to dropping, forgetful-like, into public-houses again.  It was high time Tam should be got out of the place, and they did manage to bribe him into leaving, though no easily, for it had been fine sport to him, and to make a sensation was what he valued above all things.  We heard that he went back to Redlintie a curran years after, but both the gauger and his wife were dead, and I ken that he didna trouble the twa daughters.  They were Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, and as they werena left as well off as was expected they came to Thrums, which had been their mother’s town, and started a school for the gentry there.  I dinna doubt but what it’s the school that Esther Auld’s laddie is at.

“So after being long lost sight o’ he turned up at Cullew, wi’ what looked to simple folk a fortune in his pouches, and half a dozen untrue stories about how he made it.  He had come to make a show o’ himsel’ afore his mither, and I dare say to give her some gold, for he was aye ready to give when he had, I’ll say that for him; but she had flitted to some unkent place, and so he bade on some weeks at the Cullew public.  He caredna whether the folk praised or blamed him so long as they wondered at him, and queer stories about his doings was aye on the road to Thrums.  One was that he gave wild suppers to whaever would come; another that he went to the kirk just for the glory of flinging a sovereign into the plate wi’ a clatter; another that when he lay sleeping on twa chairs, gold and silver dribbled out o’ his trouser pouches to the floor.

“There was an ugly story too, about a lassie, that led to his leaving the place and coming to Thrums, after he had near killed the Cullew smith, in a fight.  The first I heard o’ his being in Thrums was when Aaron Latta walked into my granny’s house and said there was a strange man at the Tappit Hen public standing drink to any that would tak’, and boasting that he had but to waggle his finger to make me give Aaron up.  I went wi’ Aaron and looked in at the window, but I kent wha it was afore I looked.  If Aaron had just gone in and struck him!  All decent women, laddie, has a horror of being fought about.  I’m no sure but what that’s just the difference atween guid ones and ill ones, but this man had a power ower me; and if Aaron had just struck him!  Instead o’ meddling he turned white, and I couldna help contrasting them, and thinking how masterful your father looked.  Fine I kent he was a brute, and yet I couldna help admiring him for looking so magerful.

“He bade on at the Tappit Hen, flinging his siller about in the way that made him a king at Cullew, but no molesting Miss Ailie and Miss Kitty, which all but me thought was what he had come to Thrums to do.  Aaron and me was cried for the first time the Sabbath after he came, and the next Sabbath for the second time, but afore that he was aye getting in my road and speaking to me, but I ran frae him and hod frae him when I could, and he said the reason