of sticking-plaster of wondrous adhesiveness, prowled at night about the country lanes and even the town streets, watching for children to choke and sell.  The Dandy Doctor’s business method, as the servants explained it, was with lightning quickness to clap a sticking-plaster on the face of a scholar, covering mouth and nose, preventing breathing or crying for help, then pop us under his long black cloak and carry us to Edinburgh to be sold and sliced into small pieces for folk to learn how we were made.  We always mentioned the name “Dandy Doctor” in a fearful whisper, and never dared venture out of doors after dark.  In the short winter days it got dark before school closed, and in cloudy weather we sometimes had difficulty in finding our way home unless a servant with a lantern was sent for us; but during the Dandy Doctor period the school was closed earlier, for if detained until the usual hour the teacher could not get us to leave the schoolroom.  We would rather stay all night supperless than dare the mysterious doctors supposed to be lying in wait for us.  We had to go up a hill called the Davel Brae that lay between the schoolhouse and the main street.  One evening just before dark, as we were running up the hill, one of the boys shouted, “A Dandy Doctor!  A Dandy Doctor!” and we all fled pellmell back into the schoolhouse to the astonishment of Mungo Siddons, the teacher.  I can remember to this day the amused look on the good dominie’s face as he stared and tried to guess what had got into us, until one of the older boys breathlessly explained that there was an awful big Dandy Doctor on the Brae and we couldna gang hame.  Others corroborated the dreadful news.  “Yes!  We saw him, plain as onything, with his lang black cloak to hide us in, and some of us thought we saw a sticken-plaister ready in his hand.”  We were in such a state of fear and trembling that the teacher saw he wasn’t going to get rid of us without going himself as leader.  He went only a short distance, however, and turned us over to the care of the two biggest scholars, who led us to the top of the Brae and then left us to scurry home and dash into the door like pursued squirrels diving into their holes.

Just before school skaled (closed), we all arose and sang the fine hymn “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing.”  In the spring when the swallows were coming back from their winter homes we sang—­

    “Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
    Welcome from a foreign shore;
    Safe escaped from many a danger ...”

and while singing we all swayed in rhythm with the music.  “The Cuckoo,” that always told his name in the spring of the year, was another favorite song, and when there was nothing in particular to call to mind any special bird or animal, the songs we sang were widely varied, such as

    “The whale, the whale is the beast for me,
    Plunging along through the deep, deep sea.”

But the best of all was “Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing,” though at that time the most significant part I fear was the first three words.