"Weel, weel, woman, hasna every dog his day, begging Earnscliff's pardon for the auld saying—Mayna I hae his luck, and he mine, another time?—It's a braw thing for a man to be out a' day, and frightened—na, I winna say that neither—but mistrysted wi' bogles in the hame coming, and then to hae to flyte wi' a wheen women that hae been doing naething a' the live-lang day but whirling a bit stick, wi' a thread trailing at it, or boring at a clout."
"Frightened wi' bogles!" exclaimed the females, one and all, for great was the regard then paid, and perhaps still paid, in these glens to all such fantasies.
"I did not say frightened, now—I only said mis-set wi' the thing—And there was but ae bogle, neither—Earnscliff, you saw it as weel as I did?"
And he proceeded, without very much exaggeration, to detail, in his own way, the meeting they had with the mysterious being at Micklestane-Moor, concluding,
