"But what on earth has Wilson ta'en auld Jamieson's house and barn for?
They have stude empty since I kenna whan," quoth Alexander Toddle,
forgetting his English in surprise.

"They say he means to start a business! He's made some bawbees in
Aiberdeen, they're telling me, and he thinks he'll set Barbie in a lowe
wi't."

"Ou, he means to work a perfect revolution," said Johnny Coe.

"In Barbie!" cried astounded Toddle.

"In Barbie e'en't," said the Provost.

"It would take a heap to revolutionize _hit_," said the baker, the
ironic man.

"There's a chance in that hoose," Brodie burst out, ignoring the baker's
gibe. "Dod, there's a chance, sirs. I wonder it never occurred to me
before."

"Are ye thinking ye have missed a gude thing?" grinned the Deacon.

But Brodie's lips were working in the throes of commercial speculation,
and he stared, heedless of the jibe. So Johnny Coe took up his sapient
parable.

"Atweel," said he, "there's a chance, Mr. Brodie. That road round to the
back's a handy thing. You could take a horse and cart brawly through an
opening like that. And there's a gey bit ground at the back, too, when a
body comes to think o't."

"What line's he meaning to purshoo?" queried Brodie, whose mind,
quickened by the chance he saw at No. 1 The Cross, was hot on the hunt
of its possibilities.

"He's been very close about that," said the Provost. "I asked Johnny
Gibson--it was him had the selling o't--but he couldn't give me ainy
satisfaction. All he could say was that Wilson had bought it and paid
it. 'But, losh,' said I, 'he maun 'a' lat peep what he wanted the place
for!' But na; it seems he was owre auld-farrant for the like of that.
'We'll let the folk wonder for a while, Mr. Gibson,' he had said. 'The
less we tell them, the keener they'll be to ken; and they'll advertise
me for noathing by speiring one another what I'm up till.'"

"Cunning!" said Brodie, breathing the word low in expressive admiration.

"Demned cute!" said Sandy Toddle.

"Very thmart!" said the Deacon.

"But the place has been falling down since ever I have mind o't," said
Sandy Toddle. "He's a very clever man if he makes anything out of
_that_."

"Well, well," said the Provost, "we'll soon see what he's meaning to be
at. Now that his furniture's in, he surely canna keep us in the dark
much loanger!"

Their curiosity was soon appeased. Within a week they were privileged to
read the notice here appended:--

"Mr. J