I persevered, therefore, though I was fit to fall down under the dead weight, she not being able to help herself, and having a deal of beef in her skin for an old woman of eighty; but I got a lean, by squeezing her a wee between me and the wall.
I thought they would never have come, for my shoeless feet were all bruised, and bleeding from the crunched lime and the splinters of broken stones; but, at long and last, a ladder was hoisted up, and having fastened a kinch of ropes beneath her oxters, I let her slide down over the upper step, by way of a pillyshee, having the satisfaction of seeing her safely landed in the arms of seven old wives, that were waiting with a cosey warm blanket below.

Having accomplished this grand manoeuvre, wherein I succeeded in saving the precious life of a woman of eighty, that had been four long years bedridden, I tripped down the steps myself like a nine-year-old, and had the pleasure, when the roof fell in, to know that I for one had done my duty; and that, to the best of my knowledge, no living creature except the poor cat had perished within the jaws of the devouring element.
But, bide a wee; the work was, as yet, only half done.

The fire was still roaring and raging, every puff of wind that blew through the black firmament, driving the red sparks high into the air, where they died away like the tail of a comet, or the train of a skyrocket; the joisting crazing, cracking, and tumbling down; and now and then the bursting cans playing flee in a hundred flinders from the chimney-heads.

One would have naturally enough thought that our engine could have drowned out a fire of any kind whatsoever in half a second, scores of folks driving about with pitcherfuls of water, and scaling half of it on one another and the causey in their hurry; but, woe's me! it did not play puh on the red-het stones, that whizzed like iron in a smiddy trough; so, as soon as it was darkness and smoke in one place, it was fire and fury in another.
My anxiety was great; seeing that I had done my best for my neighbours, it behoved me now, in my turn, to try and see what I could do for myself; so, notwithstanding the remonstrances of my friend James Batter--whom Nanse, knowing I had bare feet, had sent out to seek me, with a pair of shoon in his hand; and who, in scratching his head, mostly rugged out every hair of his wig with sheer vexation--I ran off, and mounted the ladder a second time, and succeeded, after muckle speeling, in getting upon the top of the wall; where, having a bucket slung up to me by means of a rope, I swashed down such showers on the top of the flames, that I soon did more good, in the space of five minutes, than the engine and the ten men, that were all in a broth of perspiration with pumping it, did the whole night over; to say nothing of the multitude of drawers of water, men, wives, and weans, with their cuddies, leglins, pitchers, pails, and water-stoups; having the satisfaction, in a short time, to observe every thing getting as black as the crown of my hat, and the gable of my own house becoming as cool as a cucumber.
Being a man of method, and acquainted with business, I could have liked to have given a finishing stitch to my work before descending the ladder; but, losh me! sic a whingeing, girning, greeting, and roaring, got up all of a sudden, as was never seen or heard of since bowed Joseph raised the meal-mob, and burned Johnnie Wilkes in effigy: and, looking down, I saw Benjie, the bairn of my own heart, and the callant Glen, my apprentice on trial, that had both been as sound as tops till this blessed moment, standing in their nightgowns and their little red cowls, rubbing their eyes, cowering with cold and fright, and making an awful uproar, crying on me to come down and not be killed.

The voice of Benjie especially pierced through and through my heart, like a two-edged sword, and I could on no manner of account suffer myself to bear it any longer, as I jealoused the bairn would have gone into convulsion fits if I had not heeded him; so, making a sign to them to be quiet, I came my ways down, taking hold of one in ilka hand, which must have been a fatherly sight to the spectators that saw us.