resolve was firmer than ever to try the experiment which had looked so plausible through the media of Barleycornian fumes. He went through his usual Monday evening routine; delved a bit of his garden; read the Weekly Mail; smoked his pipe, and interchanged the gossip of the hour with the innocent Mrs. Glen. About nine o'clock, Baldy, on his way home, looked in upon his neighbour. "And hoo dae ye think yer noo, Tam," Baldy enquired in his careless way, leaning his shoulder against the door-post, as he held the door half open and looked in towards the inmates who were sitting at the fire-Tam in his big chair, and his wife on a stool. "Lod, man," returned Tam, "I think I'm gaighlies.' 'An' whit's wrang wi' ye," interjected Mrs. Glen, who heard of his illness for the first time. "O jist a bit pain in the stamack, I dinna think it's worth bothering about" added the heroic Tam, who certainly bore up bravely under his load of imaginary affliction. He continued: "I'm jist gaun to my bed as soon as I finish this smoke, an' nae doot it'ill be a' richt in the mornin',"with a significant wink to Baldy, who, feeling that all was going well, shut the door, and made for his own home, which was about a quarter of a mile distant. About one o'clock on Tuesday morning Mrs. Glen was rudely awakened from her slumbers by Tam, who, uttering a most unearthly groan, and giving his bed-fellow a punch on the arm, caused her to rise on her elbow and exclaim: "Whit's wrang wi' ye, Tam! Whit in a' the worls wrang wi' ye!-Is yer stamack waur?" "Aye aye!" groaned the poor, afflicted sufferer; "rin an' get the doctor or I'll dee!" and he threw his arms about in an agony of despair, which plainly indicated that he would be as good as his word. He had scarcely given this muscular proof of the intense pain he was suffering, when his wife was on the floor; and in less than half a minute afterwards was hurrying on her way to the house of Dr. Druggs, one of the two practitioners of the Esculapian art in the district. Leaving her message, she ran home at a trotting pace; for, besides the urgency of the case, the night was cold, and a drizzling rain was falling, making the air feel raw, conditions least of all favourable to a person hurriedly and scantily clad, who a short time before was lying snugly in bed. Returning to her house, she made to open the door, but in vain. Thinking that she had perhaps locked it, she applied the key, which she turned and returned in the lock, but without effect. Then she tried the window, but it also refused to be moved. She was therefore reluctantly compelled to call upon Tam to try and muster as much strength as to relieve her from the predicament in which she found herself. No sooner had she made known her request, than Tam, with a long pent-up laugh, cried, "Hunt the Gowk!" The whole situation flashed on her at once, and she inwardly cursed herself for having been so easily duped; and after expressing her outraged feelings with her voice, emphasizing her remarks with her hands and feet with which she battered on the door, she was reduced to a women's extremity. But the tears which have been known to trickle into the hardest heart, melting it with the dews of human pity and sorrow, causing a responsive stream to well up and bubble over with the tiny rills which set it in motion, produced no effect on our hero, who, although he could not but hear his wife's piteous sobs, did not see the copious flow of tears by which these were accompanied. And it would have mattered little even if he had. Tam, with a nonchalance which suited his unemotional nature, smoked his pipe, cosily enjoying himself and grinning from ear to ear with unbounded satisfaction. After a lapse of half-an-hour, Mrs. Glen went away in the direction, and for the purpose of asking a night's shelter from Mrs. Baldy Bane. She had not taken many steps before a brilliant idea struck her. Why not pretend to commit suicide by throwing into the water a log of wood that chanced to be lying on the bank ? A satanical smile crept over her face as she stooped to raise the end of the log and throw it into the stream. Uttering a farewell cry, she hid behind the gable of the house to observe what the result would be. Tam heard the splash. In an instant a shiver crept over his frame, and the cold sweat started from his forehead like pearl beads. His brow assumed the colour of the pale grey ash which flew from his pipe as it fell on the hearth in a thousand pieces. Without thinking what he did, he rushed from his chair. One bold leap carried him through the window, and another, with a desperate plunge, into the river, which was considerably swollen with the recent rain. He struggled lustily in the direction of the figure floating on the surface of the water a few yards ahead. Just as he, in breathless agony of despair and joy, clasped the log in his arms and pressed it to his panting breast, his better half, coming out from her hiding place, saluted him with "Hunt the Gowk!" adding, with biting irony, that she hoped his bath would do him good. Hearing the doctor's hasty footsteps approaching, she flew into the house by the ingress Tam had made in his hurried exit, leaving our worthy to explain to his medical adviser how he came to take the treatment of his "awfu' sair stamack" into his own hands. The Brownie of Blednoch. BY WILLIAM NICHOLSON. ANNOTATED BY J. G. CARTER, F.S.A. SCOT. HE "Brownie of Bednoch" first appeared in the Dumfries Magazine for 1825, and soon spread the fame of Nicholson far beyond the bounds of his native Galloway, and secured for him that wider recognition which Dumas considered the test of true genius, and which M. Renan has called “the glory that is not altogether vanity." There cam' a strange wight to our toun-en', He tirled na lang, but he glided ben Wi' a dreary, dreary hum. His face did glare like the glow o' the west I trow the bauldest stood aback, Wi' a gape and a glower till their lugs did crack, "Hae ye wark for Aiken-drum?" O had ye seen the bairns' fright, As they stared at this wild and unyirthly wight "Sauf us!" quoth Jock, "d'ye see sic een ?" Cries Kate, "There's a hole where his nose should hae been; The black dog growling cowered his tail, His matted hair on his breast did rest, A lang blude beard wan'ered doon like a vest; Roun' his hairy form there was naething seen And his knotted knees played aye knoit between; On his wauchie arms three claws did meet, But he drew a score, himsel' did sain, But the canny auld wife cam' till her breath, But it fear't na Aiken-drum. "His presence protect us!" quoth the auld gudeman; I conjure ye-speak-by the Beuk in my han'!" "I lived in a lan' where we saw nae sky, 1 "I'll shiel a' your sheep i' the mornin' sune, "I'll loup the linn when ye canna wade, I'se tame't," quoth Aiken-drum! "To wear the tod frae the flock on the fell To gather the dew frae the heather bell And to look at my face in your clear crystal well, 1 On one occasion, Brownie had undertaken to gather the sheep into the bucht at an early hour, and so zealously did he perform his task, that not only was there not one sheep left on the hill, but he had also collected a number of hares, which were found fairly penned along with them. Upon being congratulated on his extraordinary success, Brownie exclaimed, "Confound thae wee gray anes! they hae cost me mair trouble than a' the lave o' them." |