--came through
the town last week-end. There were groups of bodies in the streets,
washed from toil to enjoy the quiet air; dandering slowly or gossiping
at ease; and they all turned to watch the quarriers stepping bravely up,
their heads tossing to the hill. The big-men-in-a-small-way glowered and
said nothing.

"I wouldn't mind," said Sandy Toddle at last--"I wouldn't mind if he
weren't such a demned ess!"

"Ess?" said the Deacon unpleasantly. He puckered his brow and blinked,
pretending not to understand.

"Oh, a cuddy, ye know," said Toddle, colouring.

"Gourlay'th stupid enough," lisped the Deacon; "we all know that. But
there'th one thing to be said on hith behalf. He's not such a 'demned
ess' as to try and thpeak fancy English!"

When the Deacon was not afraid of a man he stabbed him straight; when he
was afraid of him he stabbed him on the sly. He was annoyed by the
passing of Gourlay's carts, and he took it out of Sandy Toddle.

"It's extr'ornar!" blurted the Provost (who was a man of brosy speech,
large-mouthed and fat of utterance). "It's extr'ornar. Yass, it's
extr'ornar! I mean the luck of that man--for gumption he has noan, noan
whatever! But if the railway came hereaway I wager Gourlay would go
down," he added, less in certainty of knowledge than as prophet of the
thing desired. "I wager he'd go down, sirs."

"Likely enough," said Sandy Toddle; "he wouldn't be quick enough to jump
at the new way of doing."

"Moar than that!" cried the Provost, spite sharpening his insight, "moar
than that--he'd be owre dour to abandon the auld way. _I_'m talling ye.
He would just be left entirely! It's only those, like myself, who
approach him on the town's affairs that know the full extent of his
stupeedity."

"Oh, he's a 'demned ess,'" said the Deacon, rubbing it into Toddle and
Gourlay at the same time.

"A-ah, but then, ye see, he has the abeelity that comes from character,"
said Johnny Coe, who was a sage philosopher. "For there are two kinds of
abeelity, don't ye understa-and? There's a scattered abeelity that's of
no use! Auld Randie Donaldson was good at fifty different things, and he
died in the poorhouse! There's a dour kind of abeelity, though, that has
no cleverness, but just gangs tramping on; and that's----"

"The easiest beaten by a flank attack," said the Deacon, snubbing him.

CHAPTER III.

With the sudden start of a man roused from a daydream Gourlay turned
from the green gate an