y's hip through the gloom, saw not that, but visions of chances,
opportunities, occasions. When the lights of Barbie twinkled before him
in the dusk, he used to start from a pleasant dream of some commercial
enterprise suggested by the country round. "Yon holm would make a fine
bleaching green--pure water, fine air, labour cheap, and everything
handy. Or the Lintie's Linn among the woods--water power running to
waste yonder--surely something could be made of that." He would follow
his idea through all its mazes and developments, oblivious of the
passing miles. His delight in his visions was exactly the same as the
author's delight in the figments of his brain. They were the same good
company along the twilight roads. The author, happy with his thronging
thoughts (when they are kind enough to throng), is no happier than
Wilson was on nights like these.

He had not been a week on his rounds when he saw a "chance" waiting for
development. When out "delivering" he used to visit the upland farms to
buy butter and eggs for the Emporium. He got them cheaper so. But more
eggs and butter could be had than were required in the neighbourhood of
Barbie. Here was a chance for Wilson! He became a collector for
merchants at a distance. Barbie, before it got the railway, had only a
silly little market once a fortnight, which was a very poor outlet for
stuff. Wilson provided a better one. Another thing played into his
hands, too, in that connection. It is a cheese-making countryside about
Barbie, and the less butter produced at a cheese-making place, the
better for the cheese. Still, a good many pounds are often churned on
the sly. What need the cheese merchant ken? it keepit the gudewife in
bawbees frae week to week; and if she took a little cream frae the
cheese now and than they werena a pin the waur o't, for she aye did it
wi' decency and caution! Still, it is as well to dispose of this kind of
butter quietly, to avoid gabble among ill-speakers. Wilson, slithering
up the back road with his spring cart in the gloaming, was the man to
dispose of it quietly. And he got it dirt cheap, of course, seeing it
was a kind of contraband. All that he made in this way was not much to
be sure--threepence a dozen on the eggs, perhaps, and fourpence on the
pound of butter--still, you know, every little makes a mickle, and
hained gear helps weel.[4] And more important than the immediate profit
was the ultimate result. For Wilson in this way establish