listening. Then a stream of people carried him into the square.

The square has altered little, even in these days of enterprise,
when Tillyloss has become Newton Bank. and the Craft Head Croft
Terrace, with enamelled labels on them for the guidance of slow
people, who forget their address and have to run to the end of the
street and look up every time they write a letter. The stones on
which the butter-wives sat have disappeared, and with them the
clay walls and the outside stairs. Gone, too, is the stair of the
town-house, from the top of which the drummer roared the gossip of
the week on Sabbaths to country folk, to the scandal of all who
knew that the proper thing on that day is to keep your blinds
down; but the townhouse itself, round and red, still makes exit to
the south troublesome. Wherever streets meet the square there is a
house in the centre of them, and thus the heart of Thrums is a
box, in which the stranger finds himself suddenly, wondering at
first how he is to get out, and presently how he got in.

To Gavin, who never before had seen a score of people in the
square at once, here was a sight strange and terrible. Andrew
Struthers, an old soldier, stood on the outside stair of the town-
house, shouting words of command to some fifty weavers, many of
them scantily clad, but all armed with pikes and poles. Most were
known to the little minister, but they wore faces that were new to
him. Newcomers joined the body every moment. If the drill was
clumsy the men were fierce. Hundreds of people gathered around,
some screaming, some shaking their fists at the old soldier, many
trying to pluck their relatives out of danger. Gavin could not see
the Egyptian. Women and old men, fighting for the possession of
his ear, implored him to disperse the armed band. He ran up the