been accustomed
to see and suffer a vast deal; but my friend, I fear much, will bear
marks of it to his grave. Yet I cannot blame myself with a safe
conscience for James having fallen the victim Cursecowl. I had tried
every thing to solder up matters which the heart of man could suggest;
and knowing that it was a catastrophe which would bring down open war and
rebellion throughout the whole parish, my thoughts were all of peace, and
how to stave off the eruption of the bloody heathen. I had thought over
the thing seriously in my bed; and, reckoning plainly that Cursecowl was
not one likely soon to hold out a flag of truce, I had come to the
determination within myself to sound a parley--and offer either to take
back the coat or refund part of the purchase-money. I may add, that
having an unbounded regard for his judgment and discretion, I had, in my
own mind, selected James Batter to be sent as the ambassador. The same
day, however, brought round the extraordinary purchase of the
Willie-goat's head, and gave a new and unexpected turn to the whole
business.

Folk, moreover, should never be so over-proud as not to confess when they
are in fault; and from what happened, I am free to admit, that James,
harmless as a sucking dove, was no match in such a matter for the like of
Cursecowl, who was a perfect incarnation, for devilry and cunning, of the
old Serpent himself.

My intentions, however, were good, and those of a Christian; for, had
Cursecowl accepted the ten shillings by way of blood-money, which it was
thus my intention to have offered, this fearful and bloody stramash would
have been hushed up without the world having become a whit the wiser. But
"there is many a slip," as the proverb says, "between the cup and the
lip;" and the best intentions often fall to the ground, like the
beggarman between the two stools.

The final conclusion of the whole tragedy was, as it behoves me to
mention, that Cursecowl, in consideration of a month's gratis work in the
slaughter-house, made a brotherly legacy of the coat to his nephew, young
Killim. The laddie was a perfect world's wonder every Sunday, and would
have been laughed at out of his seven senses, had he not at last rebelled
and fairly thrown it off. I make every allowance for the young man; and
am sorry to confess that it was indeed a perfect shame to be seen. At
Dalkeith, where one is well known, any thing may pass; but I was always
in bodily terror, that, had he gone to Edinburgh, he would have been
taken up by the police, on suspicion of being either a Spanish pawtriot
or a highway robber.

CHAPTER XXV.--A PHILISTINE IN THE COAL-HOLE.

They steeked doors, they steeked yetts,
Close to the cheek and chin;
They steeked them a' but a wee wicket,
And Lammikin crap in.

_Ballad of the Lammikin_.

Hame cam our gudeman at een,
And hame cam he;
And there he spied a man
Where a man shouldna be.
Hoo cam this man, kimmer,
And who can it be;
Hoo cam this carle here,
Without the leave o' me?

_Old Song_.

Years wore on after the departure and death of poor Mungo Glen, during
the which I had a sowd of prentices, good, bad, and indifferent, and who
afterwards cut, and are cutting, a variety of figures in the world.
Sometimes I had two or three at a time; for the increase of business that
flowed in upon me with a full stream was tremendous, enabling me--who say
it that should not say it--to lay by a wheen bawbees for a sore head, or
the frailties of old age. Somehow or other, the clothes made on my
shopboard came into great vogue through all Dalkeith, both for neatness
of shape and nicety of workmanship; and the young journeymen of other
masters did not think themselves perfected, or worthy a decent wage, till
they had crooked their houghs for three months in my service. With
regard to myself, some of my acquaintances told me, that if I had gone
into Edinburgh to push my fortune, I could have cut half the trade out of
bread, and maybe risen, in the course of nature, to be Lord Provost
himself; but I just heard them speak, and kept my wheisht. I never was
overly ambitious; and I remembered how proud Nebuchadnaazer ended with
eating grass on all-fours. Every man has a right to be the best judge of
his own private matters; though, to be sure, the advice of a true friend
is often more precious than rubies, and sweeter than the Balm of Gilead.

It was about the month of March, in the year of grace _anno Domini_
eighteen hundred, that the whole country trembled, like a giant ill of
the ague, under the consternation of Buonaparte, and all the French
vagabonds emigrating over, and landing in the Firth. Keep us all! the
folk, doitit bodies, put less confidence than became them in what our
volunteer regiments were able and willing to do; yet we had a remnant
among us of the true blood, that with loud laughter laughed the creatures
to scorn; and I, for one, kept up my pluck, like a true Highlander. Does
any living soul believe that Scotland--the land of the Tweed, and the
Clyde, and the Tay--could be conquered, and the like of us sold, like
Egyptian slaves, into captivity? Fie, fie--I despise such haivers. Are
we not descended, father and son, from Robert Bruce and Sir William
Wallace, having the bright blood of freemen in our veins, and the
Pentland Hills, as well as our own dear homes and firesides, to fight
for? The rascal that would not give cut-and-thrust for his country as
long as he had a breath to draw, or a leg to stand on, should be tied
neck and heels, without benefit of clergy, and thrown over Leith pier, to
swim for his life like a mangy dog!

