r in the
kirk, while I am--weel, what you see me; but, for all that, I know more
about the fundamentals of doctrine than he does. I know the second
catechism by heart, and I could put any meenister in this toon to
shame. Ay, man, but if you want to hear preaching you must go to
Scotland. It's there that the meenisters are groonded in the faith.
In these English kirks they are very lax in the faith." And again the
man laughed as though something amused him.

"You seem to boast a good deal of your knowledge," said the judge,
trying to estimate the man.

"I ne'er boast," was the reply. "I'm just a canny Scotsman, that's
all. If I told all I kenned--weel, I might become popular. But a
still tongue makes a wise heid."

"If you are Willie Fearn's brother," said the judge, and it pained him
to say what next passed his lips, but as I have said, he was eager to
catch at any straw, "you knew Jean Lindsay?"

"Ay, I kenned her weel," was the reply. "But I was aboot to go into
the 'Hare and Hoonds,' Mr. Judge Bolitho. Perhaps for the sake of the
time when you called yourself Graham you might like to give me a drop
of whisky?"

"Come with me," said the judge. "I want to talk with you. If we go up
Liverpool Road it will be quiet there. But stay, come with me to the
house I'm staying at."

"Dootless you keep a bottle of good whisky in the cupboard there?"

"You shall not regret going," said the judge, and he led the way to
Paul's house.

Half an hour later the two sat together in Paul's study. During their
walk thither the man of the law had been thinking deeply. He had been
trying to piece together the conversation he had heard in the
market-place, trying to understand the significance of what Archie
Fearn had said. He had no great hope of important revelations, but a
lifetime of legal training and practice had proved to him that
oft-times the greatest issues depended on the most trivial
circumstances, and he could not afford to allow the most insignificant
happening to pass by unnoticed.

"How long have you been in Brunford?" asked the judge.

"Since a month before Christmas," was the reply.

"You came here to get work?"

"I came here because I wasn't known in the toon, and because I thought
I might be able to pick up an odd sax-pence."

"You say you knew Jean Lindsay when she was a girl?"

"Syne I expected her to be my ain sister-in-law, it was very natural
that I should," was the reply.

"Do you