a dumb man with a barrowful of roots for firewood, several women in men's coats, one smoking a cutty-pipe. A farm-labourer pulled his heavy legs in their rustling corduroys alongside a field of swedes, a ragged potato-bogle brandished its arms in a sudden puff of wind. Several men and women reached Haggart's cairn about the same time, and said, 'It is so,' or 'Ay, ay,' to him, according as they were loquacious or merely polite.
'We was speakin' aboot matermony,' the mole-catcher remarked, as the back-bent little party straggled toward Thrums.
'It's a caution,' murmured the farm-labourer, who had heard the observation from the other side of the dyke. 'Ay, ye may say so,' he added thoughtfully, addressing himself.
With the mole-catcher's companions, however, the talk passed into another rut. Nevertheless Haggart was thinking matrimony over, and by and by he saw his way to a joke, for one of the other stone-breakers had recently married a very small woman, and in Thrums, where women have to work, the far-seeing men prefer their wives big.
'Ye drew a sma' prize yersel, Sam'l,' said Tammas, with the gleam in his eye which showed that he was now in sarcastic fettle.
'Ay,' said the mole-catcher, 'Sam'l's Kitty is sma'. I suppose Sam'l thocht it wud be prudent-like to begin in a modest wy.'
'If Kitty hadna haen sae sma' hands,' said another stone-breaker, 'I wud hae haen a bid for her mysel.'
The women smiled; they had very large hands.
'They say,' said the youngest of them, who had a load of firewood on her back, ''at there's places whaur little hands is thocht muckle o'.'
There was an incredulous laugh at this.
'I wudna wonder, though,' said the mole-catcher, who had travelled; 'there's some michty queer ideas i' the big toons.'
'Ye'd better ging to the big toons, then, Sam'l,' suggested the merciless Tammas.
Sam'l woke up.
'Kitty's sma',' he said, with a chuckle, 'but she's an auld tid.'
'What made ye think o' speirin' her, Sam'l?'
'I cudna say for sartin,' answered Sam'l reflectively. 'I had nae intention o't till I saw Pete Proctor after her, an' syne, thinks I, I'll hae her. Ay, ye micht say as Pete was the instrument o' Providence in that case.'
'Man, man,' murmured Jamie, who knew Pete, 'Providence sometimes maks use o' strange instruments.'
'Ye was lang in gettin' a man yersel, Jinny,' said Tammas to an elderly woman.
'Fower-an'-forty year,' replied Jinny. 'It was like a stockin', lang i' the futin', but turned at last.'
'Lasses nooadays,' said the old woman who smoked, 'is partikler by what they used to be. I mind when Jeames Gowrie speired me: "Ye wud raither hae Davit Curly, I ken," he says. "I dinna deny 't," I says, for the thing was well kent, "but ye'll do vara weel, Jeames," says I, an' mairy him I did.'
'He was a harmless crittur, Jeames,' said Haggart, 'but queer. Ay, he was full o' maggots.'
'Ay,' said Jeames's widow, 'but though it's no for me to say 't, he deid a deacon.'
'There's some rale queer wys o' speirin' a wuman,' began the mole-catcher.
'Vary true, Jamie,' said a stone-breaker. 'I mind hoo – '
'There was a chappy ower by Blair,' continued Jamie, raising his voice, ''at micht hae been a single man to this day if it hadna been for the toothache.'
'Ay, man?'
'Joey Fargus was the stock's name. He was oncommon troubled wi' the toothache till he found a cure.'
'I didna ken o' ony cure for sair teeth?'
'Joey's cure was to pour cauld watter strecht on into his mooth for the maiter o' twa 'oors, an' ae day he cam into Blair an' found Jess McTaggart (a speerity bit thingy she was – ou, she was so) fair greetin' wi' sair teeth. Joey advised the crittur to try his cure, an' when he left she was pourin' the watter into her mooth ower the sink. Weel, it so happened 'at Joey was in Blair again aboot twa month after, an' he gies a cry in at Willie's – that's Jess's father's, as ye'll un'erstan'. Ay, then, Jess had haen anither fit o' the toothache, an' she was hingin' ower the sink wi' a tanker o' watter in her han', just as she'd been when he saw her last. "What!" says Joey, wi' rale consairn, "nae better yet?" The stock thocht she had been haddin' gaen at the watter a' thae twa month.'
