“It’s a wearyfu’ thing that whisky,” said Thomas.  “I wish it could be banished to Botany Bay.”

“It is that,” said I.  “Muckle and nae little sin does it breed and produce in this world.”

“I’m glad,” quoth Thomas, stroking down his chin in a slee way, “I’m glad the guilty should see the folly o’ their ain ways; it’s the first step, ye ken, till amendment.  And indeed I tell’t Maister Wiggie, when he sent me here, that I could almost become guid for your being mair wary of your conduct for the future time to come.”

This was a thunder-clap to me, but I said briskly, “So ye’re after some session business in this visit, are ye?”

“Ye’ve just guessed it,” answered Thomas, sleeking down his front hair with his fingers in a sober way.  “We had a meeting this forenoon, and it was resolved ye should stand a public rebuke in the meeting house next Sunday.”

“Hang me if I do!” answered I.  “Not for all the ministers and elders that were ever cleckit.  I was born a free man, I live in a free country, I am the subject of a free king and constitution, and I’ll be shot before I submit to such rank diabolical papistry.”

“Hooly and fairly, Mansie,” quoth Thomas.  “They’ll maybe no be sae hard as they threaten.  But ye ken, my friend, I’m speaking to you as a brither; it was an unco’-like business for an elder, not only to gang till a play, which is ane of the deevil’s rendevouses, but to gan there in a state of liquor, making yourself a world’s wonder, and you an elder of our kirk!  I put the question to yourself soberly.”

His threatening I could despise; but ah, his calm, brotherly, flattering way I could not thole with.  So I said till him, “Weel, weel, Thomas, I ken I have done wrong, and I am sorry for’t; they’ll never find me in siccan a scrape again.”

Thomas Burlings, in a friendly way, shook hands with me; telling that he would go back and plead with the session in my behalf.  To do him justice he was not worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody, gentle or simple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or minted the matter of the rebuke from that day to this.

V.—­Benjie a Barber

When wee Benjie came to his thirteenth year, many and long were the debates between his fond mother and me what trade we would bring him up to.  His mother thought that he had just the physog of an admiral, and when the matter was put to himsell, Benjie said quite briskly he would like to be a gentleman.  At which I broke through my rule never to lift my fist to the bairn, and gave him such a yerk in the cheek with the loof of my hand, as made, I am sure, his lugs ring, and sent him dozing to the door like a peerie.

We discussed, among other trades and professions, a lawyer’s advocatt, a preaching minister, a doctor, a sweep, a rowley-powley man, a penny-pie-man, a man-cook, that easiest of all lives, a gentleman’s gentleman; but in the end Nanse, when I suggested a barber, gave a mournful look and said in a state of Christian resignation, “Tak’ your ain way, gudeman.”