The old man told me that he had sometimes wondered at Snecky's mode of approach, but it had not struck him to say anything.

Afterwards, when the bellman took up his abode there, they discussed the matter heavily.
Hobart inherited both his bell and his nickname from his father, who was not a native of Thrums.

He came from some distant part where the people speak of snecking the door, meaning shut it.

In Thrums the word used is steek, and sneck seemed to the inhabitants so droll and ridiculous that Hobart got the name of Snecky.

His son left Thrums at the age of ten for the distant farm of Tirl, and did not return until the old bellman's death, twenty years afterwards; but the first remark he overheard on entering the kirkwynd was a conjecture flung across the street by a grey-haired crone, that he would be "little Snecky come to bury auld Snecky." The father had a reputation in his day for "crying" crimes he was suspected of having committed himself, but the Snecky I knew had too high a sense of his own importance for that.