d, 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 in 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,
had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Campbell's.
But when I had come so far a way already, mere shame would not suffer me
to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; I was bound,
out of mere self-respect, to carry it through; and little as I liked
the sound of wh