his
corduroys from beneath his pillow. The woman who, out of kindness,
attended him in his last illness, looked on curiously, while Cree added
the sixpences and coppers in his pocket to the half-sovereign. After
all they only made some two pounds, but a look of peace came into
Cree's eyes as he told the woman to take it all to a shop in the town.
Nearly twelve years previously Jamie Lownie had lent him two pounds,
and though the money was never asked for, it preyed on Cree's mind that
he was in debt. He payed off all he owed, and so Cree's life was not,
I think, a failure.

CHAPTER VIII

THE COURTING OF T'NOWHEAD'S BELL

For two years it had been notorious in the square that Sam'l Dickie was
thinking of courting T'nowhead's Bell, and that if little Sanders
Elshioner (which is the Thrums pronunciation of Alexander Alexander)
went in for her he might prove a formidable rival. Sam'l was a weaver
in the Tenements, and Sanders a coal-carter whose trade mark was a bell
on his horse's neck that told when coals were coming. Being something
of a public man, Sanders had not perhaps so high a social position as
Sam'l, but he had succeeded his father on the coal-cart, while the
weaver had already tried several trades. It had always been against
Sam'l, too, that once when the kirk was vacant he had advised the
selection of the third minister who preached for it on the ground that
it came expensive to pay a large number of candidates. The scandal of
the thing was hushed up, out of respect for his father, who was a
God-fearing man, but Sam'l was known by it in Lang Tammas's circle.
The coal-carter was called Little Sanders to distinguish him from his
father, who was not much more than half his size. He had grown up with
the name, and its inapplicability now came home to nobody. Sam'l's
mother had been more far-seeing than Sanders's. Her man had been
called Sammy all his life because it was the name he got as a boy, so
when their eldest son was born she spoke of him as Sam'l while still in
his cradle. The neighbours imitated her, and thus the young man had a
better start in life than had been granted to Sammy, his father.

It was Saturday evening--the night in the week when Auld Licht young
men fell in love. Sam'l Dickie, wearing a blue glengarry bonnet with a
red ball on the top, came to the door of a one-storey house in the
Tenements and stood there wriggling, for he was in a suit of tweed for
the first time th