Hard doubtless it is--and I freely confess it--to be called by sound of
bugle, or tuck of drum, from the counter and the shop-board--men, that
have been born and bred to peaceful callings, to mount the red-jacket,
soap the hair, buckle on the buff-belt, load with ball-cartridge, and
screw bayonets; but it's no use talking. We were ever the free British;
and before we would say to Frenchmen that we were their humble servants,
we would either twist the very noses off their faces, or perish in the
glorious struggle.

It was aye the opinion of the Political folk, the Whigs, the Black-nebs,
the Radicals, the Papists, and the Friends of the People, together with
the rest of the clan-jamphrey, that it was a done battle, and that
Buonaparte would lick us back and side. All this was in the heart and
heat of the great war, when we were struggling, like drowning men, for
our very life and existence, and when our colours--the true British
flag--were nailed to the mast-head. One would have thought these rips
were a set of prophets, they were all so busy prophesying, and never any
thing good. They kent (believe them) that we were to be smote hip and
thigh; and that to oppose the vile Corsican was like men with
strait-jackets out of Bedlam. They could see nothing brewing around them
but death, and disaster, and desolation, and pillage, and national
bankruptcy--our brave Highlanders, with their heads shot off, lying on
the bloody field of battle, all slaughtered to a man; our sailors,
handcuffed and shackled, musing in a French prison on the bypast days of
Camperdown, and of Lord Rodney breaking through the line; with all their
fleets sunk to the bottom of the salt sea, after being raked fore and aft
with chain-shot; and our timber, sugar, tea and treacle merchants, all
fleeing for safety and succour down to lodgings in the Abbey Strand, with
a yellow stocking on the ae leg and a black one on the other, like a
wheen mountebanks. Little could they foresee, with their spentacles of
prophecy, that a battle of Waterloo would ever be fought, to make the
confounded fugies draw in their horns, and steek up their scraighing gabs
for ever. Poor fushionless creatures!

I do not pretend to be a politician,--having been bred to the tailoring
line syne ever I was a callant, and not seeing the Adverteezer
Newspapers, or the Edinburgh Evening Courant, save and except at an orra
time,--so I shall say no more, nor pretend to be one of the thousand-and-
one wise men, able and willing to direct his Majesty's Ministers on all
matters of importance regarding Church or State. One thing, howsoever, I
trust I ken, and that is, my duty to my King as his loyal subject, to old
Scotland as her unworthy son, and to my family as their prop, support,
and breadwinner;--so I shall stick to all three (under Heaven) as long as
I have a drop of blood in my precious veins. But the truth is--and I
will let it out and shame the de'il--that I could not help making these
general observations, (as Maister Wiggie calls the spiritualeezing of his
discourses,) as what I have to relate might well make my principles
suspected, were they not known to all the world to be as firm as the
foundations of the Bass Rock. Ye shall nevertheless judge for
yourselves.

It was sometime in the blasty month of March, the weather being rawish
and rainy, with sharp frosty nights that left all the window-soles
whitewashed over with frost rind in the mornings, that as I was going out
in the dark, before lying down in my bed, to give a look into the hen-
house, and lock the coal-cellar, so that I might hang the bit key on the
nail behind our room window-shutter, I happened to give a keek in, and,
lo and behold! the awful apparition of a man with a yellow jacket, lying
sound asleep on a great lump of parrot-coal in a corner!

In the first hurry of my terror and surprise, at seeing a man with a
yellow jacket and a green foraging cap in such a situation, I was like to
drop the good twopenny candle, and faint clean away; but, coming to
myself in a jiffie, I determined, in case it might be a highway robber,
to thraw about the key, and, running up for the firelock, shoot him
through the head instantly, if found necessary. In turning round the
key, the lock, being in want of a feather of oil, made a noise, and
wakened the poor wretch, who, jumping to the soles of his feet in
despair, cried out in a voice that was like to break my heart, though I
could not make out one word of his paraphernally. It minded me, by all
the world, of a wheen cats fuffing and fighting through ither, and whiles
something that sounded like "Sugar, sugar, measure the cord," and "dabble
dabble." It was worse than the most outrageous Gaelic ever spoken in the
height of passion by a Hieland shearer.

