By this time he had got a pair of scales carefully adjusted, a small tin vessel in one of them, and balancing weights in the other. Then he went to the rack over the dresser, and mildly lamenting his wife’s absence and his own inability to lay his hand on the precise vessels he wanted, brought thence a dish and a basin. The dish he placed on the table with the basin in it and filled the latter with water to the very brim. He then took the horse, placed it gently in the basin, which was large enough to receive it entirely, and set basin and horse aside. Taking then the dish into which the water had overflowed, he poured its contents into the tin vessel in the one scale, and added weights to the opposite until they balanced each other, upon which he made a note with a piece of chalk on the table. Next, he removed everything from the scales, took the horse, wiped it in his apron, and weighed it carefully. That done, he sat down, and leaning back in his chair, seemed to his visitors to be making a calculation, only the conjecture did not quite fit the strange, inscrutable expression of his countenance. The laird began to think he must be one of those who delight to plaster knowledge with mystery. “Weel, laird,” said Jeames at length, “the weicht o’ what ye hae laid upo’ me, maks me doobtfu’ whaur nae doobt sud be. But I’m b’un’ to say, ootside the risk o’ some mistak, o’ the gr’un’s o’ which I can ken naething, for else I wadna hae made it, ’at this bit horsie o’ yours, by a’ ’at my knowledge or skeel, which is naither o’ them muckle, can tell me--this bit horsie--an’ gien it binna as I say, I can_not_ see what for it sudna be sae--only, ye see, laird, whan we think we ken a’ thing, there’s a heap ahint oor _a’ thing_; an’ feow ken better, at least feow hae a richt to ken better, nor I du mysel’, what a puir cratur is man, an hoo liable to mak mistaks, e’en whan he’s duin’ his best to be i’ the richt; an for oucht ’at I ken, there may hae been grit discoveries made, ohn ever come to my hearin’, ’at upsets a’ thing I ever was gien to tak, an’ haud by for true; an’ yet I daurna withhaud the conclusion I’m driven til, for maybe whiles the hert o’ man may gang the wrang gait by bein’ ower wise in its ain conceit o’ expeckin’ ower little, jist as weel ’s in expeckin’ ower muckle, an’ sae I’m b’un’ to tell ye, laird, ’at yer expectations frae this knot o’ metal,--for metal we maun alloo it to be, whatever else it be or bena--yer expectations, I say, are a’ thegither wrang, for it’s no more siller nor my wife’s kitchie-poker.”