forced her to
inquire.

"Would I do instead?" she asked.

"Well, hardly," said Gibson, clawing his chin, and gazing at a corded
round of "Barbie's Best" just above his head. "Dod, it's a fine ham
that," he said, to turn the subject. "How are ye selling it the now?"

"Tenpence a pound retail, but ninepence only if ye take a whole one. Ye
had better let me send you one, Mr. Gibson, now that winter's drawing
on. It's a heartsome thing, the smell of frying ham on a frosty
morning"--and her laugh went skelloching up the street.

"Well, ye see," said Gibson, with a grin, "I expect Mr. Wilson to
present me with one when he hears the news that I have brought him."

"Aha!" said she, "it's something good, then," and she stuck her arms
akimbo.--"James!" she shrilled, "James!" and the red-haired boy shot
from the back premises.

"Run up to the Red Lion, and see if your father has finished his crack
wi' Templandmuir. Tell him Mr. Gibson wants to see him on important
business."

The boy squinted once at the visitor, and scooted, the red head of him
foremost.

While Gibson waited and clawed his chin she examined him narrowly.
Suspicion as to the object of his visit fixed her attention on his face.

He was a man with mean brown eyes. Brown eyes may be clear and limpid as
a mountain pool, or they may have the fine black flash of anger and the
jovial gleam, or they may be mean things--little and sly and oily.
Gibson's had the depth of cunning, not the depth of character, and they
glistened like the eyes of a lustful animal. He was a reddish man, with
a fringe of sandy beard, and a perpetual grin which showed his yellow
teeth, with green deposit round their roots. It was more than a
grin--it was a _rictus_, semicircular from cheek to cheek; and the beady
eyes, ever on the watch up above it, belied its false benevolence. He
was not florid, yet that grin of his seemed to intensify his reddishness
(perhaps because it brought out and made prominent his sandy valance and
the ruddy round of his cheeks), so that the baker christened him long
ago "the man with the sandy smile." "Cunning Johnny" was his other
nickname. Wilson had recognized a match in him the moment he came to
Barbie, and had resolved to act with him if he could, but never to act
against him. They had made advances to each other--birds of a feather,
in short.

The grocer came in hurriedly, white-waistcoated to-day, and a
perceptibly bigger bulge in his belly than when