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something that sounded like “Sugar, sugar, measure the cord,” and “dabble, dabble.” It was waur than the maist outrageous Gaelic evcr spoken in the height o' passion by a Hicland shearer.
‘Oho!’ thinks I, friend, ye cannot be a Christian from your lingo, that’s one thing poz; and I would wager tippence you’re a Frenchy. Who kens keep us all, but yc may be Bonaparte himself in disguise, come over in a flat-bottomed boat, to spy the nakedness of the land. So ye may just rest content, and keep your quarters good till the morn’s morning.’
It was a wonderful business, and enough to happen to a man, in the course of his lifetime, to find Mounseer from Paris in his coal-neuk, and have the enemy of his country snug under lock and key; so, while he kept rampaging, fussing, stamping, and diabbling away, I went in, and brought out Benjie with a blanket rowed round him, and my journeyman, Tommy Bodkin,—who being an orphan, I made a kind of parlour boarder of, be sleeping on a shake-down beyond the kitchen fire—-to hold a consultation, and be witness of the transaction.
I got my musket, and Tommy Bodkin armcd himself with the goose, a deadly weapon, whoever may get a clour with it, and Benjie took the poker in one hand and the tongs in the other; and out we all marched briskly, to make the Frenchman, that was locked up from the light of day in the coal house surrender. After hearkening at the door for a while, and finding all quiet, he gave a knock to rouse him up, and see
