Ake Ogilvie had new come out and heard that last speak of wee Peter Peat’s. Well, God, YOU’RE common enough, he said, though it’s damn little work you ever manage. And then he went swaggering across the Square, past the statue of the War Memorial Angel, a trig-like lassie with a pair of fine hips, and spat at it, coarse-like, fair a tink Ake, aye sticking up for the working men, you were maybe a working man yourself but were hardly such a fool as stick up for the brutes.

Syne Feet the Policeman came dandering along, he was due to leave for a job in Duncairn, folk cried out Ay, Mr Leslie, fine night, respectful-like, for he’d fair got on. And he stuck his thumbs in his belt and said Ay, majestic-like, like a steer with the staggers, and squashed out his great feet and looked up at the Angel as though to speir where she’d mislaid her stays. Syne folk saw that he’d gotten his sergeant’s stripes, he’d come out to give the bit things an air; and he said he was off to Duncairn in a week, he’d been kind of put in charge of the toun, you learned, him and some other skilly childes, or at least in a bit that they called Footforthie where the factories were and a lot of tink workers, low brutes, for they hadn’t a meek to their name and lived off the Broo and Ramsay MacDonald, draining the country and Ramsay dry. But did that content them?—No, faith, it didn’t, they were aye on the riot about something or other, stirred up by those ill-ta’en Bulgars, the Socialists…. Feet said that he’d use a firm hand, by God you thought if he used his feet there wouldn’t be a Socialist left in Duncairn that didn’t look like an accident with a rhubarb tart. God, how the meikle-houghed sod could blow!

Folk ganted a bit and began to taik off, but halted at the hint of a tasty bit news, and cried No, man? and came tearing back. What’s that? God be here! and Feet swelled out his chest and started to tell his tale over again.

And the gist of the thing when you got to the bree was that Sergeant Sim Leslie had been in Duncairn, on business, like, that very forenoon—colloguing with the other heads of the Police and learning the work that he’d have to take on. Well, he’d finished the business and looked out for lodgings, awful expensive up in Duncairn and you needed a fine salary, same as he had. The second bit place that he keeked intil was a boarding-house on Windmill Brae, fell swell it looked, a braw bit house on the high hill that rises over Duncairn. But the terms were hardly as much as he’d feared, and he clinched for a room with the mistress o’t, a meikle bit woman, Cleghorn the name.

Well, they had a bit crack when he’d ta’en the room and she told to Feet, fair newsy-like, she’d had the place all decorated of late at an awful expense she couldn’t have afforded but that she had advertised for a partner with a bit of silver to lay down as deposit, and syne help as a maid attending the lodgers. Feet had said Ay? and Well, that’s right fine, not caring a damn one way or the other till she mentioned the new bit partner’s name.