totum.

"You'll come down to the meeting?" said Templandmuir to Gourlay.

Go to a meeting for which Wilson had sent out the bills! At another,
Gourlay would have hurled his usual objurgation that he would see him
condemned to eternal agonies ere he granted his request! But
Templandmuir was different. Gourlay had always flattered this man (whom
he inwardly despised) by a companionship which made proud the other. He
had always yielded to Templandmuir in small things, for the sake of the
quarry, which was a great thing. He yielded to him now.

"Verra well," he said shortly, and rose to get his hat.

When Gourlay put on his hat the shallow meanness of his brow was hid,
and nothing was seen to impair his dark, strong gravity of face. He was
a man you would have turned to look at as he marched in silence by the
side of Templandmuir. Though taller than the laird, he looked shorter
because of his enormous breadth. He had a chest like the heave of a
hill. Templandmuir was afraid of him. And fretting at the necessity he
felt to quarrel with a man of whom he was afraid, he had an unreasonable
hatred of Gourlay, whose conduct made this quarrel necessary at the same
time that his character made it to be feared; and he brooded on his
growing rage that, with it for a stimulus, he might work his cowardly
nature to the point of quarrelling. Conscious of the coming row, then,
he felt awkward in the present, and was ignorant what to say. Gourlay
was silent too. He felt it an insult to the House with the Green
Shutters that the laird should refuse its proffered hospitality. He
hated to be dragged to a meeting he despised. Never before was such
irritation between them.

When they came to the hall where the meeting was convened, there were
knots of bodies grouped about the floor. Wilson fluttered from group to
group, an important man, with a roll of papers in his hand. Gourlay,
quick for once in his dislike, took in every feature of the man he
loathed.

Wilson was what the sentimental women of the neighbourhood called a
"bonny man." His features were remarkably regular, and his complexion
was remarkably fair. His brow was so delicate of hue that the blue veins
running down his temples could be traced distinctly beneath the
whiteness of the skin. Unluckily for him, he was so fair that in a
strong light (as now beneath the gas) the suspicion of his unwashedness
became a certainty--"as if he got a bit idle slaik now and than, and
never a