10
but, when she saw her white, sighed and
said, Alas! thou'll ne'er be like the kindly
brute, my Black Lady, and yet ye rout as
like her as ony ever I did hear. But says
Tom to himself, 'tis a mercy you know not
what she says, or all would be wrong yet.
So in two or three days the old woman
put forth her braw rigget cow in the morn-
ing with the rest of her neighbour's cattle,
but it came on a sore day of heavy rain,
which washed away all the white from her
face and back; so the old woman's Black
Lady came home at night, and her rigget
cow went away with the shower, and was
never heard of. But Tom's father having
some suspicion, and looking narrowly into
the cow's face found some of the chalk not
washed away, and then he gave poor Tom
a hearty beating, and sent him away to
seek his fortune with a skin full of sore bones.
-----------------------------------------------
P A R T III.
TOM being now turned to his own
shifts, considered with himself how to raise
a little more money; and so gets a string
as near as he could guess to be the length
of his mother, and to Edinburgh he goes,
to a wright who was acquainted with his
