He had his own reasons for not quitting Wythburn after he had received his very unequivocal "sneck posset." "Better a wee bush," he would say, "than na bield".

Shelter certainly the tailor's home afforded him; and that was all that he required for the present.

Wilson had not been long in the tailor's cottage before Sim seemed to grow uneasy under a fresh anxiety, of which his lodger was the subject.

Wilson's manners had obviously undergone a change.

His early smoothness, his slavering glibness, had disappeared.