CHAPTER IV
FIRST COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN

LEARNED man says in a book, other-
A wise beautiful with truth, that villages are
family groups. To him Thrums would only
be a village, though town is the word we have
ever used, and this is not true of it. Doubt-
less we have interests in common, from which a
place so near (but the road is heavy) as Tillie-
drum is shut out, and we have an individuality
of our own, too, as if, like our red houses, we
came from a quarry that supplies no other place.
But we are not one family. In the old days,
those of us who were of the Tenements seldom
wandered to the Croft head, and if we did go
there we saw men to whom we could not always
give a name. To flit from the Tanage brae to
Haggart’s road was to change one’s friends. A
kirk-wynd weaver might kill his swine and Tilly-
loss not know of it until boys ran westward
hitting each other with the bladders. Only the
voice of the dulsemen could be heard all over
Thrums at once. Thus even in a small place
but a few outstanding persons are known to
everybody.

In eight days Gavin’s figure was more familiar
in Thrums than many that had grown bent in it.
He had already been twice to the cemetery, for a

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