"What's yon he's carrying on his shouther?" pondered Brodie.
"It looks like a boax," said the Provost slowly, bending every effort of eye and mind to discover what it really was. He was giving his profoundest cogitations to the "boax."
"It is a boax! But who is it though? I canna make him out."
"Dod, I canna tell either; his head's so bent with his burden!"
At last the man, laying his "boax" on the ground, stood up to ease his spine, so that his face was visible.
"Losh, it's Jock Gilmour, the orra man at Gourlay's! What'll he be doing out on the street at this hour of the day? I thocht he was always busy on the premises! Will Gourlay be sending him off with something to somebody? But no; that canna be. He would have sent it with the carts."
"I'll wager ye," cried Johnny Coe quickly, speaking more loudly than usual in the animation of discovery—"I'll wager ye Gourlay has quarrelled him and put him to the door!"
"Man, you're right! That'll just be it, that'll just be it! Ay, ay—faith ay—and yon'll be his kist he's carrying! Man, you're right, Mr. Coe; you have just put your finger on't. We'll hear news this morning."
They edged forward to the middle of the road, the Provost in front, to meet Gilmour coming down.
"Ye've a heavy burden this morning, John," said the Provost graciously.