CHAPTER VIII.
THE UNCLAIMED FIDDLE-CASE
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FTER a' is said and dune, it appears to me this worl' is no sae big as it seems. There's a story telt in a southern county aboot a gangrel creatur' wha marched aff at midnicht wi' a blanket that had been lent him by a hospitable farmer, in whose barn he had gotten a night's lodgin', but a mist cam' on, and the body, wi' his blanket aboot him, fand himself at nicht, efter a lang day's march, in the same farm-yard, face to face wi' the man whose kindness he had requited sae ill. I dinna ken whether the reflection is original or no', hooever, it seems to me that the ill-daer generally gangs roon in a circle, like the man i' the mist, without ettlin' it, until he fa's intil the very teeth o' the ill he has dune; and I wudna say but some notion o' this kin' may have been at the bottom o' the auld custom o' settlin' accounts wi' criminals on the same spot where their crimes were committed.
Noo, this is a gey gruesome beginnin' to the story I'm gaun to tell ye—for I'm no' thinkin' ye've forgotten that when I bidet in George Street, before the death o' my first cousin, Jen Spreull, ane o' my ludgers, a divinity student, gaed off at the and o' a six months' session and left me a toom fiddle-case in
