JACK CHEAP, THE PEDLAR

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 32, 7 February 1931, Page 20

JACK CHEAP, THE PEDLAR

; NIGHT was drawing on and little Jack Cheap the Pedlar was making his way through a lonely Border moor. His pack was heavy, his feet were hurting him. He wondered where he was going to sleep. Last night it had been among the straw of a barn, and all the little pigs came ana kissed him with then- cold To'his delight a little wayside- inn was seen in view. A bed might be possible. The house was full, but for a packet of needles and a handful of shoe-laces the landlady made him up a comfortable bed in the kitchen. Just as the household was-going to rest in strode three huge' Highland drovers, on their way back from England. When they were told the inn was full they said they would take the bed in the kitchen. "But Cheap the Pedlar is going to sleep there," said the landlady. "Not he," replied red Bory, grinding his teeth and grasping his broadsword. "My weapon and he will be better acquainted if he dares to try." So the little pedlar spent uneasy hours perched on a,stool by the dying fire while his enemies slept cosily, in bed, laughing like ogres in a fairy tale, their red beards sticking up into the air and their enormous brogues arrang: ed neatly in pairs beneath the bedfoot: Toward the middle of the night Jack Cheap heaped up more peats on the fire, till the "water in the big cauldron hanging over it began to boil. The little man tiptoed to the bedside, picked up all the brogues, and boiled them well for an hour in the cauldron. Then ho dr.ew them out with the tongs, wiped them dry, and set them down again by the heh, -pair by pair, in order, y Great was the commotion when the Highlanders awoke and wanted to rosiime their journey. They knew their own brogues again, their clouts and patchos, but a boy of ten could not have pulled them on, they had shrunk so. "I doubt it is the Brownie," said the landlady. ' "There is a Brownie that, belongs to the place. He comes down the chimney at night, swinging by the cauldronl chain. ~ He will have taken a loan'of your brogues and left his own behind." "But Brownies are wee," said Kory. "What would he be doing with our big shoes?" "Maybe he needed /boots for himself and his cronies to cross the river,' ' said Jack. "If I were you," said the landlady, "I should take them to the Wishing | Well, and leave them there for a night. Maybe in the morning you will find your own there instead." The night before the Highlanders had laughed at Jack Cheap as he nodded on his stool by the fire. It was his turn to chuckle as he watched the three big men limping down the road carrying their boiled brogues with them.