"Oho!" thinks I, "friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo,
that's one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you're a Frenchy. Who
kens, keep us all, but ye may be Buonaparte himself in disguise, come
over in a flat-bottomed boat to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may
just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn's morning."

It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man in the course
of his lifetime, to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal-neuk, and have
the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so, while he kept
rampauging, fuffing, stamping, and _diabbling_ away, I went in and
brought out Benjie, with a blanket rowed round him, and my journeyman,
Tommy Staytape--who, being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour-boarder
of, he sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen fire--to hold a
consultation, and be witness of the transaction.

I got my musket, and Tommy Staytape armed himself with the goose--a
deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it--and Benjie took the poker
in one hand, and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly,
to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the
coal-house, surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and
finding all quiet, we gave a knock to rouse him up, and see if we could
bring any thing out of him by speering cross-questions. Tommy and Benjie
trembled from top to toe, like aspen leaves, but fient a word could we
make common sense of at all. I wonder who educates these foreign
creatures? it was in vain to follow him, for he just gab-gabbled away,
like one of the stone masons at the Tower of Babel. At first I was
completely bamboozled, and almost dung stupid, though I kent one word of
French which I wanted to put to him, so I cried through, "Canna you speak
Scotcha, Mounseer?"

He had not the politeness to stop and make answer, but just went on with
his string of haivers, without either rhyme or reason, which we could
make neither top, tail, nor main of.

It was a sore trial to us all, putting us to our wit's end, and how to
come on was past all visible comprehension; when Tommy Staytape, giving
his elbow a rub, said, "Od, maister, I wager something that he's broken
loose frae Penicuik. We have him like a rotten in a fa'."

On Penicuik being mentioned, we heard the foreign creature in the coal-
house groaning out, "och," and "ochone," and "parbleu," and "Mysie
Rabble,"--that I fancy was his sweetheart at home, some bit French quean,
that wondered he was never like to come from the wars and marry her. I
thought on this, for his voice was mournful, though I could not
understand the words; and kenning he was a stranger in a far land, my
bowels yearned within me with compassion towards him.

I would have given half-a-crown at that blessed moment to have been able
to wash my hands free of him; but I swithered, and was like the cuddie
between the two bundles of hay. At long and last a thought struck me,
which was to give the deluded simple creature a chance of escape;
reckoning that, if he found his way home, he would see the shame and
folly of fighting against us any more; and, marrying Mysie Rabble, live a
contented and peaceful life, under his own fig and bay tree. So wishing
him a sound sleep, I cried through the door, "Mounseer, gooda nighta;"
decoying away Benjie and Tommy Staytape into the house. Bidding them
depart to their beds, I said to them after shutting the door, "Now,
callants, we have the precious life of a fellow-creature in our hand, and
to account for. Though he has a yellow jacket on, and speaks nonsense,
yet, nevertheless, he is of the same flesh and blood as ourselves. Maybe
we may be all obliged to wear green foraging-caps before we die yet!
Mention what we have seen or heard to no living soul; for maybe, if he
were to escape, we would be all taken up on suspicion of being spies, and
hanged on a gallows as high as Haman."--After giving them this wholesome
advice, I dispatched them to their beds like lamplighters, binding them
to never fash their thumbs, but sleep like tops, as I would keep a sharp
look-out till morning.

As soon, howsoever, as I heard them sleeping, and playing on the pipes
through their noses, I cried first "Tommy," and syne "Benjie," to be
sure; and, glad to receive no answer from either, I went to the aumrie
and took out a mutton-bone, gey sair pyked, but fleshy enough at the
mouse end; and, putting a penny row beside it, crap out to the coal-house
on my tiptaes. All was quiet as pussie,--so I shot them through the hole
at the corner made for letting the gaislings in by; and giving a tirl,
cried softly through, "Halloa, Mounseer, there's your suppera fora youa;
for I dara saya you are yauppa."

