egan
to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a
word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I
thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that
all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place
to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the
same look and the same answer, I began to take it into my head there was
something strange about the Shaws itself.

The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries;
and, spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his
cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the
house of Shaws.

He stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others.

"Ay," said he. "What for?"

"It's a great house?" I asked.

"Doubtless," says he. "The house is a big muckle house."

"Ay," said I, "but the folk that are in it?"

"Folk?" cried he. "Are ye daft? There's nae folk there--to call folk."

"What?" say I; "not Mr. Ebenezer?"

"Ou, ay," says the man; "there's the laird, to be sure, if it's him
you're wanting. What'll like be your business, mannie?"

"I was led to think that I would get a situation," I said, looking as
modest as I could.

"What?" cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse
started; and then, "Well, mannie," he added, "it's nane of my affairs;
but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye'll take a word from me, ye'll
keep clear of the Shaws."

The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful
white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well
that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man
was Mr Balfour of the Shaws.

"Hoot, hoot, hoot," said the barber, "nae kind of a man, nae kind of a
man at all"; and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was; but
I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next
customer no wiser than he came.

I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. The more
indistinct the accusations were, the less I liked them, for they left
the wider field to fancy. What kind of a great house was this, that all
the parish should start and stare to be asked the way to it? or what
sort of a gentleman, that his ill-fame should be thus current on the
wayside? If an hour's walking would have brought me back to Essendean, I
had left my adventure then and there, and returned to M