Chris gasped Ake, Ake, is’t true? and he said Oh ay. There, mistress, don’t take on so. He’s safe, your loon, they won’t push the case—that’s the quality of justice we’ve got in Duncairn. Sit you still a wee bit and I’ll tell the tale.

She realized later he told it her so that she might hide in herself again. But her mind at the time frothed over the telling like a wild thing mad to be out of a cage, trying to think, to think that Ewan—

And Ake said he’d not made the sawmill that morning, but sought out Speight and put it to him that he could get this bit case against the young Red quashed—Ake knew the lad, there was no harm in him, a decent student, and he’d been sore mishandled already by the bobbies. And Jimmy had listened with his long dreich face looking dreicher than ever, and shaken his head, he couldn’t interfere, he’d no power to influence the courts or the bailies. Ake had told him for Christ’s sake not to talk wet, they were both of them out of their hippens by now, the Lord Provost kenned as well as he did that there was as much graft in the average Scots toun as in any damn place across the Atlantic. Who invited contracts for agreed-on tenders? Who arranged the sale of public land and bought it afore the offer was made public? Who took a squeeze off the water rates, and who made a bit thing from the Libraries? And where did the bobbies, inspectors and sergeants, get their extra wages for houses and motors except by acting as pimps for the whores, living off the lasses and running them in when they wouldn’t pay up their weekly whack? And was there a bookie’s pitch in Duncairn that didn’t pay tribute, week in, week out? Not one.

Speight said that all that was just coarse rumour and scandal, he knew nothing about it, and Ake said Maybe. And you’ll see that this young Tavendale’s let off with a caution, or whatever the flummery’s necessary?

The Lord Provost had nearly burst with rage then, he’d said he’d be damned if he’d be badgered and blackmailed in this way any longer, all because of a small mistake in his youth—was he the first young childe to rape a lass in a hedge, with a bit of darkness to hide his identity? … And Ake had seen he half-meant what he said, a rat that was fair being driven in a corner, he’d pressed him over-hard and his nerve would gang, the next thing might be Ake himself in the jail.

So he’d laid his proposition in front of Jimmy: if he’d bring this off in the Tavendale case Ake would never again breathe a single word about that lassie raped in a hedge, never a whisper in public or private, nor seek for any advantage on’t. And the Provost had said And you’ll leave my sawmill? and Ake had given a bit shrug and said Ay. All right, Jimmy, it’s ta-ta, then.