So for twenty years the household moved on its quiet, ordered way in the manse by the Water of Cairn.  Then the boy, entering into the inheritance devised to him by his mother’s marriage-settlement, took the portion of goods that pertained to him, and went his way into a far country, and did there according to the manner of his kind.  Meysie had been to some extent to blame for this, as had also his father.  The minister himself, absorbed in his books and in his sermons, had only given occasional notice to the eager, ill-balanced boy who was growing up in his home.  He had given him, indeed, his due hours of teaching till he went away to school, but he had known nothing of his recreations and amusements.  Meysie, who was by no means dumb though she was undoubtedly deaf, kept dinning in his ears that he must take his place with the highest in the land, by which she meant the young Laird of Cairnie and the Mitchels of Mitchelfleld.  Some of these young fellows were exceedingly ready to show Clement Symington how to squander his ducats, and when he took the road to London he went away a pigeon ready for the plucking.  The waters closed over his head, and so far as his father was concerned there was an end of him.

Elspeth Symington, the baby girl, turned out a child of another type.  Strong, masculine, resolute, with some of the determination of the old slave-driving grandfather in her, she had from an early age been under the care of a sister of her mother’s.  And with her she had learned many things, chiefly that sad lesson—­to despise her father.  It had never struck Mr. Symington in the way of complaint that he had no art or part in his wife’s fortune, so that he was not disappointed when he found himself stranded in the little cottage by the Clints of Drumore with thirty pounds a year.  He was lonely, it was true, but his books stood between him and unhappiness.  Also Meysie, deaf and cross, grumbled and crooned loyally about his doors.

This wintry morning there was no fire in the room which was called by the minister the “study”—­but by Meysie, more exactly and descriptively, “ben the hoose.”  The minister had written on Meysie’s slate the night before that, as the peats were running done and no one could say how long the storm might continue, no fire was to be put in the study the next day.

So after Mr. Symington had eaten his porridge, taking it with a little milk from their one cow—­Meysie standing by the while to “see that he suppit them”—­he made an incursion or two down the house to the “room” for some books that he needed.  Then Meysie bustled about her work and cleaned up with prodigious birr and clatter, being utterly unable to hear the noise she made.  The minister soon became absorbed in his book, and a light of contentment shone in his face.  Occasionally his hand stole to his pocket.  Meysie, whose eyes never wandered far from him, knew that he was feeling for the leather case in which he kept the photographs