Mr.
Galbraith was one of them, and smiled a grim, an ugly smile.
"So this is your vaunted brownie, Mr.Duff!" he said, and stood looking down upon Gibbie, as if in his small person he saw superstition at the point of death, mocked thither by the arrows of his contemptuous wit.
"It's all the brownie I could lay hands on, sir," answered Fergus.
"I took him in the act." "Boy," said the laird, rolling his eyes, more unsteady than usual with indignation, in the direction of Gibbie, "what have you to say for yourself ?" Gibbie had no say--and nothing to say that his questioner could either have understood or believed; the truth from his lips would but have presented him a lying hypocrite to the wisdom of his judge.
As it was, he smiled, looking up fearless in the face of the magistrate, so awful in his own esteem.
"What is your name ?" asked the laird, speaking yet more sternly.
Gibbie still smiled and was silent, looking straight in his questioner's eyes.

He dreaded nothing from the laird.

Fergus had beaten him, but Fergus he classed with the bigger boys who had occasionally treated him roughly; this was a man, and men, except they were foreign sailors, or drunk, were never unkind.

He had no idea of his silence causing annoyance.

Everybody in the city had known he could not answer; and now when Fergus and the laird persisted in questioning him, he thought they were making kindly game of him, and smiled the more.