But fine sport we had when we went
huntin' down them rebels about your Border country, after Culloden had
settled their business. By G----! I mind once I starved an old Scotch
witch that lived up there among your cursed hills. She was preaching,
and psalm-singing, and bragging about how the Lord would provide for the
widowed and fatherless, or some cant of that sort. But _I_ soon put her
to the test."
"Ay?" said a stern-faced, youngish man, dressed in the uniform of a
private of Sempil's Regiment, jumping up hurriedly in front of the
dragoon, "ay? And what did ye do?"
"Do?" replied the cavalryman; "why, I just sliced the throat of the old
witch's cow, and I cut all her garden stuff and threw it into the burn.
I'm thinking it would take a deal o' prayer to get the better o' that!
But, oh! no doubt the Lord would provide, as she said," sneered the man.
"And was that in Nithsdale?" asked the young Borderer.
"It was," said the dragoon.
"An' ye did that, an' ye hae nae thocht o' repentance?"
"Repentance! What's there to repent? D---- you, I tell you she was a
witch, and I gave her no more than a witch deserves," roared the
half-tipsy dragoon.
"Then, by God! I tell _you_ it was my mother that you mishandled that
day.
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