niture I never saw!" said the Provost.

"Whose is it?" said Brodie.

"Oh, have ye noat heard?" said the Head of the Town with eyebrows in
air. "It beloangs to that fellow Wilson, doan't ye know? He's a son of
oald Wilson, the mowdie-man of Brigabee. It seems we're to have him for
a neighbour, or all's bye wi't. I declare I doan't know what this
world's coming to!"

"Man, Provost," said Brodie, "d'ye tell me tha-at? I've been over at
Fleckie for the last ten days--my brother Rab's dead and won away, as I
dare say you have heard--oh yes, we must all go--so, ye see, I'm
scarcely abreast o' the latest intelligence. What's Wilson doing here? I
thought he had been a pawnbroker in Embro."

"Noat he! It's _whispered_ indeed, that he left Brigabee to go and help
in a pawmbroker's, but it seems he married an Aberdeen lass and sattled
there after a while, the manager of a store, I have been given to
understa-and. He has taken oald Rab Jamieson's barn at the bottom of the
Cross--for what purpose it beats even me to tell! And that's his
furniture----"

"I declare!" said the astonished Brodie. "He's a smart-looking boy that.
Will that be a son of his?"

He pointed to a sharp-faced urchin of twelve who was busy carrying
chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson
meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in
shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically
near his neck--so short was the space of shirt between the top line of
his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and
the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs,
being tied loosely above the calf with dirty white strips of cloth
instead of garters. He had no cap, and it was seen that his hair had a
"cow-lick" in front; it slanted up from his brow, that is, in a sleek
kind of tuft. There was a violent squint in one of his sharp gray eyes,
so that it seemed to flash at the world across the bridge of his nose.
He was so eager at his work that his clumsy-looking boots--they only
_looked_ clumsy because the legs they were stuck to were so
thin--skidded on the cobbles as he whipped round the barn with a chair
inverted on his poll. When he came back for another chair, he sometimes
wheepled a tune of his own making, in shrill, disconnected jerks, and
sometimes wiped his nose on his sleeve. And the bodies watched him.

"Faith, he's keen," said the Provost.