"ye great
muckle fat hotch o' a dacent bodie, ye--I'll gang in and have a dish o'
tea wi' ye." And away went the fine fuddled fellow.

"She's a wise woman that," said the ex-Provost, looking after them. "She
kenned no to flyte, and he went like a lamb."

"I believe he'th feared o' her," snapped the Deacon, "or he wudny-un
went thae lamb-like!"

"Leave him alone!" said Johnny Coe, who had been drinking too. "He's
the only kind heart in Barbie. And Gourlay's the only gentleman."

"Gentleman!" cried Sandy Toddle. "Lord save us! Auld Gourlay a
gentleman!"

"Yes, gentleman!" said Johnny, to whom the drink gave a courage. "Brute,
if ye like, but aristocrat frae scalp to heel. If he had brains, and a
dacent wife, and a bigger field--oh, man," said Johnny, visioning the
possibility, "Auld Gourla could conquer the world, if he swalled his
neck till't."

"It would be a big conquest that!" said the Deacon.--"Here comes his
son, taking his ain share o' the earth, at ony rate."

Young Gourlay came staggering round the corner, "a little sprung" (as
they phrase it in Barbie), but not so bad as they had hoped to see him.
Webster and the ragman had exaggerated the condition of their
fellow-toper. Probably their own oscillation lent itself to everything
they saw. John zigzagged, it is true, but otherwise he was fairly steady
on his pins. Unluckily, however, failing to see a stone before on the
road, he tripped, and went sprawling on his hands and knees. A titter
went.

"What the hell are you laughing at?" he snarled, leaping up, quick to
feel the slight, blatant to resent it.

"Tyuts, man," Tam Wylie rebuked him in a careless scorn.

With a parting scowl he went swaggering up the street.

"Ay," said Toddle dryly, "that's the Gourlay possibeelity."

CHAPTER XXII.

"Aha, Deacon, my old cock, here you are!" The speaker smote the Deacon
between his thin shoulder-blades till the hat leapt on his startled
cranium. "No, not a lengthy stay--just down for a flying visit to see my
little girl. Dem'd glad to get back to town again--Barbie's too quiet
for my tastes. No life in the place, no life at all!"

The speaker was Davie Aird, draper and buck. "No life at all," he cried,
as he shot down his cuffs with a jerk, and swung up and down the
bar-room of the Red Lion. He was dressed in a long fawn overcoat
reaching to his heels, with two big yellow buttons at the waist behind,
in the most approved fashion of the horsy. He pau