The poor chiel commenced again to grunt and grane, and groan and yelp,
and cry ochone;--and make such woful lamentations, that heart of man
could not stand it; and I found the warm tears prap-prapping to my een.
Before being put to this trial of my strength, I thought that, if ever it
was my fortune to foregather with a Frenchman, either him or me should do
or die; but, i'fegs, one should not crack so crouse before they are put
to the test; and, though I had taken a prisoner without fighting at
all--though he had come into the coal-hole of the Philistines of his own
accord as it were, and was as safe as the spy in the house of Rahab at
Jericho--and though we had him like a mouse beneath a firlet, snug under
custody of lock and key, yet I considered within myself, with a pitiful
consideration, that, although he could not speak well, he might yet feel
deeply, that he might have a father and mother, and sisters and brothers,
in his ain country, weeping and wearying for his return; and that his
truelove Mysie Rabble might pine away like a snapped flower, and die of a
broken heart.

Being a volunteer, and so one of his Majesty's confidential servants, I
swithered tremendously between my duty as a man and a soldier; but, do
what you like, nature will aye be uppermost. The scale weighed down to
the side of pity. I hearkened to the scripture that promises a blessing
to the merciful in heart; and determined, come of it what would, to let
the Frenchy take his chance of falling into other hands.

Having given him a due allowance by looking at my watch, and thinking he
would have had enough of time to have taken his will of the mutton-bone
in the way of pyking, I went to the press and brought out a bottle of
swipes, which I also shoved through the hole; although, for lack of a
tanker, there being none at hand, he would be obliged to lift it to his
head, and do his best. To show the creature did not want sense, he
shoved, when he was done, the empty plate and the toom bottle through
beneath the door, mumbling some trash or other which no living creature
could comprehend, but which I dare say, from the way it was said, was the
telling me how much he was obliged for his supper and poor lodging. From
my kindness towards him, he grew more composed; but as he went back to
the corner to lie down, I heard him give two-three heavy sighs.--I could
not thole't, mortal foe though the man was of mine; so I gave the key a
canny thraw round in the lock, as it were by chance; and, wishing him a
good-night, went to my bed beside Nanse.

At the dawn of day, by cock-craw, Benjie and Tommy Staytape, keen of the
ploy, were up and astir, as anxious as if their life depended on it, to
see that all was safe and snug, and that the prisoner had not shot the
lock. They agreed to march sentry over him half an hour the piece, time
about, the one stretching himself out on a stool beside the kitchen fire,
by way of a bench in the guard-house, while the other went to and fro
like the ticker of a clock. I dare say they saw themselves marching him
after breakfast time, with his yellow jacket, through a mob of weans with
glowering een and gaping mouths, up to the Tolbooth.

The back window being up a jink, I heard the two confabbing. "We'll draw
cuts," said Benjie, "which is to walk sentry first; see, here's two
straws, the longest gets the choice."--"I've won," cried Tommy; "so gang
you in a while, and if I need ye, or grow frightened, I'll beat leather-
ty-patch wi' my buckles on the back-door. But we had better see first
what he is about, for he may be howking a hole through aneath the
foundations; thae fiefs can work like moudiwarts."--"I'll slip forret,"
said Benjie, "and gie a peep."--"Keep to a side," cried Tommy Staytape,
"for, dog on it, Moosey'll maybe hae a pistol; and, if his birse be up,
he would think nae mair o' shooting ye as dead as a red herring, than I
would do of taking my breakfast."

"I'll rin past, and gie a knock at the door wi' the poker to rouse him
up?" asked Benjie.

"Come away then," answered Tommy, "and ye'll hear him gie a yowl, and
commence gabbling like a goose."

As all this was going on, I rose and took a vizzy between the chinks of
the window-shutters; so, just as I got my neb to the hole, I saw Benjie,
as he flew past, give the door a drive. His consternation, on finding it
flee half open, may be easier imagined than described; especially, as on
the door dunting to again, it being soople in the hinges, they both
plainly heard a fistling within. Neither of them ever got such a fleg
since they were born; for expecting the Frenchman to bounce out like a
roaring lion, they hurried like mad into the house, couping the creels
over one another, Tommy spraining his thumb against the back-door, and
Benjie's foot going into Tommy's coat-pocket, which it carried away with
it, like a cloth-sandal.

At the noise of this stramash, I took opportunity to come fleeing down
the stair, with the gun in my hand; in the first place, to show them I
was not frightened to handle fire-arms; and, in the second, making
pretence that I thought it was Mounseer with his green foraging-cap
making an attempt at housebreaking. Benjie was in a terrible pickle;
and, though his nose was blooding with the drive he had come against
Tommy's teeth, he took hold of my arm like grim death, crying, "Take
tent, faither, take tent; the door is open, and the Penicuiker hiding
himself behind it. He'll brain some of us with a lump of coal--and will
he!"

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