CHAPTER XIII .-- THE CHINCOUGH PILGRIMAGE.
Man hath a weary pilgrimage As through the world he wends: On every stage from youth to age Still discontent attends.
With heaviness he casts his eye Upon the road before, And still remembers with a sigh The days that are no more.
SOUTHEY.
Some folks having been bred up from their cradle to the writing of books, of course naturally do the thing regularly and scientifically; but that's not to be expected from the like of me, that have followed no other way of life than the shaping and sewing line.

It behoves me, therefore, to beg pardon for not being able to carry my history aye regularly straight forward, and for being forced whiles to zig-zag and vandyke.

For instance, I clean forgot to give, in its proper place, a history of one of my travels, with Benjie in my bosom, in search of a cure for the chincough.
My son Benjie was, at this dividual time, between four and five years old, when--poor wee chieldie!--he took the chincough, and in more respects than one was not in a good way; so the doctor recommended his mother and me, for the change of air, first to carry him down a coal-pit, and syne to the limekilns at Cousland.
The coal-pit I could not think of at all; to say nothing of the danger of swinging down into the bowels of the earth in a creel, the thing aye put me in mind of the awful place, where the wicked, after death and judgment, howl, and hiss, and gnash their teeth; and where, unless Heaven be more merciful than we are just--we may all be soon enough.

So I could not think of that, till other human means failed; and I determined, in the first place, to hire Tammie Dobbie's cart, and try a smell of the fresh air about the limekilns.
It was a fine July forenoon, and the cart, filled with clean straw, was at the door by eleven o'clock; so our wife handed us out a pair of blankets to hap round me, and syne little Benjie into my arms, with his big-coatie on, and his leather cappie tied below his chin, and a bit red worsted comforterie round his neck; for, though the sun was warm and pleasant withal, we dreaded cold, as the doctor bade us.

Oh, he was a fine old man, Doctor Hartshorn! We had not well got out of the town, when Tammie Dobbie louped up on the fore-tram.