ey thought.

"You may well say that," shouted Brodie. "Wilson has procured the whole
of the Templar's carterage. Oh, Wilson has become a power! Yon new
houses of his must be bringing in a braw penny.--I'm thinking, Mr.
Connal, that Wilson ought to be the Provost!"

"Strange!" cried the former Head of the Town, "that _you_ should have
been thinking that! I've just been in the same mind o't. Wilson's by far
and away the most progressive man we have. What a business he has built
in two or three years!"

"He has that!" shouted Brodie. "He goes up the brae as fast as some
other folk are going down't. And yet they tell me he got a verra poor
welcome from some of us the first morning he appeared in Barbie!"

Gourlay gave no sign. Others would have shown, by the moist glisten of
self-pity in the eye, or the scowl of wrath, how much they were moved;
but Gourlay stared calmly before him, his chin resting on the head of
his staff, resolute, immobile, like a stone head at gaze in the desert.
Only the larger fullness of his fine nostril betrayed the hell of wrath
seething within him. And when they alighted in Skeighan an observant boy
said to his mother, "I saw the marks of his chirted teeth through his
jaw."

But they were still far from Skeighan, and Gourlay had much to thole.

"Did ye hear," shouted Brodie, "that Wilson is sending his son to the
College at Embro in October?"

"D'ye tell me that?" said the Provost. "What a successful lad that has
been! He's a credit to moar than Wilson; he's a credit to the whole
town."

"Ay," yelled Brodie; "the money wasna wasted on _him_! It must be a
terrible thing when a man has a splurging ass for his son, that never
got a prize!"

The Provost began to get nervous. Brodie was going too far. It was all
very well for Brodie, who was at the far end of the wagonette and out of
danger; but if he provoked an outbreak, Gourlay would think nothing of
tearing Provost and Deacon from their perch and tossing them across the
hedge.

"What does Wilson mean to make of his son?" he inquired--a civil enough
question surely.

"Oh, a minister. That'll mean six or seven years at the University."

"Indeed!" said the Provost. "That'll cost an enormous siller!"

"Oh," yelled Brodie, "but Wilson can afford it! It's not everybody can!
It's all verra well to send your son to Skeighan High School, but when
it comes to sending him to College, it's time to think twice of what
you're doing--especially i