eleven o'clock
I have aye heard that seeing is believing ; and that youth might take a warning from the punishment that sooner or later is ever tacked to the tail of crime , I took Benjie and Mungo to hear the trial ; and two more rueful faces than they put on , when they looked at the culprits , were never seen since Adam was a boy . It was far different with the two Eirishers , who showed themselves so hardened by a long course of sin and misery , that , instead of abasing themselves in the face of a magistrate , they scarcely almost gave a civil answer to a single question which was speered at them . Howsoever , they paid for that at a heavy ransom , as ye shall hear by and by . Having been kept all night in the cold tolbooth on bread and water , without either coal or candle to warm their toes , or let them see what they were doing , they were harled out amid an immense crowd of young and old , more especially wives and weans , at eleven o'clock on the next forenoon , to the endurance of a punishment which ought to have afflicted them almost as muckle as that of death itself . When the key of the jail door was thrawn , and the two loons brought out , there was a bumming of wonder , and maybe sorrow , among the terrible crowd , to see fellow-creatures so left alone to themselves as to have robbed an honest man 's hen-house at the dead hour of night , when a fire was bleezing next door , and the howl of desolation soughing over the town like a visible judgment . One of them , as I said before , had a red pow , and a foraging cap , with a black napkin roppined round his weasand ; a jean jacket with six pockets , and square tails ; a velveteen waistcoat with plated buttons ; corduroy breeches buttoned at the knees ; rig-and-fur stockings ; and heavy , clanking wooden clogs . The other , who was little and round-shouldered , with a bull neck and bushy black whiskers , just like a shoebrush stuck to each cheek of his head , as if he had been a travelling agent for Macassar , had on a low-crowned , plated beaver hat , with the end of a peacock 's feather , stuck in the band ; a long-tailed old black coat , as brown as a berry , and as bare as my loof , to say nothing of being out at both elbows .