ranogie; "you could kill him wi' the one lick."

The elders, engaged with more important matters, paid no attention to
the children, who had pushed between them to the front and were looking
up at their faces, as they talked, with curious watching eyes. John,
with his instinct to notice things, took the poker up when his father
laid it down, to see if it was really the size of the rim. It was too
heavy for him to raise by the handle; he had to lift it by the middle.
Janet was at his elbow, watching him. "You could kill a man with that,"
he told her, importantly, though she had heard it for herself. Janet
stared and shuddered. Then the boy laid the poker-head along the rim,
fitting edge to edge with a nice precision.

"Mother," he cried, turning towards her in his interest, "mother, look
here! It's exactly the same size!"

"Put it down, sir," said his father with a grim smile at Loranogie.
"You'll be killing folk next."

CHAPTER IX.

"Are ye packit, Peter?" said Gourlay.

"Yes, sir," said Peter Riney, running round to the other side of a cart,
to fasten a horse's bellyband to the shaft. "Yes, sir, we're a' ready."

"Have the carriers a big load?"

"Andy has just a wheen parcels, but Elshie's as fu' as he can haud. And
there's a gey pickle stuff waiting at the Cross."

The hot wind of yesterday had brought lightning through the night, and
this morning there was the gentle drizzle that sometimes follows a heavy
thunderstorm. Hints of the farther blue showed themselves in a lofty sky
of delicate and drifting gray. The blackbirds and thrushes welcomed the
cooler air with a gush of musical piping, as if the liquid tenderness of
the morning had actually got into their throats and made them softer.

"You had better snoove away then," said Gourlay. "Donnerton's five mile
ayont Fleckie, and by the time you deliver the meal there, and load the
ironwork, it'll be late ere you get back. Snoove away, Peter; snoove
away!"

Peter shuffled uneasily, and his pale blue eyes blinked at Gourlay from
beneath their grizzled crow nests of red hair.

"Are we a' to start thegither, sir?" he hesitated. "D'ye mean--d'ye mean
the carriers too?"

"Atweel, Peter!" said Gourlay. "What for no?"

Peter took a great old watch, with a yellow case, from his fob, and,
"It wants a while o' aicht, sir," he volunteered.

"Ay, man, Peter, and what of that?" said Gourlay.

There was almost a twinkle in his eye. Peter Riney was the only