I mind, as it were yesterday, his gloomy look at the platter that morn's morning. “Here they are again!” cried he, “fired to a cinder; it's always that with the old wife, or else a heart of dough. For a bawbee I would throw them in her face.” “Well, not so much as that.” said I, “though it is mighty provoking.” “I'm not thinking of myself,” said he, always glooming at the platter with his dark, wild Hielan' eye. “I'm not thinking of myself,” said he, “but it's something by way of an insult to you, that had to complain of Sunday's haddocks.” “Oh, as to them,” quo' I, “they did brawly for me; 'twas you put your share in your pocket and threw it away on the Green. Besides the scones are not so bad as they look”--I broke one and ate; “they're owre good at least for a hungry man like me to send back where they came from.” His face got red. “What's that rubbish about the haddocks and the Green?” said he. “You left me at my breakfast when you went to the Ram's Horn Kirk.” “And that's true, Jock,” said I; “but I think I have made no' so bad a guess. You were feared to affront the landlady by leaving her ancient fish on the ashet, and you egged me on to do the grumbling.” “Well, it's as sure as death, Paul,” said he shamefacedly, “I hate to vex a woman. And you're a thought wrong in your guess”--he laughed at his own humour as he said it--“for when you were gone to your kirk I transferred my share of the stinking fish to your empty plate.” He jouked his head, but scarcely quick enough, for my Sallust caught him on the ear. He replied with a volume of Buchanan the historian, the man I like because he skelped the Lord's anointed, James the First, and for a time there was war in Lucky Grant's parlour room, till I threw him into the recess bed snibbed the door, and went abroad into the street leaving my room-fellow for once to utter his own complaints. I went out with the itch of battle on me, and that was the consequence of a woman's havering while scones burned, and likewise my undoing, for the High Street when I came to it was in the yeasty ferment of encountering hosts, their cries calling poor foolish Paul Greig like a trumpet. It had been a night and morning of snow, though I and Mackellar, so high in Lucky Grant's chamber in Crombie's Land, had not suspected it. The dull drab streets, with their crazy, corbelled gable-ends, had been transformed by a silent miracle of heaven into something new and clean; where noisome gutters were wont to brim with slops there was the napkin of the Lord.