"Honest! there's twa-three kinds o' honesty, wife Christian. There's the cauld iron or steel kind, that will neither brak nor bend--the lukewarm, that is stiff--and the red hot, which canna be handled, but may be twisted by a bribe o' the hammer, or the cajoling o' the nippers. What kind would ye wish mine to be?" "The cauld, that winna bend." "And canna be fashioned to man's purposes, and made a picklock o'? Weel, weel, Christian, I'm content." But George Gourlay was not content, neither then nor for several nights; nor even in that hour when, having watched guidwife Christian as she lay on the liver side, and heard the "snurr, snurr," of her deepest sleep, and listened to the corresponding knurr of the old timepiece as it beat hoarsely the key-stone hour between the night and the day, he slipt noiselessly out of bed, and listened again to ascertain whether his stealthy movement had disturbed his wife. All safe--nor sound anywhere within the house, or even in the Wynd, where midnight orgies of the new-comers sometimes annoyed the remaining grandees not yet gone over the Loch; no, nor rap, rap, upwards from the spirits in the deserted house right below him, inviting him by the call of "Let me out." Most opportune silence,--not even broken by guidwife Christian's Baudron watching with brain-lighted eyes at some hole in a meat-press. And dark too, not less than Cimmerian, save only for a small rule of moonlight, which, penetrating a circular hole in the shutter, played fitfully, as the clouds went over its source, on a point of the red curtains--sometimes disappearing altogether. By a little groping he got his hose; nor more would he venture to search for, but finding his way by touch of the finger, he reached the kitchen, where he lighted the end of a small dip. A sorry glimmer indeed; but it enabled him to lay his hands on a bunch of crooked instruments, which he lifted so stealthily that even a mouse would have continued nibbling forbidden cheese, and been not a whit alarmed. Then there was the more dangerous opening of the door leading to the tortuous stair--dangerous, for that quick ear ben the house, which knew the creak as well as she did the accents of Geordie Gourlay. Ah, _tutum silentii præmium_! has he not gone through all this, and reached the stair without a sneeze or sigh of mortal to disturb him!