"I say it puzzles me, guidwife Christian, and has done for years."
"And mair it should me, George. You have been here only nine years, but 'tis now twenty-one since my father was carried to the West Kirk; and a year afore that I heard him say the house was left o' a morning: nor sound nor sigh o' human being has been heard in't since that hour."
"And then the changes," said Geordie, "hae ta'en awa the auld folk whase gleg een would hae noticed it. As for Bailie or Dean o' Guild, nane o' them hae ever tirled the padlock."
"But the factor, auld Dallas o' Lady Stair's Close, dee'd shortly after my father, and that will partly account for't."
"It accounts for naething, guidwife Christian," rejoined he. "Whar's the laird? Men are sometimes forgetfu'; but what man, or woman either, ever forgets their property or heirlooms? Ye ken, love Christian," he continued, looking askance at her, half in seriousness and half in humour, "I am a blacksmith, and hae routh o' skeleton keys."
"And never ane o' them will touch that padlock while I'm in your keeping, Geordie. I took ye for an honest man."
An opposition or check which Gourlay did not altogether like; for, in secret truth, he had long contemplated an entry by these said skeleton keys, and, like all people who want a justification for some act they wish to perform, not altogether consistent with what is right, he had often in serious playfulness knocked his foot against the old worm-eaten, wood-rusted, dry-rotted door, as if he expected some confined ghost to shriek, like that unhappy spirit of the Buchan Caves, "Let me out, let me out!" whereupon Mr. Gourlay would have been, we doubt not, more humane than his old father-god, who would not let the pretty mother of love out of his iron net.
"Honest! there's twa-three kinds o' honesty, wife Christian. There's the cauld iron or steel kind, that will neither brak nor bend—the lukewarm, that is stiff—and the red hot, which canna be handled, but may be twisted by a bribe o' the hammer, or the cajoling o' the nippers. What kind would ye wish mine to be?"
"The cauld, that winna bend."
"And canna be fashioned to man's purposes, and made a picklock o'? Weel, weel, Christian, I'm content."