andmuir.

It was partly by sheer impact of character that Gourlay obtained his
ascendency over hearty and careless Templandmuir, and partly by a bluff
joviality which he--so little cunning in other things--knew to affect
among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with
Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed"
his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?"
and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate production of the
big decanter.

More than ten years ago now Templandmuir gave this fine, dour upstanding
friend of his a twelve-year tack of the Red Quarry, and that was the
making of Gourlay. The quarry yielded the best building stone in a
circuit of thirty miles, easy to work and hard against wind and weather.
When the main line went north through Skeighan and Poltandie, there was
a great deal of building on the far side, and Gourlay simply coined the
money. He could not have exhausted the quarry had he tried--he would
have had to howk down a hill--but he took thousands of loads from it for
the Skeighan folk; and the commission he paid the laird on each was
ridiculously small. He built wooden stables out on Templandmuir's
estate--the Templar had seven hundred acres of hill land--and it was
there the quarry horses generally stood. It was only rarely--once in two
years, perhaps--that they came into the House with the Green Shutters.
Last Saturday they had brought several loads of stuff for Gourlay's own
use, and that is why they were present at the great procession on the
Monday following.

It was their feeling that Gourlay's success was out of all proportion to
his merits that made other great-men-in-a-small-way so bitter against
him. They were an able lot, and scarce one but possessed fifty times his
weight of brain. Yet he had the big way of doing, though most of them
were well enough to pass. Had they not been aware of his stupidity, they
would never have minded his triumphs in the countryside; but they felt
it with a sense of personal defeat that he--the donkey, as they thought
him--should scoop every chance that was going, and leave them, the
long-headed ones, still muddling in their old concerns. They consoled
themselves with sneers, he retorted with brutal scorn, and the feud kept
increasing between them.

They were standing at the Cross, to enjoy their Saturday at e'en, when
Gourlay's "quarriers"--as the quarry horses had been named