CHAPTER XXVII.--"PUGGIE, PUGGIE,"-- A STORY WITHOUT A TAIL.
Saw ye Johnie coming?
quo' she, Saw ye Johnie coming?
Wi' his blue bonnet on his head, And his doggie running.
_Old Ballad_.
The welfare of the human race and the improvement of society being my chief aim, in this record of my sayings and doings through the pilgrimage of life, I make bold at the instigation of Nanse, my worthy wife, to record in black and white a remarkably curious thing, to which I was an eyewitness in the course of nature.

I have little reluctance to consent, not only because the affair was not a little striking in itself--as the reader will soon see--but because, like AEsop's Fables, it bears a good moral at the end of it.
Many a time have I thought of the business alluded to, which happened to take place in our fore-shop one bonny summer afternoon, when I was selling a coallier wife, from the Marquis of Lothian's upper hill, a yard of serge at our counter-side.

At the time she came in, although busied in reading an account of one of Buonaparte's battles in the Courant newspaper, I observed at her foot a bonny wee doggie, with a bushy black tail, of the dancing breed--that could sit on its hind-legs like a squirrel, cast biscuit from its nose, and play a thousand other most diverting tricks.

Well, as I was saying, I saw the woman had a pride in the bit creature--it was just a curiosity like--and had belonged to a neighbour's son that volunteered out of the Berwickshire militia, (the Birses, as they were called,) into a regiment that was draughted away into Egypt, Malta, or the East Indies, I believe--so, it seems, the lad's father and mother thought much more about it, for the sake of him that was off and away--being to their fond eyes a remembrancer, and to their parental hearts a sort of living keepsake.
After bargaining about the serge--and taking two or three other things, such as a leather-cap edged with rabbit-fur for her little nevoy--a dozen of plated buttons for her goodman's new waistcoat, which was making up at Bonnyrig by Nicky Sharpshears, my old apprentice--and a spotted silk napkin for her own Sunday neck wear--I tied up the soft articles with grey paper and skinie, and was handing over the odd bawbees of change, when, just as she was lifting the leather-cap from the counter, she said with a terrible face, looking down to the ground as if she was short-sighted--"Pity me! what's that ?" I could not imagine, gleg as I generally am, what had happened; so came round about the far end of the counter, with my spectacles on, to see what it was, when, lo and behold! I perceived a dribbling of blood all along the clean sanded floor, up and down, as if somebody had been walking about with a cut finger; but, after looking around us for a little, we soon found out the thief--and that we did.
The bit doggie was sitting cowering and shivering, and pressing its back against the counter, giving every now and then a mournful whine, so we plainly saw that every thing was not right.

On the which, the wife, slipping a little back, snapped her finger and thumb before its nose, and cried out--"Hiskie, poor fellow!" but no--it would not do.