“‘You mean,’ says she,’ that he’ll gie them awa to some ill-off body, as he gies near a’ thing he has?  Ay, but there’s one thing he never parts wi’, and that’s my work.  There’s a young lady in the manse the now,’ says she, ’that offered to finish the mittens for me, but he would value them less if I let ony other body put a stitch into them.’

“I thocht to mysel’, ’Tammas Whamond, the Lord has opened a door to you, and you’ll be disgraced forever if you dinna walk straucht in.’  So I rose again, and I says, boldly this time, ’Whaur’s that young leddy?  I hae something to say to her that canna be kept waiting.’

“‘She’s up the stair,’ she says, surprised, ’but you canna ken her, Mr. Whamond, for she just came last nicht.’”

‘"I ken mair o’ her than you think,’ says I; ’I ken what brocht her here, and ken wha she thinks she is to be married to, and I’ve come to tell her that she’ll never get him.’”

‘"How no?’ she said, amazed like.

“‘Because,’ said I, wi’ my teeth thegither, ’he is already married.’

“Lads, I stood waiting to see her fall, and when she didna fall I just waited langer, thinking she was slow in taking it a’ in.

“‘I see you ken wha she is,’ she said, looking at me, ’and yet I canna credit your news.’

“‘They’re true,’ I cries.

“‘Even if they are,’ says she, considering, ’it may be the best thing that could happen to baith o’ them.’

“I sank back in the chair in fair bewilderment, for I didna ken at that time, as we a’ ken now, that she was thinking o’ the earl when I was thinking o’ her son.  Dominie, it looked to me as if the Lord had opened a door to me, and syne shut it in my face.

“Syne wi’ me sitting there in a kind o’ awe o’ the woman’s simpleness, she began to tell me what the minister was like when he was a bairn, and I was saying a’ the time to mysel’, ’You’re chief elder o’ the kirk, Tammas Whamond, and you maun speak out the next time she stops to draw breath.’  They were terrible sma’, common things she telled me, sic as near a’ mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o’ holy way she said them drove my words down my throat, like as if I was some infidel man trying to break out wi’ blasphemy in a—­kirk.

“‘I’ll let you see something,’ says she, ’that I ken will interest you .’  She brocht it out o’ a drawer, and what do you thitik it was?  As sure as death it was no more than some o’ his hair when he was a litlin, and it was tied up sic carefully in paper that you would hae thocht it was some valuable thing.

“‘Mr. Whamond,’ she says solemnly, ’you’ve come thrice to the manse to keep me frae being uneasy about my son’s absence, and you was the chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I’ll gie you a little o’ that hair.’

“Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and yet to see her fondling it!  I says to myself, ‘Mrs. Dishart,’ I says to mysel’, ’I was the chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I’ve come here to tell you that I’m to be the chief instrument under God in driving him out o’t.’  Ay, but when I focht to bring out these words, my mouth snecked like a box.