For, you see, there being so many to attend to on market day, they had parted them among themselves, so many to each. And when it came to our turn it was old Mr. Smart we saw. The grand man in canary and black ushered us ben, told our name, adding, "of Marnhoul estate," as if we had been the owners thereof. We had looked to see a fine, noble-appearing man sitting on a kind of throne, receiving homage, but there was nobody in the room but an old man in a dressing-gown and soft felt slippers, stirring the fire--though, indeed, it was hot enough outside. He turned towards us, the poker still in his hand, and with an eye like a gimlet seemed to take us in at a single glance. "What's wrong? What's wrong the day?" he cried in an odd sing-song; "what news of the Holy Smugglers? More battle, murder, and sudden death along the Solway shore?" I had never seen my grandfather so visibly perturbed before. He actually stammered in trying to open out his business--which, now I come to think of it, was indeed of the delicatest. "I have," he began, "the honour of speaking to Mr. Smart the elder?" "It is an honour you share with every Moffat Tam that wants a new roof to his pigstye," grumbled the old man in the dressing-gown, "but such as it is, say on. My time is short! If ye want mainners ye must go next door!" "Mr. Smart," said my grandfather, "I have come all the way from the house of Heathknowes on the estate of Marnhoul to announce to you a misfortune." "What?" cried the old fellow in the blanket dressing-gown briskly, "has the dead come to life again, or is Lalor Maitland turned honest?" But my grandfather shook his head, and with a lamentable voice opened out to the head of the firm what had befallen their Mr. Poole, how he had come with pistols in his bag, and gotten trodden on by Rob, my reckless uncle, so that he was now lying, safe but disabled, in the small wall cabinet of Heathknowes. I was expecting nothing less than a cry for the peace officers, and to be marched off between a file of soldiers--or, at any rate, the constables of the town guard. But instead the little man put on a pair of great glasses with rims of black horn, and looked at my grandfather quizzically and a trifle sternly to see if he were daring to jest. But presently, seeing the transparent honesty of the man (as who would not?), he broke out into a snort of laughter, snatched open a door at his elbow, and cried out at the top of his voice (which, to tell the truth, was no better than a screech), "Dick Poole--ho there, big Dick Poole!--I want you, Dickie!" I could see nothing from the next room but a haze of tobacco smoke, which presently entering, set the old man in the dressing-gown a-coughing. "Send away thy rascals, Dick," he wheezed, "and shut that door, Dickie. That cursed reek of yours would kill a hog of the stye. Hither with you, good Dick!"