So Tommy and Grizel were friends, and finding that it hurt the doctor to speak on a certain subject to him, Grizel gave her confidences to Tommy.  She had a fear, which he shared on its being explained to him, that she might meet a man of the stamp of her father, and grow fond of him before she knew the kind he was, and as even Tommy could not suggest an infallible test which would lay them bare at the first glance, he consented to consult Blinder once more.  He found the blind man by his fire-side, very difficult to coax into words on the important topic, but Tommy’s “You’ve said ower much no to tell a bit more,” seemed to impress him, and he answered the question,—­

“You said a woman should fly frae the like o’ Grizel’s father though it should be to the other end of the world, but how is she to ken that he’s that kind?”

“She’ll ken,” Blinder answered after thinking it over, “if she likes him and fears him at one breath, and has a sort of secret dread that he’s getting a power ower her that she canna resist.”

These words were a flash of light on a neglected corner to Tommy.  “Now I see, now I ken,” he exclaimed, amazed; “now I ken what my mother meant!  Blinder, is that no the kind of man that’s called masterful?”

“It’s what poor women find them and call them to their cost,” said Blinder.

Tommy’s excitement was prodigious.  “Now I ken, now I see!” he cried, slapping his leg and stamping up and down the room.

“Sit down!” roared his host.

“I canna,” retorted the boy.  “Oh, to think o’t, to think I came to speir that question at you, to think her and me has wondered what kind he was, and I kent a’ the time!” Without staying to tell Blinder what he was blethering about, he hurried off to Grizel, who was waiting for him in the Den, and to her he poured out his astonishing news.

“I ken all about them, I’ve kent since afore I came to Thrums, but though I generally say the prayer, I’ve forgot to think o’ what it means.”  In a stampede of words he told her all he could remember of his mother’s story as related to him on a grim night in London so long ago, and she listened eagerly.  And when that was over, he repeated first his prayer and then Elspeth’s, “O God, whatever is to be my fate, may I never be one of them that bow the knee to masterful man, and if I was born like that and canna help it, O take me up to heaven afore I’m fil’t.”  Grizel repeated it after him until she had it by heart, and even as she said it a strange thing happened, for she began to draw back from Tommy, with a look of terror on her face.

“What makes you look at me like that?” he cried.

“I believe—­I think—­you are masterful,” she gasped.

“Me!” he retorted indignantly.

“Now,” she went on, waving him back, “now I know why I would not give in to you when you wanted me to be Stroke’s wife.  I was afraid you were masterful!”

“Was that it?” cried Tommy.