'I call to mind,' the stone-breaker broke in again, 'hoo a body – '
'So,' continued Jamie, 'Joey cudna help but admire the patience o' the lassie, an' says he, "Jess," he says, "come oot by to Mortar Pits, an' try oor well." That's hoo Joey Fargus speired's wife, an' if ye dinna believe's, ye've nae mair to do but ging to Mortar Pits an' see the well yersels.'
'I recall,' said the stone-breaker, 'a vary neat case o' speirin'. It was Jocky Wilkie, him 'at's brither was grieve to Broken Busses, an' the lass was Leeby Lunan. She was aye puttin' Jocky aff when he was on the point o' speirin' her, keepin' 'im hingin' on the hook like a trout, as ye may say, an' takkin her fling wi' ither lads at the same time.'
'Ay, I've kent them do that.'
'Weel, it fair maddened Jocky, so ae nicht he gings to her father's hoose wi' a present o' a grand thimble to her in his pooch, an' afore the hale hoosehold he perdooces't an' flings't wi' a bang on the dresser:
"Tak it," he says to Leeby, "or leave't." In coorse the thing's bein' done sae public-like, Leeby kent she had to mak up her mind there an' then. Ay, she took it.'
'But hoo did ye speir Chirsty yersel, Dan'l?' asked Jinny of the speaker.
There was a laugh at this, for, as was well known, Dan'l had jilted Chirsty.
'I never kent I had speired,' replied the stone-breaker, 'till Chirsty told me.'
'Ye'll no say ye wasna fond o' her?'
'Sometimes I was, an' syne at other times I was indifferent-like. The mair I thocht o't the mair risky I saw it was, so i' the tail o' the day I says to Chirsty, says I, "Na, na, Chirsty, lat's be as I am."'
'They say she took on terrible, Dan'l.'
'Ay, nae doot, but a man has 'imsel to conseeder.'
By this time they had crossed the moor of whins. It was a cold, still evening, and as they paused before climbing down into the town they heard the tinkle of a bell.
'That's Snecky's bell,' said the mole-catcher; 'what can he be cryin' at this time o' nicht?'
'There's something far wrang,' said one of the women. 'Look, a'body's rinnin' to the square.'
The troubled look returned to Tammas Haggart's face, and he stopped to look back across the fast-darkening moor.
'Did ony o' ye see little Davy Dundas, the saw-miller's bairny?' he began.
At that moment a young man swept by. His teeth were clenched, his eyes glaring.
'Speak o' the deil,' said the mole-catcher; 'that was Rob Angus.'
CHAPTER II
ROB BECOMES FREE
As Haggart hobbled down into the square, in the mole-catcher's rear, Hobart's cracked bell tinkled up the back-wynd, and immediately afterwards the bellman took his stand by the side of Tam Peter's fish-cart. Snecky gave his audience time to gather, for not every day was it given to him to cry a lost bairn. The words fell slowly from his reluctant lips. Before he flung back his head and ejected his proclamation in a series of puffs he was the possessor of exclusive news, but his tongue had hardly ceased to roll round the concluding sentence when the crowd took up the cry themselves. Wives flinging open their windows shouted their fears across the wynds. Davy Dundas had wandered from the kirkyard, where Rob had left her in Kitty Wilkie's charge till he returned from the woods. What had Kitty been about? It was believed that the litlin had taken with her a letter that had come for Rob. Was Rob back from the woods yet? Ay, he had scoured the whole countryside already for her.
Men gathered on the saw-mill brig, looking perplexedly at the burn that swivelled at this point, a sawdust colour, between wooden boards; but the women