As
Purdie said: "I could hae thrawn mine off the head o' a scaur, and if
she had strucken a whinstane rock she wad hae been nae mair blunted than
if I had thrawn her on a haystalk." Yet when anon he came to cast this
leister at the muckle kipper, "the 14 lb. waster stottit off his back as
if he had been a bag o' wool." That was proof enough, if any were
needed, that a fish so awesome big must be something uncanny and beyond
nature. In a cold sweat, Tam and the boy fled from the waterside and
cast themselves shivering into their beds over the byre at home. But as
he lay awake, unable to close an eye, Purdie's courage crept back to
him, and again he resolved that have that fish he would, muckle black
de'il or no. So again he roused his now reluctant torch-bearer, and
having with difficulty convinced him that the fish was actually a fish,
and not the devil let loose on them for their sin in having broken the
Sabbath--"Irr ye _sure_, Tam, it wasna the de'il?" the boy
quavered--before daylight they again found the spot where the great
kipper lay. And whether it was that this time, knowing that it really
was Monday morning, Purdie threw with easier conscience and consequently
with surer aim, or to what other cause who may say, but certain it is
that the man and the boy, soaked to the skin and chilled to the marrow,
triumphantly bore home that morning to the mill, where Purdie's father
then lived, a most monstrous heavy fish.
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