“You hae done your duty, gudeman,” at length said Mysie, “and now you may leave the puir bit lassie to me; I’ll dootless find a word o’ comfort to say to her.”

“But I’m feared, I am awfu’ feared, woman, that she is but a prodigal and an—­”

“Hush, gudeman!  There is mercy for the prodigal daughter as weel as for the prodigal son;” and at these words Andrew went out with a dark, stern face, while she turned with a new and stronger tenderness to the dying woman.

“God is love,” she whispered; “if you hae done aught wrang, there’s the open grave o’ Jesus, dearie; just bury your wrang-doing there.”  She was answered with a happy smile.  “And your little lad is my lad fra this hour, dearie!” The dying lips parted, and Mysie knew they had spoken a blessing for her.

Nothing was found upon the woman that could identify her, nothing except a cruel letter, which evidently came from the girl’s father; but even in this there was neither date nor locality named.  It had no term of endearment to commence with, and was signed simply, “John Dunbar.”  Two things were, however, proven by it:  that the woman’s given name was Bessie, and that by her marriage she had cut herself off from her home and her father’s affection.

So she was laid by stranger hands within that doorless house in the which God sometimes mercifully puts his weary ones to sleep.  Mysie took the child to her heart at once, and Andrew was not long able to resist the little lad’s beauty and winning ways.  The neighbors began to call him “wee Andrew;” and the old man grew to love his namesake with a strangely tender affection.

Sometimes there was indeed a bitter feeling in Mysie’s heart, as she saw how gentle he was with this child and remembered how stern and strict he had been with their own lad.  She did not understand that the one was in reality the result of the other, the acknowledgement of his fault, and the touching effort to atone, in some way, for it.

One night, when wee Andrew was about seven years old, this wrong struck her in a manner peculiarly painful.  Andrew had made a most extraordinary journey, even as far as Penrith.  A large manufactory had been begun there, and a sudden demand for his long staple of white wool had sprung up.  Moreover, he had had a prosperous journey, and brought back with him two books for the boy, AEsop’s Fables and Robinson Crusoe.

When Mysie saw them, her heart swelled beyond control.  She remembered a day when her own son Davie had begged for these very books and been refused with hard rebukes.  She remembered the old man’s bitter words and the child’s bitter tears; but she did not reflect that the present concession was the result of the former refusal, nor yet that the books were much easier got and the money more plentiful than thirty years previous.  When wee Andrew ran away with his treasures to the Druids’ stones, Mysie went into the shippen, and did her milking to some very sad thoughts.