Sentence The Fivehundredandfortyseventh 

"Aye, Maister," said the cook, "a braw cake," and Tavish explained that it should have three layers, and he, himself, personally, would decorate it with marzipan and icing, of which the cook confessed ignorance, his idea of a cake being a "clootie dumpling," but he would rise manfully to the challenge and, following Tavish's instructions, mixed and baked the three layers, which on their removal from the ovens, Tavish bustled away to decorate. in actual fact, as it happens, the 'cake' was already decorated, gleaming pink icing covering the cask, and candles already sitting in the smooth flat top, one of which was the disguised wick, which descended through the plug-hole into the closely packed gunpowder and shrapnel; and so it was that, while the Duke and his closest companions sat around

the table in the Private banquet Chamber, Tavish, bowing low and wearing his white cook's robe and hat, entered with the piece de resistance and placed it in the middle of the table; His Grace and his cronies gasped in admiration and in their attention being focussed on the Cake, Lolly slipped out from between the Duke's legs under the table and left the room, along with Tammy and Bernie who had been suffering the embraces of two of the guests; Tavish took a spill from his harum-scarum helper, Wullie, who had accompanied him and quickly lit all but one of the candles; he sent Wullie from the room, lit the touchpaper, then, as it began to burn down, he also departed; they moved well

away from the door, and just in time, for it was blasted from it's hinges by the mighty explosion which rocked the Palace; Tavish just took one look, and the sight of mangled and bleeding heads, arms and torsos plastered around the walls, with their bums still on the benches and their legs, feet and shoes intact beneath the thick oak table – reminding him of nothing so much as the gory assassination of seven Mafia Dons in 'The Great Pullman Bloodbath of 1937' - was all the confirmation he needed: in one fell swoop he had succeeded in destroying the Ring of Gold! or so he thought, until, by the time the stories began to circulate about the legs and breeched bums being able to obambulate for half an hour after their top halves had been reduced to mince, he had also learned that in the seconds before the massacre, Lawyer Elginbrod had been 'caught short' and nipped out of another door into the adjacent privy, and so had shat himself before he had time to lower his own

breeches and sit; he had remained there, terrified that the door would open to admit his murderer, and eventually made his escape by sliding, with colubrine slipperiness, down the hole and managed to descend the outer wall to an open window on the floor below and make his escape under cover of darkness towards Auld Reekie!