" said Templandmuir. "The costs must have been
enormous, and then there's the damages. He would have been better to
settle't and be done wi't, but his pride made him fight it to the
hindmost! It has made touch the boddom of his purse, I'll wager ye.
Weel, weel, it'll help to subdue his pride a bit, and muckle was the
need o' that."

Young Gourlay was seized with a sudden fear. The prosperity of the House
with the Green Shutters had been a fact of his existence; it had never
entered his boyish mind to question its continuance. But a weakening
doubt stole through his limbs. What would become of him if the Gourlays
were threatened with disaster? He had a terrifying vision of himself as
a lonely atomy, adrift on a tossing world, cut off from his anchorage.

"Mother, are _we_ ever likely to be ill off?" he asked his mother that
evening.

She ran her fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his brow
fondly. He was as tall as herself now.

"No, no, dear; what makes ye think that? Your father has always had a
grand business, and I brought a hantle money to the house."

"Hokey!" said the youth, "when Ah'm in the business Ah'll have the
times!"

CHAPTER XV.

Gourlay was hard up for money. Every day of his life taught him that he
was nowhere in the stress of modern competition. The grand days--only a
few years back, but seeming half a century away, so much had happened in
between--the grand days when he was the only big man in the locality,
and carried everything with a high hand, had disappeared for ever. Now
all was bustle, hurry, and confusion, the getting and sending of
telegrams, quick dispatches by railway, the watching of markets at a
distance, rapid combinations that bewildered Gourlay's duller mind. At
first he was too obstinate to try the newer methods; when he did, he was
too stupid to use them cleverly. When he plunged it was always at the
wrong time, for he plunged at random, not knowing what to do. He had
lost heavily of late both in grain and cheese, and the lawsuit with
Gibson had crippled him. It was well for him that property in Barbie had
increased in value; the House with the Green Shutters was to prove the
buttress of his fortune. Already he had borrowed considerably upon that
security; he was now dressing to go to Skeighan and get more.

"Brodie, Gurney, and Yarrowby" of Glasgow were the lawyers who financed
him, and he had to sign some papers at Goudie's office ere he touched
the cash