“So we talked a bit langer, and she screeved aboot, pittin’ things into their places.

“‘It’s a fine nicht for gettin’ hame,’ she says, at the hinder end.

“This was, as ye may say, something like a hint, but I was determined to hae it oot wi’ her that nicht.  An’ so I had, though no’ in the way I had intended exactly.

“‘It is a fine nicht,’ says I; ‘but I ken by the pains in the sma’ o’ my back that it’s gaun to be a storm.’

“Wi’ that, as if a bee had stang’d her, Tibby cam’ to the ither side o’ the table frae whaur I was sittin’—­as it micht be there—­an’ she set her hands on the edge o’t wi’ the loofs doon (I think I see her noo; she looked awsome bonny), an’ says she—­

“’Tammas Thackanraip, ye are a decent man, but ye are wasting your time comin’ here coortin’ me,’ she says.  ‘Gin ye think that Tibby o’ the Hilltap is gaun to marry a man wi’ his een in his pooch an’ a weather-glass in the sma’ o’ his back, ye’re maist notoriously mista’en,’ says she.”

There was silence in the kitchen after that, so that we could hear the clock ticking time about with my wife’s needles.

“So I cam’ awa’,” at last said Tammock, sadly.

“An’ what hae ye dune aboot it?” asked my wife, sympathetically.

“Dune aboot it?” said Tammas; “I juist speered Bell Mulwhulter when I cam’ hame.”

“An’ what said she?” asked the mistress.

“Oh,” cried Tammas, “she said it was raither near the eleeventh ’oor, but that she had nae objections that she kenned o’.”

IV

THE OLD TORY

                    One man alone,
  Amid the general consent of tongues. 
  For his point’s sake bore his point—­
  Then, unrepenting, died.

The first time I ever saw the Old Tory, he was scurrying down the street of the Radical village where he lived, with a score of men after him.  Clods and stones were flying, and the Old Tory had his hand up to protect his head.  Yet ever as he fled, he turned him about to cry an epithet injurious to the good name of some great Radical leader.  It was a time when the political atmosphere was prickly with electricity, and men’s passions easily flared up—­specially the passions of those who had nothing whatever to do with the matter.

The Old Tory was the man to enjoy a time like that.  On the day before the election he set a banner on his chimney which he called “the right yellow,” which flaunted bravely all day so long as David Armitt, the Old Tory, sat at his door busking salmon hooks, with a loaded blunderbuss at his elbow and grim determination in the cock of one shaggy grey eyebrow.

But at night, when all was quiet under the Dullarg stars, Jamie Wardhaugh and three brave spirits climbed to the rigging of the Old Tory’s house, tore down his yellow flag, thrust the staff down the chimney, and set a slate across the aperture.