Ake cried to the quean Has he done you harm? and she answered back cool, Not him. He’s just drunk, and looked at Ewan that was standing beside her: You shouldn’t have hit him; that was quite unnecessary.

Syne they all looked at Ewan’s knuckles and saw they were skinned and dripping blood, it seemed he hadn’t known himself, he looked kind of dazed and now wakened up. Yes, sorry. Damn silly thing to do. Ake, will you help me carry him down?

So the two of them carried him off like a corp leaving the women to redd up the soss, the Piddle childe slept through it all like a bairn. Ake said to Ewan as they laid Piddle in bed that he’d given the poor sod a gey mishandling, and Ewan said so it seemed, he knew little about it. He’d heard Miss Johns call and then things had gone cloudy—interesting, supposed it was much the same thing happened to stags in rutting time.

Ma said B’God ’twas the best tale she’d heard since a gelding of her father’s at Monymusk had chased a brood mare into a ditch—why didn’t you let on to me about it?

This was to Chris after dinner that day, Chris shook her head, it wasn’t worth mention. Mr Piddle had made a fool of himself, there was no harm done, he was only a bairn.

Ma said And what about your Ewan, then? and Chris said she thought that that had been straightened, Ewan had told Mr Piddle he was sorry and Mr Piddle had asked him He-he! What for? he’d had no memory of the happening at all. Now Ma mustn’t worry, she was just to lie still, the house would be fine and all the things in’t.

Ma shook her head: And to think of me lying flat on my back when there’s all these fine stravaigings about! Speak of New York—damn’t, it’s not in’t!

October came in long swaths of rain pelting the glinting streets of Duncairn. Going up and down the Windmill Steps with her baskets of groceries Chris would see the toun far alow under the rain’s onset move and shake and shiver a minute like an old grey collie shaking in sleep. The drive of wind and rain cleared the wynds of the fouller smells; down in the Mile, shining in mail, the great houses rose above the wet birl and drum of the trams, buses creeping about like beasts in a fog, snorting, and blowing the wet from their faces, Duncairn getting out its reefers and bonnets, in drifting umbrella’ed afternoon tides the half-gentry poured down the Mile every day. Up in the house it was canty and fine, the wind breenging unbreeked into room after room whenever you opened a shutter a bit, Miss Murgatroyd thought it was Such Rough, and John Cushnie came home from Raggie Robertson’s store and said they were doing a roaring trade, him and Raggie, in selling a new line in raincoats. Jock the cat shivered so close to the range Chris wondered he didn’t get in and look out.