'Saw ye ever sic a bourach (heap)? It jist blecks (beats) me to
think what ae body can du wi' sae mony kists. For I mayna doobt but
there's something or ither in ilka ane o' them. Naebody wad carry
aboot toom (empty) kists wi' them. I cannot mak' it oot.'
The boxes might well surprise Sandy, if we may draw any conclusions
from the fact that the sole implement of personal adornment which he
possessed was two inches of a broken comb, for which he had to
search when he happened to want it, in the drawer of his stool,
among awls, lumps of rosin for his violin, masses of the same
substance wrought into shoemaker's wax for his ends, and packets of
boar's bristles, commonly called birse, for the same.
'Are thae a' ae body's?' asked Robert.
'Troth are they. They're a' hers, I wat. Ye wad hae thocht she had
been gaein' to The Bothie; but gin she had been that, there wad hae
been a cairriage to meet her,' said Crookit Caumill, the ostler.
The Bothie was the name facetiously given by Alexander, Baron
Rothie, son of the Marquis of Boarshead, to a house he had built in
the neighbourhood, chiefly for the accommodation of his bachelor
friends from London during the shooting-season.
'Haud yer tongue, Caumill,' said the shoemaker. 'She's nae sic
cattle, yon.'
'Haud up the bit bowat (stable-lantern), man, and lat Robert here
see the direction upo' them. Maybe he'll mak' something o't. He's
a fine scholar, ye ken,' said another of the bystanders.
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