“Rob Dow,” shouted Gavin, as Dow flung past with a scythe in his hand, “lay down that scythe.”

“To hell wi’ religion!” Rob retorted, fiercely; “it spoils a’ thing.”

“Lay down that scythe; I command you.”

Rob stopped undecidedly, then cast the scythe from him, but its rattle on the stones was more than he could bear.

“I winna,” he cried, and, picking it up, ran to the square.

An upper window in Bank Street opened, and Dr. McQueen put out his head.  He was smoking as usual.

“Mr. Dishart,” he said, “you will return home at once if you are a wise man; or, better still, come in here.  You can do nothing with these people to-night.”

“I can stop their fighting.”

“You will only make black blood between them and you.”

“Dinna heed him, Mr. Dishart,” cried some women.

“You had better heed him,” cried a man.

“I will not desert my people,” Gavin said.

“Listen, then, to my prescription,” the doctor replied.  “Drive that gypsy lassie out of the town before the soldiers reach it.  She is firing the men to a red-heat through sheer devilry.”

“She brocht the news, or we would have been nipped in our beds,” some people cried.

“Does any one know who she is?” Gavin demanded, but all shook their heads.  The Egyptian, as they called her, had never been seen in these parts before.

“Has any other person seen the soldiers?” he asked.  “Perhaps this is a false alarm.”

“Several have seen them within the last few minutes,” the doctor answered.  “They came from Tilliedrum, and were advancing on us from the south, but when they heard that we had got the alarm they stopped at the top of the brae, near T’nowhead’s farm.  Man, you would take these things more coolly if you smoked.”

“Show me this woman,” Gavin said sternly to those who had been listening.  Then a stream of people carried him into the square.

The square has altered little, even in these days of enterprise, when Tillyloss has become Newton Bank. and the Craft Head Croft Terrace, with enamelled labels on them for the guidance of slow people, who forget their address and have to run to the end of the street and look up every time they write a letter.  The stones on which the butter-wives sat have disappeared, and with them the clay walls and the outside stairs.  Gone, too, is the stair of the town-house, from the top of which the drummer roared the gossip of the week on Sabbaths to country folk, to the scandal of all who knew that the proper thing on that day is to keep your blinds down; but the townhouse itself, round and red, still makes exit to the south troublesome.  Wherever streets meet the square there is a house in the centre of them, and thus the heart of Thrums is a box, in which the stranger finds himself suddenly, wondering at first how he is to get out, and presently how he got in.