They live in the kirk-wynd, or in retiring little houses the builder of which does not seem to have remembered that it is a good plan to have a road leading to houses until after they were finished.

Narrow paths straggling round gardens, some of them with stunted gates, which it is commoner to step over than to open, have been formed to reach these dwellings, but in winter they are running streams, and then the best way to reach a house such as that of Tammy Mealmaker the wright, pronounced wir-icht, is over a broken dyke and a pig-sty.

Tammy, who died a bachelor, had been soured in his youth by a disappointment in love, of which he spoke but seldom.

She lived far away in a town to which he had wandered in the days when his blood ran hot, and they became engaged.

Unfortunately, however, Tammy forgot her name, and he never knew the address; so there the affair ended, to his silent grief.
He admitted himself, over his snuff-mull of an evening, that he was a very ordinary character, but a certain halo of horror was cast over the whole family by their connection with little Joey Sutie, who was pointed at in Thrums as the laddie that whistled when he went past the minister.