“No, no,” said the excited doctor, “they are just a bit daft.  That’s the proper spirit for the game.  Look, that’s the baron-bailie near standing on his head, and there’s Mr. Duthie off his head a’ thegither.  Yon’s twa weavers and a mason cursing the laird, and the man wi’ the besom is the Master of Crumnathie.”

“A democracy, at all events,” said Gavin.

“By no means,” said the doctor, “it’s an aristocracy of intellect.  Gee up, Lightning, or the frost will be gone before we are there.”

“It is my opinion, doctor,” said Gavin, “that you will have bones to set before that game is finished.  I can see nothing but legs now.”

“Don’t say a word against curling, sir, to me,” said McQueen, whom the sight of a game in which he must not play had turned crusty.  “Dangerous!  It’s the best medicine I know of.  Look at that man coming across the field.  It is Jo Strachan.  Well, sir, curling saved Jo’s life after I had given him up.  You don’t believe me?  Hie, Jo, Jo Strachan, come here and tell the minister how curling put you on your legs again.”

Strachan came forward, a tough, little, wizened man, with red flannel round his ears to keep out the cold.

“It’s gospel what the doctor says, Mr. Dishart,” he declared.  “Me and my brither Sandy was baith ill, and in the same bed, and the doctor had hopes o’ Sandy, but nane o’ me.  Ay, weel, when I heard that, I thocht I micht as weel die on the ice as in my bed, so I up and on wi’ my claethes.  Sandy was mad at me, for he was no curler, and he says, ’Jo Strachan, if you gang to Rashie-bog you’ll assuredly be brocht hame a corp.’  I didna heed him, though, and off I gaed.”

“And I see you did not die,” said Gavin.

“Not me,” answered the fish cadger, with a grin.  “Na, but the joke o’t is, it was Sandy that died.”

“Not the joke, Jo,” corrected the doctor, “the moral.”

“Ay, the moral; I’m aye forgetting the word.”

McQueen, enjoying Gavin’s discomfiture, turned Lightning down the Rashie-bog road, which would be impassable as soon as the thaw came.  In summer Rashie-bog is several fields in which a cart does not sink unless it stands still, but in winter it is a loch with here and there a spring where dead men are said to lie, There are no rushes at its east end, and here the dog-cart drew up near the curlers, a crowd of men dancing, screaming, shaking their fists and sweeping, while half a hundred onlookers got in their way, gesticulating and advising.

“Hold me tight,” the doctor whispered to Gavin, “or I’ll be leaving you to drive Nanny to the poorhouse by yourself.”

He had no sooner said this than he tried to jump out of the trap.

“You donnert fule, John Robbie,” he shouted to a player, “soop her up, man, soop her up; no, no, dinna, dinna; leave her alane.  Bailie, leave her alane, you blazing idiot.  Mr. Dishart, let me go; what do you mean, sir, by hanging on to my coat tails?  Dang it all, Duthie’s winning.  He has it, he has it!”