So stands the Thracian herdsman with his spear
Full in the gap, and hopes the hunted bear;
And hears him in the rustling wood, and sees
His course at distance by the bending trees;
And thinks Here comes my mortal enemy,
And either he must fall in fight or I.

DRYDEN’S Palamon and Arcite.

Nay, never shake thy gory locks at me;
Thou canst not say I did it!

Macbeth.

It was on a fine summer morning, somewhere about four o’clock, when I wakened from my night’s rest, and was about thinking to bestir myself, that I heard the sound of voices in the kail-yard stretching south from our back windows. I listened and I listened and I better listened and still the sound of the argle-bargling became more distinct, now in a fleeching way, and now in harsh angry tones, as if some quarrelsome disagreement had taken place. I had not the comfort of my wife’s company in this dilemmy; she being away, three days before, on the top of Tammie Trundle the carrier’s cart, to Lauder, on a visit to her folks there; her mother (my gudemother like) having been for some time ill with an income in her leg, which threatened to make a lameter of her in her old age, the two doctors there not speaking of the blacksmith, and sundry skeely old women being able to make nothing of the business; so nobody happened to be with me in the room saving wee Benjie, who was lying asleep at the back of the bed, with his little Kilmarnock on his head, as sound as a top. Nevertheless, I looked for my clothes; and, opening one half of the window shutter, I saw four young birkies, well dressed indeed three of them customers of my own all belonging to the town; two of them young doctors, one of them a writer’s clerk, and the other a grocer. The whole appeared very fierce and fearsome, like turkey-cocks; swaggering about with warlike arms as if they had been the king’s dragoons; and priming a pair of pistols, which one of the surgeons, a spirity, outspoken lad, Maister Blister, was holding in his grip.

I jealoused at once what they were after, being now a wee up to fire-arms; so I saw that scaith was to come of it; and that I would be wanting in my duty on four heads, first, as a Christian; second, as a man; third, as a subject; and fourth, as a father; if I withheld myself from the scene; nor lifted up my voice, however fruitlessly, against such crying iniquity as the wanton letting out of human blood; so forth I hastened, half dressed, with my grey stockings rolled up my thighs over my corduroys, and my old hat above my cowl, to the kail-yard of contention.

I was just in the nick of time; and my presence checked the effusion of blood for a little but wait a wee. So high and furious were at least three of the party, that I saw it was catching water in a sieve to waste words on them, knowing as clearly as the sun serves the world, that interceding would be of no avail. Howsoever, I made a feint, and threatened to bowl away for a magistrate, if they would not desist from their barbarous and bloody purpose; but, i’fegs, I had better kept my counsel till it was asked for.

“Tailor Mansie,” blustered out Maister Thomas Blister with a furious cock of his eye he was a queer Eirish birkie, come over for his education “since ye have ventured to thrust your nose, ma vourneen,” said he, “where nobody invited ye, you must just stay,” added he, “and abide by the consequences. This is an affair of honour, you take, don’t ye? and if ye venture to stir one foot from the spot, och then, ma bouchal,” said he, “by the poker of St Patrick, but whisk through ye goes one of these leaden playthings, as sure as ye ever spoiled a coat, or cabbaged broadcloth! Ye have now come out, ye observe, hark ye,” said he, “and are art and part in the business; and if one, or both, of the principals be killed, poor devils,” said he, “we are all alike liable to take our trial before the Justiciary Court, hark ye; and by the powers,” said he, “I doubt not but, on proper consideration, machree, that they will allow us to get off mercifully, on this side of swinging, by a verdict of manslaughter and be hanged to them!”

’Od, I found myself immediately in a scrape; but how to get out of it baffled my gumption. It set me all a shivering; yet I thought that, come the worst when it should, they surely would not hang the father of a helpless small family, that had nothing but his needle for their support, if I made a proper affidavy, about having tried to make peace between the youths. So, conscience being a brave supporter, I abode in silence, though not without many queer and qualmish thoughts, and a pit-patting of the heart, not unco pleasant in the tholing.

“Blood and wounds!” bawled Maister Thomas Blister, “it would be a disgrace for ever on the honourable profession of physic,” egging on poor Maister Willy Magneezhy, whose face was as white as double-bleached linen, “to make an apology for such an insult. Arrah, my honey! you not fit to doctor a cat, you not fit to bleed a calf, you not fit to poultice a pig, after three years’ apprenticeship,” said he, “and a winter with Doctor Monro? By the cupping-glasses of ’Pocrates,” said he, “and by the pistol of Gallon, but I would have caned him on the spot if he had just let out half as much to me! Look ye, man,” said he, “look ye, man, he is all shaking,” (this was a God’s truth;) “he’ll turn tail. At him like fire, Willie.”

Magneezhy, though sadly frightened, looked a thought brighter; and made a kind of half step forward. “Say that ye’ll ask my pardon once more, and if not,” whined the poor lad, with a voice broken and trembling, “then we must just shoot one another.”

“Devil a bit,” answered Maister Bloatsheet, “devil a bit. No, sir; you must down on your bare knees, and beg ten thousand pardons for calling me out here, in a raw morning; or I’ll have a shot at you, whether you will or not.”

