groups of country
people, bearing a curious relation to their own legs, were going in
various directions across the square. Loud laughter, very much like
animal noises, now and then invaded the ear; but the sound only rippled
the wide lake of the silence. The air was perfumed with the scent of
peat fires and the burning of weeds and potato-tops. There was no
fountain to complete the harmony, but the intermittent gushes from the
spout of the great pump in the centre of the square were no bad
substitute. At all events, they supplied the sound of water, without
which Nature's orchestra is not full.

Wattie Sim, the watchmaker, long and lank, with grey bushy eyebrows
meeting over his nose, wandered, with the gait of a heedless pair of
compasses, across from his own shop to Redford the bookseller's, at
whose door a small group was already gathered.

"Well, Wattie," said Captain Clashmach, "how goes the world with you?"

"Muckle the same's wi' yersel', Captain, and the doctor there,"
answered Wattie with a grin. "Whan the time's guid for ither fowk, it's
but sae sae for you and me. I haena had a watch come in for a haill ook
(week)."

"Hoo de ye accoont for that, Mr Sim?" asked a shoemaker who stood near
without belonging to the group.

"It's the ile, man, the ile. Half the mischeef o' watches is the ile."

"But I don't see," said the doctor, "how that can be, Sim."

"Weel, ye see, sir," answered Wattie--and the words seemed somehow to
have come tumbling silently down over the ridge of his nose, before he
caught them in his mouth and articulated them--"ye see, sir, watches is
delicat things. They're not to be traitet like fowk's insides wi'
onything 'at comes first. Gin I cud jist get the middle half-pint oot
o' the hert o' a hogsheid o' sperm ile, I wad I sud keep a' yer watches
gaein like the verra universe. But it wad be an ill thing for me, ye
ken. Sae maybe a' thing's for the best efter a'.--Noo, ye see, i' this
het weather, the ile keeps fine an' saft, and disna clog the
warks.--But losh preserves a'! What's that?"

Staring up the street towards the sunset, which coloured all their
faces a red bronze, stood a group of townsfolk, momently increasing,
from which, before Wattie's party could reach it, burst a general
explosion of laughter. It was some moments, however, before they
understood what was the matter, for the great mild sun shone full in
their eyes. At length they saw, as if issuing from the huge heavy