But when the Templar married the miller's daughter of the Mill o' Blink (a sad come-down, said foolish neighbours, for a Halliday of Templandmuir) there was a sudden change about the laird. In our good Scots proverb, "A miller's daughter has a shrill voice," and the new leddy of Templandmuir ("a leddy she is!" said the frightened housekeeper) justified the proverb. Her voice went with the skirl of an east wind through the rat-riddled mansion of the Hallidays. She was nine-and-twenty, and a birkie woman of nine-and-twenty can make a good husband out of very unpromising material. The Templar wore a scared look in those days and went home betimes. His cronies knew the fun was over when they heard what happened to the great punchbowl--she made it a swine-trough. It was the heirloom of a hundred years, and as much as a man could carry with his arms out, a massive curio in stone; but to her husband's plaint about its degradation, "Oh," she cried, "it'll never know the difference! It's been used to swine!" But she was not content with the cessation of the old; she was determined on bringing in the new. For a twelvemonth now she had urged her husband to be rid of Gourlay. The country was opening up, she said, and the quarry ought to be their own. A dozen times he had promised her to warn Gourlay that he must yield the quarry when his tack ran out at the end of the year, and a dozen times he had shrunk from the encounter. "I'll write," he said feebly. "Write!" said she, lowered in her pride to think her husband was a coward. "Write, indeed! Man, have ye no spunk? Think what he has made out o' ye! Think o' the money that has gone to him that should have come to you! You should be glad o' the chance to tell him o't. My certy, if I was you I wouldn't miss it for the world--just to let him know of his cheatry! Oh, it's very right that _I_"--she sounded the _I_ big and brave--"it's very right that _I_ should live in this tumbledown hole while _he_ builds a palace from your plunder! It's right that _I_ should put up with this"--she flung hands of contempt at her dwelling--"it's right that _I_ should put up with this, while yon trollop has a splendid mansion on the top o' the brae! And every bawbee of his fortune has come out of you--the fool makes nothing from his other business--he would have been a pauper if he hadn't met a softie like you that he could do what he liked with. Write, indeed! I have no patience with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, _I_ have. Write, indeed! In you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!" No wonder the Templar looked subdued.