CHAPTER I
Down the steep street where stands the office of Walkingshaw & Gilliflower, careers a hat. It is a silk hat and of a large size, the hat of a professional man of the most dignified standing and evident brain capacity. Nothing could show better the innate depravity of March winds than their choice of such a hat to play with. They had thousands to choose from—bowlers, caps, wideawakes, all kinds of commonplace head-gear—and here they have selected for their sport this cylinder of silk, symbolical of all most worthy of the city's respect. It leaps and bumps and slides, propelled by the breeze and the law of gravitation, down the decorously paved hill, in company with a little cloud of dust and some scraps of dirty paper. And behind it, now at a canter, now at a panting trot, ambles the portly form of Mr. Heriot Walkingshaw. The very devil must be in the wind to-day.
At the corner of Queen Street the hat met the full force of the easterly blast, and bidding good-by to gravitation, turned at right angles and skimmed for forty yards through space as though the brothers Wright had mounted it. Then it resumed the action of a Rugby football, pitching now on its end and now on its middle, and behaving accordingly each time. Mr. Walkingshaw, perceiving that it was now bouncing in the direction he desired to go, fell for a moment to a walk and looked around for some assistant. But the only spectators within hail happened to be two errand boys who had not seen a circus for some time and evinced no desire to interrupt the entertainment. So off he started again, his white spats twinkling beneath his flapping overcoat, and covered the first fifty yards in such promising fashion that he was able to strike the revolving rim a series of smart raps with his umbrella before the wind had recovered its breath. Then suddenly up leapt the hat, cannoned from a lamp-post on to the railings of the Queen Street Gardens, from them across the pavement into the gutter, and there, getting nicely on edge, careered like a hoop, with the thud of Heriot's footsteps growing fainter behind.
Down the next cross street came two acquaintances of the Writer to the Signet, and they stopped at the corner in amazement.
"Good God, that's Heriot Walkingshaw!" cried one.
"A man of his age!" replied the other; "he's running like a wing three-quarter—look at his stride!"
A benevolent lady half stopped the hat with her umbrella. The W.S. was up to it. He stooped to reach it—a quick grab and he had it by the rim.
"Well picked up, sir!" cried one of the acquaintances.
Mr. Walkingshaw did not hear. He was on the other side of the street and engrossed in brushing his quarry with his coat sleeve.
"It's a wonderful performance," remarked the other acquaintance; "but it ought just about to finish him."