dying of resentment.  Would nobody do anything for her?  I thought.  Would not her father help her?  He had got more gentle now; whence I had reason to hope that Christian principles and feelings had begun to rise and operate in him; while surely the influence of his son must, by this time, have done something not only to soften his character generally, but to appease the anger he had cherished towards the one ewe-lamb, against which, having wandered away into the desert place, he had closed and barred the door of the sheep-fold.  I would go and see him, and try what could be done for her.

I may be forgiven here if I make the remark that I cannot help thinking that what measure of success I had already had with my people, was partly owing to this, that when I thought of a thing and had concluded it might do, I very seldom put off the consequent action.  I found I was wrong sometimes, and that the particular action did no good; but thus movement was kept up in my operative nature, preventing it from sinking towards the inactivity to which I was but too much inclined.  Besides, to find out what will not do, is a step towards finding out what will do.  Moreover, an attempt in itself unsuccessful may set something or other in motion that will help.

My present attempt turned out one of my failures, though I cannot think that it would have been better left unmade.

A red rayless sun, which one might have imagined sullen and disconsolate because he could not make the dead earth smile into flowers, was looking through the frosty fog of the winter morning as I walked across the bridge to find Thomas Weir in his workshop.  The poplars stood like goblin sentinels, with black heads, upon which the long hair stood on end, all along the dark cold river.  Nature looked like a life out of which the love has vanished.  I turned from it and hastened on.

Thomas was busy working with a spoke-sheave at the spoke of a cart-wheel.  How curiously the smallest visual fact will sometimes keep its place in the memory, when it cannot with all earnestness of endeavour recall a thought—­a far more important fact!  That will come again only when its time comes first.

“A cold morning, Thomas,” I called from the door.

“I can always keep myself warm, sir,” returned Thomas, cheerfully.

“What are you doing, Tom?” I said, going up to him first.

“A little job for myself, sir.  I’m making a few bookshelves.”

“I want to have a little talk with your father.  Just step out in a minute or so, and let me have half-an-hour.”

“Yes, sir, certainly.”

I then went to the other end of the shop, for, curiously, as it seemed to me, although father and son were on the best of terms, they always worked as far from each other as the shop would permit, and it was a very large room.

“It is not easy always to keep warm through and through, Thomas,” I said.