bargain-making eye at Mr.
Wylie.

Tam drew himself up. He saw what was coming.

"We're needing some hay for the burgh horse," said the Provost. "Ye'll
be willing to sell at fifty shillings the ton, since it's like to be so
plentiful."

"Oh," said Tam solemnly, "that's on-possible! Gourlay's seeking the
three pound! and where he leads we maun a' gang. Gourlay sets the tune,
and Barbie dances till't."

That was quite untrue so far as the speaker was concerned. It took a
clever man to make Tam Wylie dance to his piping. But Thomas, the knave,
knew that he could always take a rise out the Provost by cracking up the
Gourlays, and that to do it now was the best way of fobbing him off
about the hay.

"Gourlay!" muttered the Provost, in disgust. And Tam winked at the
baker.

"Losh," said Sandy Toddle, "yonder's the Free Kirk minister going past
the Cross! Where'll _he_ be off till at this hour of the day? He's not
often up so soon."

"They say he sits late studying," said Johnny Coe.

"H'mph, studying!" grunted Tam Brodie, a big, heavy, wall-cheeked man,
whose little, side-glancing eyes seemed always alert for scandal amid
the massive insolence of his smooth face. "I see few signs of studying
in _him_. He's noathing but a stink wi' a skin on't."

T. Brodie was a very important man, look you, and wrote "Leather
Mercht." above his door, though he cobbled with his own hands. He was a
staunch Conservative, and down on the Dissenters.

"What road'th he taking?" lisped Deacon Allardyce, craning past Brodie's
big shoulder to get a look.

"He's stoppit to speak to Widow Wallace. What will he be saying to
_her_?"

"She's a greedy bodie that Mrs. Wallace: I wouldna wonder but she's
speiring him for bawbees."

"Will he take the Skeighan Road, I wonder?"

"Or the Fechars?"

"He's a great man for gathering gowans and other sic trash. He's maybe
for a dander up the burn juist. They say he's a great botanical man."

"Ay," said Brodie, "paidling in a burn's the ploy for him. He's a weanly
gowk."

"A-a-ah!" protested the baker, who was a Burnsomaniac, "there's waur
than a walk by the bank o' a bonny burn. Ye ken what Mossgiel said:--

'The Muse nae poet ever fand her,
Till by himsel' he learned to wander,
Adown some trottin' burn's meander,
And no thick lang;
Oh sweet to muse and pensive ponder
A heartfelt sang.'"

Poetical quotations, however, made the Provost uncomfort