Mother came running at the noise
I made, wrapped me up, put me in the servant girl's arms and told her
to run with me through the garden and out by a back way to Peter
Lawson to have something done to stop the bleeding. He simply pushed a
wad of cotton into my mouth after soaking it in some brown astringent
stuff, and told me to be sure to keep my mouth shut and all would soon
be well. Mother put me to bed, calmed my fears, and told me to lie
still and sleep like a gude bairn. But just as I was dropping off to
sleep I swallowed the bulky wad of medicated cotton and with it, as I
imagined, my tongue also. My screams over so great a loss brought
mother, darkest corners of the house, and oftentimes a long search
was required to find me. But after we were a few years older, we
enjoyed bathing with other boys as we wandered along the shore,
careful, however, not to get into a pool that had an invisible
boy-devouring monster at the bottom of it. Such pools, miniature
maelstroms, were called "sookin-in-goats" and were well known to most
of us.
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