Across the road sat Dite Deuchars, the mole-catcher, a solitary figure, taking his pleasure on the dyke.  Behind him was the flour-miller’s field, and beyond it the Den, of which only some tree-tops were visible.  He looked wearily east the road, but no one emerged from Thrums; he looked wearily west the road, which doubled out of sight at Aaron Latta’s cottage, little more than a stone’s throw distant.  On the inside of Aaron’s window an endless procession seemed to be passing, but it was only the warping mill going round.  It was an empty day, but Dite, the accursed, was used to them; nothing ever happened where he was, but many things as soon as he had gone.

He yawned and looked at the houses opposite.  They were all of one story; the smith’s had a rusty plough stowed away on its roof; under a window stood a pew and bookboard, bought at the roup of an old church, and thus transformed into a garden-seat.  There were many of them in Thrums that year.  All the doors, except that of the smithy, were shut, until one of them blew ajar, when Dite knew at once, from the smell which crossed the road, that Blinder was in the bunk pulling the teeth of his potatoes.  May Ann Irons, the blind man’s niece, came out at this door to beat the cistern with a bass, and she gave Dite a wag of her head.  He was to be married to her if she could get nothing better.

By and by the Painted Lady came along the road.  She was a little woman, brightly dressed, so fragile that a collie might have knocked her over with his tail, and she had a beautiful white-and-pink face, the white ending of a sudden in the middle of her neck, where it met skin of a duller color.  As she tripped along with mincing gait, she was speaking confidentially to herself, but when she saw Dite grinning, she seemed, first, afraid, and then sorry for herself, and then she tried to carry it off with a giggle, cocking her head impudently at him.  Even then she looked childish, and a faded guilelessness, with many pretty airs and graces, still lingered about her, like innocent birds loath to be gone from the spot where their nest has been.  When she had passed monotony again reigned, and Dite crossed to the smithy window, though none of the letters could be for him.  He could read the addresses on six of them, but the seventh lay on its back, and every time he rose on his tip-toes to squint down at it, the spout pushed his bonnet over his eyes.

“Smith,” he cried in at the door, “to gang hame afore I ken wha that letter’s to is more than I can do.”

The smith good-naturedly brought the letter to him, and then glancing at the address was dumfounded.  “God behears,” he exclaimed, with a sudden look at the distant cemetery, “it’s to Double Dykes!”

Dite also shot a look at the cemetery.  “He’ll never get it,” he said, with mighty conviction.

The two men gazed at the cemetery for some time, and at last Dite muttered, “Ay, ay, Double Dykes, you was aye fond o’ your joke!”