CHAPTER X.
PETER SIMON.
This man was not a native of the district, but had for some two years now been a dweller in it.

Report said he was the son of a small tradesman in a city at no great distance, but, to those who knew him, he made no secret of the fact, that he had been found by such a man, a child of a few months, lying on a pavement of that city, one stormy, desolate Christmas-eve, when it was now dark, with the wind blowing bitterly from the north, and the said tradesman seemingly the one inhabitant of the coldest city in Scotland who dared face it.

He had just closed his shop, had carried home to one of his customers a forgotten order, and was returning to his wife and a childless hearth, when he all but stumbled over the infant.

Before stooping to lift him, he looked all about to see if there was nobody to do it instead.

There was not a human being, or even what comes next to one, a dog in sight, and the wind was blowing like a blast from a frozen hell.