" said the Provost, when he read the bill, "we've a new departure
here! This is an unco splutter, as the oald sow said when she tumbled in
the gutter."

"Ay," said Sandy Toddle, "a fuff in the pan, I'm thinking. He promises
owre muckle to last long! He lauchs owre loud to be merry at the end
o't. For the loudest bummler's no the best bee, as my father, honest
man, used to tell the minister."

"Ah-ah, I'm no so sure o' that," said Tam Brodie. "I forgathered wi'
Wilson on Wednesday last, and I tell ye, sirs, he's worth the watching.
They'll need to stand on a baikie that put the branks on him. He has the
considering eye in his head--yon lang far-away glimmer at a thing from
out the end of the eyebrow. He turned it on mysell twa-three times, the
cunning devil, trying to keek into me, to see if he could use me. And
look at the chance he has! There's two stores in Barbie, to be sure. But
Kinnikum's a dirty beast, and folk have a scunner at his goods; and
Catherwood's a drucken swine, and his place but sairly guided. That's a
great stroke o' policy, too, promising to deliver folk's goods on their
own doorstep to them. There's a whole jing-bang of outlying clachans
round Barbie that he'll get the trade of by a dodge like that. The like
was never tried hereaway before. I wadna wonder but it works wonders."

It did.

It was partly policy and partly accident that brought Wilson back to
Barbie. He had been managing a wealthy old merchant's store for a long
time in Aberdeen, and he had been blithely looking forward to the
goodwill of it, when jink, at the old man's death, in stepped a nephew,
and ousted the poo-oor fellow. He had bawled shrilly, but to no purpose;
he had to be travelling. When he rose to greatness in Barbie it was
whispered that the nephew discovered he was feathering his own nest, and
that this was the reason of his sharp dismissal. But perhaps we should
credit that report to Barbie's disposition rather than to Wilson's
misdemeanour.

Wilson might have set up for himself in the nippy northern town. But it
is an instinct with men who have met with a rebuff in a place to shake
its dust from their shoes, and be off to seek their fortunes in the
larger world. We take a scunner at the place that has ill-used us.
Wilson took a scunner at Aberdeen, and decided to leave it and look
around him. Scotland was opening up, and there were bound to be heaps of
chances for a man like him! "A man like me," was a frequent phra