market poorly
revealed for the shawls that must cover them. The men donned their best
figured waistcoats and their newest stocks, and cursed the fashions that
took them from their pipes and cards, but solaced themselves mightily
with the bottle in the host's bedroom. From those friendly convocations,
jealousies innumerable bred. It was not only that each other's gowns
raised unchristian thoughts in the bosoms of the women, but in a
community where each knew her neighbour and many were on equality,
there must be selections, and rancour rose. And it was the true Highland
rancour, concealing itself under a front of indifference and even
politeness, though the latter might be ice-cold in degree but burning
fiercely at the core.

A few days after Gilian came to town Miss Mary and her brothers were
submitted to a slight there could be no mistaking. It came from the
wife of the Sheriff, who was a half-sister of the Turners. The Sheriff's
servant had come up to the shop below the Paymaster's house early in the
forenoon for candles, and Miss Mary chanced to be in the shop when this
purchase was made. It could signify nothing but festivity, for even in
the Sheriff's the home-made candle was good enough for all but festive
nights.

Miss Mary went upstairs disturbed, curious, annoyed. She had got no
invitation to the Sheriff's, and yet here was the hint of some convivial
gathering such as she and her brothers had hitherto always been welcome
to.

"What do you think it will be, John?" she asked the Paymaster, telling
him what she had seen.

"Tuts," said he, "they'll just be out of dips. Or maybe the Sheriff has
an extra hard case at avizandum, not to be seen clearly through with a
common creesh flame."

"That's aye you," cried Miss Mary, indignant "People might slap you in
the face and you would have no interest."

She hastened to Peggy in the kitchen and Peggy shared her wonder, though
she was not permitted to see her annoyance. A plan was devised to find
out what this extravagance of candle might portend.

The maid took her water-stoups and went up to the Cross Well, where
women were busy at that hour of the day plying for the water of
Bealloch-an-uarain, that bubbles up deep in the heart of the hills, and
brings the coolness and refreshment of the shady wood into the burgh
street in the most intense days of summer warmth. She filled her stoups
composedly, set them down and gossiped, upset them as by accident, and
waited