Coe had told his story with enjoying gusto, and had told it well--for Johnny, though constantly snubbed by his fellows, was in many ways the ablest of them all. His voice and manner drove it home. They knew, besides, he was telling what himself had seen. For they knew he was lying prostrate with fear in the open smiddy-shed from the time Gourlay went to Skeighan Drone to the time that he came back, and that he had seen him both come and go. They were silent for a while, impressed, in spite of themselves, by the vivid presentment of Gourlay's manhood on the day that had scared them all. The baker felt inclined to cry out on his cruelty for keeping his wife suffering to gratify his wrath; but the sudden picture of the man's courage changed that feeling to another of admiring awe: a man so defiant of the angry heavens might do anything. And so with the others; they hated Gourlay, but his bravery was a fact of nature which they could not disregard; they knew themselves smaller, and said nothing for a while. Tam Brodie, the most brutal among them, was the first to recover. Even he did not try to belittle at once, but he felt the subtle discomfort of the situation, and relieved it by bringing the conversation back to its usual channel. "That was at the boy's birth, Mr. Coe?" said he. "Ou ay, just the laddie. It was a' richt when the lassie came. It was Doctor Dandy brocht _her_ hame, for Munn was deid by that time, and Dandy had his place." "What will Gourlay be going to make of him?" the Provost asked. "A doctor or a minister or wha-at?" "Deil a fear of that," said Brodie; "he'll take him into the business! It's a' that he's fit for. He's an infernal dunce, just his father owre again, and the Dominie thrashes him remorseless! I hear my own weans speaking o't. Ou, it seems he's just a perfect numbskull!" "Ye couldn't expect ainything else from a son of Gourlay," said the Provost. Conversation languished. Some fillip was needed to bring it to an easy flow, and the simultaneous scrape of their feet turning round showed the direction of their thoughts. "A dram would be very acceptable now," murmured Sandy Toddle, rubbing his chin. "Ou, we wouldna be the waur o't," said Tam Wylie. "We would all be the better of a little drope," smirked the Deacon. And they made for the Red Lion for the matutinal dram. CHAPTER VII.