“I’m a’ wat wi’ the rain,” again quoth the elfish voice, more genially, “an’ I’m no’ fit to gang into a gentleman’s hoose.”

“Come into the dining-room,” said the minister kindly.

“‘Deed, an’ ye’ll no,” interposed Betsy, who had been coming nearer.  “Ye’se juist gang into the study, an’ I’ll lay doon a bass for ye to stand an’ dreep on.  Where come ye frae, laddie?”

“I am Tammas Gleg’s laddie.  My faither disna ken that I hae come to see the minister,” said the boy.

“The loon’s no’ wise!” muttered Betsy.  “Could the back door no’ hae served ye?—­Bringing fowk away through the hoose traikin’ to open the front door to you on sic a nicht!  Man, ye are a peetifu’ object!”

The object addressed looked about him.  He was making a circle of wetness on the floor.  He was taken imperatively by the coat-sleeve.

“Ye canna gang into the study like that.  There wad be nae dryin’ the floor.  Come into the kitchen, laddie,” said Betsy.  “Gang yer ways ben, minister, to your ain gate-end, an’ the loon’ll be wi’ ye the noo.”

So Betsy, who was accustomed to her own way in the manse of Blawrinnie, drove Tammas Gleg’s laddie before her into the kitchen, and the minister went into the study with a kind of junior apostolic meekness.  Then he meditatively settled his hard circular collar, which he wore in the interests of Life and Work, but privately hated with a deadly hatred, as his particular form of penance.

It was no very long season that he had to wait, and before he had done more than again lift up his interesting “authority,” the door of the study was pushed open and Betsy cried in, “Here he’s!” lest there might be any trouble in the identification.  And not without some reason.  For, strange as was the figure which had stepped into the minister’s lobby out of the storm, the vision which now met his eyes was infinitely stranger.

A thick-set body little over four and a half feet high, exceedingly thick and stout, was surmounted with one of the most curious heads the minister had ever seen.  He saw a round apple face, eyes of extraordinary brightness, a thin-lipped mouth which seemed to meander half-way round the head as if uncertain where to stop.  Betsy had arrayed this “object” in a pink bed-gown of her own, a pair of the minister’s trousers turned up nearly to the knee in a roll the thickness of a man’s wrist, and one of the minister’s new-fangled M.B. waistcoats, through the armholes of which two very long arms escaped, clad as far as the elbows in the sleeves of the pink bed-gown.

Happily the minister was wholly destitute of a sense of humour (and therefore clearly marked for promotion in the Church); and the privation stood him in good stead now.  It only struck him as a little irregular to be sitting in the study with a person so attired.  But he thought to himself—­“After all, he may be one of My People.”

“And what can I do for you?” he said kindly, when the Object was seated opposite to him on the very edge of a large arm-chair, the pink arms laid like weapons of warfare upon his knees, and the broad hands warming themselves in a curious unattached manner at the fire.