it is only a marriage, which the girls have, therefore, to go through without the help of the boys.  This warns me that I have come to an end of my story for all except my little maid.  In the days when she sat on my knee and listened it had no end, for after I told her how her father and mother were married a second time she would say, “And then I came, didn’t I?  Oh, tell me about me!” So it happened that when she was no higher than my staff she knew more than I could write in another book, and many a time she solemnly told me what I had told her, as—­

“Would you like me to tell you a story?  Well, it’s about a minister, and the people wanted to be bad to him, and then there was a flood, and a flood is lochs falling instead of rain, and so of course he was nearly drownded, and he preached to them till they liked him again, and so they let him marry her, and they like her awful too, and, just think! it was my father; and that’s all.  Now tell me about grandmother when father came home.”

I told her once again that Margaret never knew how nearly Gavin was driven from his kirk.  For Margaret was as one who goes to bed in the daytime and wakes in it, and is not told that there has been a black night while she slept.  She had seen her son leave the manse the idol of his people, and she saw them rejoicing as they brought him back.  Of what occurred at the Jaws, as the spot where Dow had saved two lives is now called, she learned, but not that these Jaws snatched him and her from an ignominy more terrible than death, for she never knew that the people had meditated driving him from his kirk.  This Thrums is bleak and perhaps forbidding, but there is a moment of the day when a setting sun dyes it pink, and the people are like their town.  Thrums was never colder in times of snow than were his congregation to their minister when the Great Rain began, but his fortitude rekindled their hearts.  He was an obstinate minister, and love had led him a dance, but in the hour of trial he had proved himself a man.

When Gavin reached the manse, and saw not only his mother but Babbie, he would have kissed them both; but Babbie could only say, “She does not know,” and then run away crying.  Gavin put his arm round his mother, and drew her into the parlor, where he told her who Babbie was.  Now Margaret had begun to love Babbie already, and had prayed to see Gavin happily married; but it was a long time before she went upstairs to look for his wife and kiss her and bring her down.  “Why was it a long time?” my little maid would ask, and I had to tell her to wait until she was old, and had a son, when she would find out for herself.