She then tried it by its own name, and bade it rise, saying, "Puggie, Puggie!" when--would ever mortal man of woman born believe it ?--its bit black, bushy, curly tail, was off by the rump--docked and away, as if it had been for a wager.
"Eh, megstie!" cried the woman, laying down the leather-cap and the tied- up parcel, and holding out both her hands in astonishment.

"Eh, my goodness, what's come o' the brute's tail?
Lovy ding! just see, it's clean gane! Losh keep me! that's awfu'! Div ye keep rotten-fa's about your premises, Maister Wauch?
See, a bonny business as ever happened in the days of ane's lifetime!" As a furnishing tailor, as a Christian, and as an inhabitant of Dalkeith, my corruption was raised--was up like a flash of lightning, or a cat's back.

Such doings in an enlightened age and a civilized country!--in a town where we have three kirks, a grammar school, a subscription library, a ladies' benevolent society, a mechanics' institution, and a debating club! My heart burned within me like dry tow; and I could mostly have jumped up to the ceiling with vexation and anger--seeing as plain as a pikestaff, though the simple woman did not, that it was the handiwork of none other than our neighbour Reuben Cursecowl, the butcher.

Dog on it, it was too bad--it was a rascally transaction; so, come of it what would, I could not find it in my heart to screen him.

"I'll wager, however," said I, in a kind of off-hand way, not wishing exactly, ye observe, to be seen in the business, "that it will have been running away with beef-steaks, mutton-chops, sheep feet, or something else out of the booth; and some of his prentice laddies may have come across its hind- quarters accidentally with the cleaver." "Mistake here, or mistake there," said the woman, her face growing as red as the sleeve of a soldier's jacket, and her two eyes burning like live coals--"'Od the butcher, but I'll butcher him, the nasty, ugly, ill-faured vagabond; the thief-like, cruel, malicious, ill-hearted, down- looking blackguard! He would go for to offer for to presume for to dare to lay hands on an honest man's son's doug! It sets him weel, the bloodthirsty Gehazi, the halinshaker ne'er-do-weel! I'll gie him sic a redding up as he never had since the day his mother boor him!" Then looting down to the poor bit beast, that was bleeding like a sheep--"Ay, Puggie, man," she said in a doleful voice, "they've made ye an unco fright; but I'll gie them up their fit for't; I'll show them, in a couple of hurries, that they have catched a Tartar!"-- and with that out went the woman, paper parcel, leather-cap and all, randying like a tinkler from Yetholm; the wee wretchie cowering behind her, with the mouse-wabs sticking on the place I had put them to stop the bleeding; and looking, by all the world, like a sight I once saw, when I was a boy, on a visit to my father's half-cousin, Aunt Heatherwig, on the Castle-hill of Edinburgh--to wit, a thief going down Leith Walk, on his road to be shipped for transportation to Botany Bay, after having been pelted for a couple of hours with rotten eggs in the pillory.
Knowing the nature of the parties concerned, and that intimately on both sides, I jealoused directly that there would be a stramash; so not liking, for sundry reasons, to have my neb seen in the business, I shut to the door, and drew the long bolt; while I hastened ben to the room, and, softly pulling up a jink of the window, clapped the side of my head to it; that, unobserved, I might have an opportunity of overhearing the conversation between Reuben Cursecowl and the coallier wife; which, weel- a-wat, was likely to become public property.
"Hollo! you man, do ye ken onything about that ?" cried the randy woman;--but wait a moment, till I give a skiff of description of our neighbour Reuben.
By this time--it was ten years after James Batter's tragedy--Mr Cursecowl was an oldish man--he is gathered to his fathers now--and was considerably past his best, as his wife, douce, honest woman, used to observe.