Davy quietly and laconically replied--'I've a coo (cow) noo.'" But even still more "canny" was the eye to the main chance in an Aberdonian fellow-countryman, communicated in the following pleasant terms from a Nairn correspondent:--"I have just been reading your delightful 'Reminiscences,' which has brought to my recollection a story I used to hear my father tell.

It was thus:--A countryman in a remote part of Aberdeenshire having got a newly-coined sovereign in the days when such a thing was seldom seen in his part of the country, went about showing it to his friends and neighbours for the charge of one penny each sight.

Evil days, however, unfortunately overtook him, and he was obliged to part with his loved coin.

Soon after, a neighbour called on him, and asked a sight of his sovereign, at the same time tendering a penny.

'Ah, man,' says he, 'it's gane; but I'll lat ye see _the cloutie it was rowt in_ for a bawbee.'" There was something very simple-minded in the manner in which a parishioner announced his canny care for his supposed interests when he became an elder of the kirk.