"
"Pillaging, I suppose?" said Morton, "for how else could you come by that
portmanteau?"
"I wotna if it's pillaging, or how ye ca't," said Cuddie, "but it comes
natural to a body, and it's a profitable trade. Our folk had tirled the
dead dragoons as bare as bawbees before we were loose amaist.--But when I
saw the Whigs a' weel yokit by the lugs to Kettledrummle and the other
chield, I set off at the lang trot on my ain errand and your honour's.
Sae I took up the syke a wee bit, away to the right, where I saw the
marks o'mony a horsefoot, and sure eneugh I cam to a place where there
had been some clean leatherin', and a' the puir chields were lying there
buskit wi' their claes just as they had put them on that morning--naebody
had found out that pose o' carcages--and wha suld be in the midst thereof
(as my mither says) but our auld acquaintance, Sergeant Bothwell?"
"Ay, has that man fallen?" said Morton.
"Troth has he," answered Cuddie; "and his een were open and his brow
bent, and his teeth clenched thegither, like the jaws of a trap for
foumarts when the spring's doun--I was amaist feared to look at him;
however, I thought to hae turn about wi' him, and sae I e'en riped his
pouches, as he had dune mony an honester man's; and here's your ain
siller again (or your uncle's, which is the same) that he got at Milnwood
that unlucky night that made us a' sodgers thegither.
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