CHAPTER III.
THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.
"Never daunton youth" was, I remember, a saying of my grandmother's; but it was the most dauntoned youth in Scotland that now jogged over the moor to the Edinburgh highroad.

I had a swimming head, and a hard crupper to grate my ribs at every movement, and my captor would shift me about with as little gentleness as if I had been a bag of oats for his horse's feed.

But it was the ignominy of the business that kept me on the brink of tears.

First, I was believed to be one of the maniac company of the Sweet-Singers, whom my soul abhorred; _item_, I had been worsted by a trooper with shameful ease, so that my manhood cried out against me.

Lastly, I had cut the sorriest figure in the eyes of that proud girl.