Davie all this
while lay with his nose almost in the fire, nuzzling among the ashes,
kicking his heels, mumbling to himself, turning the eggs as they lay in
the hot embers, as if to confute the proverb, that 'there goes reason to
roasting of eggs,' and justify the eulogium which poor Janet poured out
upon
Him whom she loved, her idiot boy.
Davie's no sae silly as folk tak him for, Mr. Wauverley; he wadna
hae brought you here unless he had kend ye was a friend to his
Honour--indeed the very dogs kend ye, Mr. Wauverley, for ye was aye kind
to beast and body.--I can tell you a story o' Davie, wi' his Honour's
leave: His Honour, ye see, being under hiding in thae sair times--the
mair's the pity--he lies a' day, and whiles a' night, in the cove in the
dern hag; but though it 's a bieldy eneugh bit, and the auld gudeman o'
Corse-Cleugh has panged it wi' a kemple o' strae amaist, yet when the
country's quiet, and the night very cauld, his Honour whiles creeps doun
here to get a warm at the ingle, and a sleep amang the blankets, and
gangs awa in the morning. And so, ae morning, siccan a fright as I
got! Twa unlucky red-coats were up for black-fishing, or some siccan
ploy--for the neb o' them's never out o' mischief--and they just got a
glisk o' his Honour as he gaed into the wood, and banged aff a gun at
him, I out like a jer-falcon, and cried,--"Wad they shoot an honest
woman's poor innocent bairn?" And I fleyt at them, and threepit it was
my son; and they damned and swuir at me that it was the auld rebel, as
the villains ca'd his Honour; and Davie was in the wood, and heard the
tuilzie, and he, just out o' his ain head, got up the auld grey mantle
that his Honour had flung off him to gang the faster, and he cam out o'
the very same bit o' the wood, majoring and looking about sae like his
Honour, that they were clean beguiled, and thought they had letten aff
their gun at crack-brained Sawney, as they ca'd him; and they gae
me saxpence, and twa saumon fish, to say naething about it.
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