ion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain
with a drink to make it hold the tighter!"

Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign
wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved
back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The
wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that
no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the
crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him
and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a
rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if
wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while
Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode--with a look on his face
that made the folk fall away.

"He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was
gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the
boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous
stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!"
cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt!
It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and
never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid
about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!"

"Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for
his thplendid wrath yet."

From that day Wilson and Gourlay were a pair of gladiators for whom the
people of Barbie made a ring. They pitted the protagonists against each
other and hounded them on to rivalry by their comments and remarks,
taking the side of the newcomer, less from partiality to him than from
hatred of their ancient enemy. It was strange that a thing so impalpable
as gossip should influence so strong a man as John Gourlay to his ruin.
But it did. The bodies of Barbie became not only the chorus to Gourlay's
tragedy, buzzing it abroad and discussing his downfall; they became
also, merely by their maddening tattle, a villain of the piece and an
active cause of the catastrophe. Their gossip seemed to materialize into
a single entity, a something propelling, that spurred Gourlay on to the
schemes that ruined him. He was not to be done, he said; he would show
the dogs what he thought of them. And so he plunged headlong, while the
wary Wilson watched him, smiling at the sight.

The