CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



called Spunkie. What shrieking and tossing of arms, 

 round the whole length and breadth of the village! 

 Where is Simon Andrew the constable? Where is 

 auld Robert Maxwell the ruling elder? What can 

 have become of Laird Warnock, whose word is law? 

 And what can the Minister be about, can any body 

 tell, that he does not come flying from the manse 

 to save the lives of his parishioners from cannibals, 

 and gipsies, and Eerish, murdering their way to the 

 gallows ? 



How — why — or when — that bloody battle ceased 

 to be, was never distinctly known either then or since ; 

 but, like every thing else, it had an end — and even 

 now we have a confused dream of the spot at its ter- 

 mination — naked men lying on their backs in the 

 mire, all drenched in blood — with women, some old 

 and ugly, with shrivelled witch-like hag breasts, others 

 young, and darkly, swarthily, blackly beautiful, with 

 budding or new-blown bosoms unkerchiefed in the 

 colley-shangy — perilous to see — leaning over them: 

 and these were the Egyptians! Men in brown shirts, 

 gore-spotted, with green bandages round their broken 

 heads, laughing, and joking, and jeering, and singing, 

 and shouting, though desperately mauled and mangled 

 — while Scottish wives, and widows, and maids, could 

 not help crying out in sympathy, "Oh! but they're 

 bonnie men — what a pity they should aye be sae fond 

 [82 ] 



