"Tak it," he says to Leeby, "or leave't." In coorse the thing's bein' done sae public-like, Leeby kent she had to mak up her mind there an' then. Ay, she took it.'
'But hoo did ye speir Chirsty yersel, Dan'l?' asked Jinny of the speaker.
There was a laugh at this, for, as was well known, Dan'l had jilted Chirsty.
'I never kent I had speired,' replied the stone-breaker, 'till Chirsty told me.'
'Sometimes I was, an' syne at other times I was indifferent-like. The mair I thocht o't the mair risky I saw it was, so i' the tail o' the day I says to Chirsty, says I, "Na, na, Chirsty, lat's be as I am."'
'Ay, nae doot, but a man has 'imsel to conseeder.'
By this time they had crossed the moor of whins. It was a cold, still evening, and as they paused before climbing down into the town they heard the tinkle of a bell.
'That's Snecky's bell,' said the mole-catcher; 'what can he be cryin' at this time o' nicht?'
'There's something far wrang,' said one of the women. 'Look, a'body's rinnin' to the square.'
The troubled look returned to Tammas Haggart's face, and he stopped to look back across the fast-darkening moor.
'Did ony o' ye see little Davy Dundas, the saw-miller's bairny?' he began.
At that moment a young man swept by. His teeth were clenched, his eyes glaring.
'Speak o' the deil,' said the mole-catcher; 'that was Rob Angus.'
As Haggart hobbled down into the square, in the mole-catcher's rear, Hobart's cracked bell tinkled up the back-wynd, and immediately afterwards the bellman took his stand by the side of Tam Peter's fish-cart. Snecky gave his audience time to gather, for not every day was it given to him to cry a lost bairn. The words fell slowly from his reluctant lips. Before he flung back his head and ejected his proclamation in a series of puffs he was the possessor of exclusive news, but his tongue had hardly ceased to roll round the concluding sentence when the crowd took up the cry themselves. Wives flinging open their windows shouted their fears across the wynds. Davy Dundas had wandered from the kirkyard, where Rob had left her in Kitty Wilkie's charge till he returned from the woods. What had Kitty been about? It was believed that the litlin had taken with her a letter that had come for Rob. Was Rob back from the woods yet? Ay, he had scoured the whole countryside already for her.