“Will you stand that?” said Blister, with eyes like burning coals. “By the living jingo, and the holy poker, Magneezhy, if you stand that, if you stand that, I say, I stand no longer your second, but leave you to disgrace and a caning. If he likes to shoot you like a dog, and not as a gentleman, then, cuishla machree, let him do it, and be done!”

“No, sir,” replied Magneezhy with a quivering voice, which he tried in vain, poor fellow, to render warlike, (he had never been in the volunteers like me.) “Hand us the pistols, then; and let us do or die!”

“Spoken like a hero, and brother of the lancet: as little afraid at the sight of your own blood, as at that of your patients,” said Blister. “Hand over the pistols.”

It was an awful business. Gude save us, such goings on in a Christian land! While Mr Bloatsheet, the young writer, was in the act of cocking the bloody weapon, I again, but to no purpose, endeavoured to slip in a word edgeways. Magneezhy was in an awful case; if he had been already shot, he could not have looked more clay and corpse-like; so I took up a douce earnest confabulation, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody conclusion, with Mr Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was standing behind Bloatsheet with a large mahogany box under his arm, something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about from house to house, through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets; or niffering plaited ear-rings, and suchlike, with young lasses, for old silver coins or cracked teaspoons.

“Oh!” answered he, very composedly, as if it had been a canister full of black-rapee or black-guard, that he had just lifted down from his top-shelf, “it’s just Doctor Blister’s saws, whittles, and big knives, in case any of their legs or arms be blown away, that he may cut them off.” Little would have prevented me sinking down through the ground, had I not remembered at the preceese moment, that I myself was a soldier, and liable, when the hour of danger threatened, to be called out, in marching-order, to the field of battle. But by this time the pistols were in the hands of the two infatuated young men, Mr Bloatsheet, as fierce as a hussar dragoon, and Magneezhy as supple in the knees as if he was all on oiled hinges; so the next consideration was to get well out of the way, the lookers-on running nearly as great a chance of being shot as the principals, they not being accustomed, like me for instance, to the use of arms; on which account, I scougged myself behind a big pear-tree; both being to fire when Blister gave the word “Off!”

I had scarcely jouked into my hidy-hole, when “crack crack” played the pistols like lightning; and as soon as I got my cowl taken from my eyes, and looked about, woes me! I saw Magneezhy clap his hand to his brow, wheel round like a peerie, or a sheep seized with the sturdie, and then play flap down on his broadside, breaking the necks of half-a-dozen cabbage-stocks three of which were afterwards clean lost, as we could not put them all into the pot at one time. The whole of us ran forward, but foremost was Bloatsheet, who seizing Magneezhy by the hand, cried, with a mournful face, “I hope you forgive me? Only say this as long as you have breath; for I am off to Leith harbour in half a minute.”

The blood was running over poor Magneezhy’s eyes, and drib-dribbling from the neb of his nose, so he was truly in a pitiful state; but he said with more strength than I thought he could have mustered, “Yes, yes, fly for your life. I am dying without much pain fly for your life, for I am a gone man!”

Bloatsheet bounced through the kail-yard like a maukin, clamb over the bit wall, and off like mad; while Blister was feeling Magneezhy’s pulse with one hand, and looking at his doctor’s watch, which he had in the other. “Do ye think that the poor lad will live, doctor?” said I to him.

He gave his head a wise shake, and only observed, “I dare say, it will be a hanging business among us. In what direction do you think, Mansie, we should all take flight?”

But I answered bravely, “Flee them that will, I’se flee nane. If I am taken prisoner, the town-officers maun haul me from my own house; but, nevertheless, I trust the visibility of my innocence will be as plain as a pikestaff to the eyes of the Fifteen!”

“What, then, Mansie, will we do with poor Magneezhy? Give us your advice in need.”

“Let us carry him down to my own bed,” answered I; “I would not desert a fellow-creature in his dying hour! Help me down with him, and then flee the country as fast as you are able!”

We immediately proceeded, and lifted the poor lad, who had now dwalmed away, upon our wife’s hand-barrow Blister taking the feet, and me the oxters, whereby I got my waistcoat all japanned with blood; so, when we got him laid right, we proceeded to carry him between us down the close, just as if he had been a sticked sheep, and in at the back door, which cost us some trouble, being narrow, and the barrow getting jammed in; but, at long and last, we got him streeked out above the blankets, having previously shooken Benjie, and wakened him out of his morning’s nap.

All this being accomplished and got over, Blister decamped, leaving me my leeful lane, excepting Benjie, who was next to nobody, in the house with the dying man. What a frightful face he had, all smeared over with blood and powder and I really jealoused, that if he died in that room it would be haunted for evermair, he being in a manner a murdered man; so that, even should I be acquitted of art and part, his ghost might still come to bother us, making our house a hell upon earth, and frighting us out of our seven senses. But in the midst of my dreadful surmises, when all was still, so that you might have heard a pin fall, a knock-knock-knock, came to the door, on which, recovering my senses, I dreaded first that it was the death-chap, and syne that the affair had got wind, and that it was the beagles come in search of me; so I kissed little Benjie, who was sitting on his creepie, blubbering and greeting for his parritch, while a tear stood in my own eye as I went forward to lift the sneck to let the officers, as I thought, harrie our house, by carrying off me, its master; but it was, thank Heaven, only Tammie Bodkin, coming in whistling to his work, with some measuring papers hanging round his neck.

