back-bent little party straggled toward Thrums.

'It's a caution,' murmured the farm-labourer, who had heard the observation from the other side of the dyke. 'Ay, ye may say so,' he added thoughtfully, addressing himself.

With the mole-catcher's companions, however, the talk passed into another rut. Nevertheless Haggart was thinking matrimony over, and by and by he saw his way to a joke, for one of the other stone-breakers had recently married a very small woman, and in Thrums, where women have to work, the far-seeing men prefer their wives big.

'Ye drew a sma' prize yersel, Sam'l,' said Tammas, with the gleam in his eye which showed that he was now in sarcastic fettle.

'Ay,' said the mole-catcher, 'Sam'l's Kitty is sma'. I suppose Sam'l thocht it wud be prudent-like to begin in a modest wy.'

'If Kitty hadna haen sae sma' hands,' said another stone-breaker, 'I wud hae haen a bid for her mysel.'

The women smiled; they had very large hands.

'They say,' said the youngest of them, who had a load of firewood on her back, ''at there's places whaur little hands is thocht muckle o'.'

There was an incredulous laugh at this.

'I wudna wonder, though,' said the mole-catcher, who had travelled; 'there's some michty queer ideas i' the big toons.'

'Ye'd better ging to the big toons, then, Sam'l,' suggested the merciless Tammas.

Sam'l woke up.

'Kitty's sma',' he said, with a chuckle, 'but she's an auld tid.'

'What made ye think o' speirin' her, Sam'l?'

'I cudna say for sartin,' answered Sam'l reflectively. 'I had nae intention o't till I saw Pete Proctor after her, an' syne, thinks I, I'll hae her. Ay, ye micht say as Pete was the instrument o' Providence in that case.'

'Man, man,' murmured Jamie, who knew Pete, 'Providence sometimes maks use o' strange instruments.'

'Ye was lang in gettin' a man yersel, Jinny,' said Tammas to an elderly 

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