"I have," said Irrendavie, and he eyed him suspiciously. For what was Wilson speiring for? _He_ wasna a cheese-merchant. "How much the stane are ye seeking for't?" said Wilson. "I have just been asking Mr. Gourlay here for seven-and-six," said Irrendavie, "but he winna rise a penny on the seven!" "_I_'ll gi'e ye seven-and-six," said Wilson, and slapped his long thin flexible bank-book far too ostentatiously against the knuckles of his left hand. "But--but," stammered Irrendavie, suspicious still, but melting at the offer, "_you_ have no means of storing cheese." "Oh," said Wilson, getting in a fine one at Gourlay, "there's no drawback in that! The ways o' business have changed greatly since steam came close to our doors. It's nothing but vanity nowadays when a country merchant wastes money on a ramshackle of buildings for storing--there's no need for that if he only had brains to develop quick deliveries. Some folk, no doubt, like to build monuments to their own pride, but I'm not one of that kind; there's not enough sense in that to satisfy a man like me. My offer doesna hold, you understand, unless you deliver the cheese at Skeighan Station. Do you accept the condition?" "Oh yes," said Irrendavie, "I'm willing to agree to that." "C'way into the Red Lion then," said Wilson, "and we'll wet the bargain with a drink to make it hold the tighter!" Then a strange thing happened. Gourlay had a curious stick of foreign wood (one of the trifles he fed his pride on) the crook of which curved back to the stem and inhered, leaving space only for the fingers. The wood was of wonderful toughness, and Gourlay had been known to bet that no man could break the handle of his stick by a single grip over the crook and under it. Yet now, as he saw his bargain whisked away from him and listened to Wilson's jibe, the thing snapped in his grip like a rotten twig. He stared down at the broken pieces for a while, as if wondering how they came there, then dashed them on the ground while Wilson stood smiling by. And then he strode--with a look on his face that made the folk fall away. "He's hellish angry," they grinned to each other when their foe was gone, and laughed when they heard the cause of it. "Ha, ha, Wilson's the boy to diddle him!" And yet they looked queer when told that the famous stick had snapped in his grasp like a worm-eaten larch-twig. "Lord!" cried the baker in admiring awe, "did he break it with the ae chirt! It's been tried by scores of fellows for the last twenty years, and never a man of them was up till't! Lads, there's something splendid about Gourlay's wrath. What a man he is when the paw-sion grups him!" "Thplendid, d'ye ca't?" said the Deacon. "He may thwing in a towe for his thplendid wrath yet."