“I wouldna,” replied Mr. Cathro, “though I could, and I couldna though I would.  It would defy the face of clay to do it, you canny lover.”

Now, the Dominie had frequently declined to write as he was bidden, and had suggested alterations which were invariably accepted, but to his astonishment Andrew would not give in.  “I’ll be stepping, then,” he said coolly, “for if you hinna the knack o’t I ken somebody that has.”

“Who?” demanded the irate Dominie.

“I promised no to tell you,” replied Andrew, and away he went.  Mr. Cathro expected him to return presently in humbler mood, but was disappointed, and a week or two afterwards he heard Andrew and Mary Jane Proctor cried in the parish church.  “Did Bell Birse refuse him?” he asked the kirk officer, and was informed that Bell had never got a chance.  “His letter was so cunning,” said John, “that without speiring her, it drew ane frae her in which she let out that she was centred on Davit Allardyce.”

“But who wrote Andrew’s letter?” asked Mr. Cathro, sharply.

“I thought it had been yoursel’,” said John, and the Dominie chafed, and lost much of the afternoon service by going over in his mind the names of possible rivals.  He never thought of Tommy.

Then a week or two later fell a heavier blow.  At least twice a year the Dominie had written for Meggy Duff to her daughter in Ireland a long letter founded on this suggestion, “Dear Kaytherine, if you dinna send ten shillings immediately, your puir auld mother will have neither house nor hame.  I’m crying to you for’t, Kaytherine; hearken and you’ll hear my cry across the cauldriff sea.”  He met Meggy in the Banker’s Close one day, and asked her pleasantly if the time was not drawing nigh for another appeal.

“I have wrote,” replied the old woman, giving her pocket a boastful smack, which she thus explained, “And it was the whole ten shillings this time, and you never got more for me than five.”

“Who wrote the letter for you?” he asked, lowering.

She, too, it seemed, had promised not to tell.

“Did you promise to tell nobody, Meggy, or just no to tell me,” he pressed her, of a sudden suspecting Tommy.

“Just no to tell you,” she answered, and at that.

“Da-a-a,” began the Dominie, and then saved his reputation by adding “gont.”  The derivation of the word dagont has puzzled many, but here we seem to have it.

It is interesting to know what Tommy wrote.  The general opinion was that his letter must have been a triumph of eloquent appeal, and indeed he had first sketched out several masterpieces, all of some length and in different styles, but on the whole not unlike the concoctions of Meggy’s former secretary; that is, he had dwelt on the duties of daughters, on the hardness of the times, on the certainty that if Katherine helped this time assistance would never be needed again.  This sort of thing had always