"he needn't have built such a
gra-and house to put a slut of a wife like yon in!"

"I was surprised," said Sandy Toddle, "to hear about her firing up. I
wouldn't have thought she had the spirit, or that Gourlay would have
come to her support!"

"Oh," said the Provost, "it wasn't her he was thinking of! It was his
own pride, the brute. He leads the woman the life of a doag. I'm
surprised that he ever married her!"

"I ken fine how he married her," said Johnny Coe. "I was acquaint wi'
her faither, auld Tenshillingland owre at Fechars--a grand farmer he
was, wi' land o' his nain, and a gey pickle bawbees. It was the bawbees,
and not the woman, that Gourlay went after! It was _her_ money, as ye
ken, that set him on his feet, and made him such a big man. He never
cared a preen for _her_, and then when she proved a dirty trollop, he
couldna endure her look! That's what makes him so sore upon her now. And
yet I mind her a braw lass, too," said Johnny the sentimentalist, "a
braw lass she was," he mused, "wi' fine, brown glossy hair, I mind,
and--ochonee! ochonee!--as daft as a yett in a windy day. She had a
cousin, Jenny Wabster, that dwelt in Tenshillingland than, and mony a
summer nicht up the Fechars Road, when ye smelled the honeysuckle in the
gloaming, I have heard the two o' them tee-heeing owre the lads
thegither, skirling in the dark and lauching to themselves. They were of
the glaikit kind ye can always hear loang before ye see. Jock Allan
(that has done so well in Embro) was a herd at Tenshillingland than, and
he likit her, and I think she likit him; but Gourlay came wi' his gig
and whisked her away. She doesna lauch sae muckle now, puir bodie! But a
braw lass she----"

"It's you maun speak to Gourlay, Deacon," said the Provost, brushing
aside the reminiscent Coe.

"How can it be that, Provost? It'th _your_ place, surely. You're the
head of the town!"

When Gourlay was to be approached there was always a competition for who
should be hindmost.

"Yass, but you know perfectly well, Deacon, that I cannot thole the look
of him. I simply cannot thole the look. And he knows it too. The
thing'll gang smash at the outset--_I'm_ talling ye, now--it'll go
smash at the outset if it's left to me. And than, ye see, you have a
better way of approaching folk!"

"Ith that tho?" said the Deacon dryly. He shot a suspicious glance to
see if the Provost was guying him.

"Oh, it must be left to you, Deacon," said the baker and