The Twenty-four, Hours 263

loses what a body tells him,’ all she answers is
‘Havers.’ Tod, but women’s provoking.”

“| allow,” Birse said, “ that on the first Sabbath
o’ June month, and again on the third Sabbath,
he poured out the Word grandly, but I’ve ta’en
note this curran Sabbaths that if he’s no michty
magnificent he’s michty poor. There’s something
damming up his mind, and when he gets by- it
he’s a roaring water, but when he doesna he’s a
despisable trickle. The folk thinks it’s a woman
that’s getting in his way, but dinna tell me that
about sic a scholar; I tell you he would gang
ower a toon o’ women like a loaded cart ower
new-laid stanes.”’

Wearyworld hobbled after me up the Roods
one day, pelting me with remarks, though I was
doing my best to get away from him. “ Even
Rob Dow sees there’s something come ower the
minister,’ he bawled, “for Rob’s fou ilka Sab-
bath now. Ay, but this I will say for Mr.
Dishart, that he aye gies me a civil word.” I
thought I had left the policeman behind with
this, but next minute he roared, “ And whatever
is the matter wi’ him it has made him kindlier to
me than ever.” He must have taken the short
cut through Lunan’s close, for at the top of the
Roods his voice again made up on me. “ Dagone
you, for a cruel pack to put your fingers to your
lugs ilka time I open my mouth.”

As for Waster Lunny’s daughter Easie, who
got her schooling free for redding up the school-
house and breaking my furniture, she would never
have been off the gossip about the minister, for
she was her mother in miniature, with a tongue