“Ah, Tammie,” said I to him, my heart warming at a kent face, and making the laddie, although my bounden servant by a regular indenture of five years, a friend in my need, “come in, my man. I fear yell hae to take charge of the business for some time to come; mind what I tell’d ye about the shaping and the cutting, and no making the goose ower warm; as I doubt I am about to be harled away to the tolbooth.”

Tammie’s heart swelled to his mouth. “Ah, maister,” he said, “ye’re joking. What should ye have done that ye should be ta’en to sic an ill place?”

“Ay, Tammie, lad,” answered I, “it is but ower true.”

“Weel, weel,” quo’ Tammie I really thought it a great deal of the laddie “weel, weel, they canna prevent me coming to sew beside ye; and if I can take the measure of customers without, ye can cut the claith within. But what is’t for, maister?”

“Come in here,” said I to him, “and believe your ain een, Tammie, my man.”

“Losh me!” cried the poor laddie, glowring at the bloody face of the man in the bed, and starting back on his tip-toes. “Ay ay ay! maister; save us, maister; ay ay ay you have na cloured his harnpan with the guse? Ay, maister, maister! whaten an unearthly sight!! I doubt they’ll hang us a’; you for doing’t and me on suspicion and Benjie as art and part, puir thing! But I’ll rin for a doctor. Will I, maister?”

The thought had never struck me before, being in a sort of a manner dung stupid; but catching up the word, I said with all my pith and birr, “Rin, rin, Tammie, rin for life and death!”

Tammie bolted like a nine-year-old, never looking behind his tail; so, in less than ten minutes, he returned, hauling along old Doctor Peelbox, whom he had waukened out of his bed, in a camblet morning-gown, and a pair of red slippers, by the lug and horn, at the very time I was trying to quiet young Benjie, who was following me up and down the house, as I was pacing to and fro in distraction, girning and whingeing for his breakfast.

“Bad business, bad business; bless us, what is this?” said the old Doctor, who was near-sighted, staring at Magneezhy’s bloody face through his silver spectacles “what’s the matter?”

The poor patient knew at once his master’s tongue, and lifting up one of his eyes, the other being stiff and barkened down said in a melancholy voice, “Ah, master, do you think I’ll get better?”

Doctor Peelbox, old man as he was, started back as if he had been a French dancing-master, or had stramped on a hot bar of iron. “Tom, Tom, is this you? what, in the name of wonder, has done this?” Then feeling his wrist “but your pulse is quite good. Have you fallen, boy? Where is the blood coming from?”

“Somewhere about the hairy scalp,” answered Magneezhy, in their own queer sort of lingo. “I doubt some artery’s cut through!”

The Doctor immediately bade him lie quiet and hush, as he was getting a needle and silken thread ready to sew it up; ordering me to have a basin and water ready, to wash the poor lad’s physog. I did so as hard as I was able, though I was not sure about the blood just; old Doctor Peelbox watching over my shoulder with a lighted penny candle in one hand, and the needle and thread in the other, to see where the blood spouted from. But we were as daft as wise; so he bade me take my big shears, and cut out all the hair on the fore part of the head as bare as my loof; and syne we washed, and better washed; so Magneezhy got the other eye up, when the barkened blood was loosed; looking, though as pale as a clean shirt, more frighted than hurt; until it became plain to us all, first to the Doctor, syne to me, and syne to Tammie Bodkin, and last of all to Magneezhy himself, that his skin was not so much as peeled. So we helped him out of the bed, and blithe was I to see the lad standing on the floor, without a hold, on his own feet.

I did my best to clean his neckcloth and shirt of the blood, making him look as decentish as possible, considering circumstances; and lending him, as the scripture commands, my tartan mantle to hide the infirmity of his bloody trowsers and waistcoat. Home went he and his master together; me standing at our close mouth, wishing them a good-morning, and blithe to see their backs. Indeed, a condemned thief with the rope about his neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over, could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same blessed moment. It was like Adam seeing the deil’s rear marching out of Paradise, if one may be allowed to think such a thing.

The whole business, tag-rag and bob-tail, soon, however, spunked out, and was the town talk for more than one day But you’ll hear.

At the first I pitied the poor lads, that I thought had fled for ever and aye from their native country, to Bengal, Seringapatam, Copenhagen, Botany Bay, or Jamaica, leaving behind them all their friends and old Scotland, as they might never hear of the goodness of Providence in their behalf. But wait a wee.

Would you believe it? As sure’s death, the whole was but a wicked trick played by that mischievous loon Blister and his cronies, upon one that was a simple and soft-headed callant. De’il a hait was in the one pistol but a pluff of powder; and in the other, a cartridge-paper, full of blood, was rammed down upon the charge; the which, hitting Magneezhy on the ee-bree, had caused a business that seemed to have put him out of life, and nearly put me (though one of the volunteers) out of my seven senses.