“In the bottom o’ my kist there’s a little silver teapot.  It’s no’ real silver, but it’s fell bonny.  I bought it for Elspeth twa or three months back when I saw I couldna last the winter.  I bought it to her for a marriage present.  She’s no’ to see it till her wedding-day comes round.  Syne you’re to give it to her, man, and say it’s with her mother’s love.  Tell her all about me, for it canna harm her then.  Tell her of the fool lies I sent to Thrums, but dinna forget what a bonny place I thought it all the time, nor how I stood on many a driech night at the corner of that street, looking so waeful at the lighted windows, and hungering for the wring of a Thrums hand or the sound of the Thrums word, and all the time the shrewd blasts cutting through my thin trails of claithes.  Tell her, man, how you and me spent this night, and how I fought to keep my hoast down so as no’ to waken her.  Mind that whatever I have been, I was aye fond o’ my bairns, and slaved for them till I dropped.  She’ll have long forgotten what I was like, and it’s just as well, but yet—­Look at me, Tommy, look long, long, so as you’ll be able to call up my face as it was on the far-back night when I telled you my mournful story.  Na, you canna see in the dark, but haud my hand, haud it tight, so that, when you tell Elspeth, you’ll mind how hot it was, and the skin loose on it; and put your hand on my cheeks, man, and feel how wet they are wi’ sorrowful tears, and lay it on my breast, so that you can tell her how I was shrunk awa’.  And if she greets for her mother a whiley, let her greet.”

The sobbing boy hugged his mother.  “Do you think I’m an auld woman?” she said to him.

“You’re gey auld, are you no’?” he answered.

“Ay,” she said, “I’m gey auld; I’m nine and twenty.  I was seventeen on the day when Aaron Latta went half-road in the cart wi’ me to Cullew, hauding my hand aneath my shawl.  He hadna spiered me, but I just kent.”

Tommy remained in his mother’s bed for the rest of the night, and so many things were buzzing in his brain that not for an hour did he think it time to repeat his new prayer.  At last he said reverently:  “O God, keep me from being a magerful man!” Then he opened his eyes to let God see that his prayer was ended, and added to himself:  “But I think I would fell like it.”

CHAPTER XI

AARON LATTA

The Airlie post had dropped the letters for outlying farms at the Monypenny smithy and trudged on.  The smith having wiped his hand on his hair, made a row of them, without looking at the addresses, on his window-sill, where, happening to be seven in number, they were almost a model of Monypenny, which is within hail of Thrums, but round the corner from it, and so has ways of its own.  With the next clang on the anvil the middle letter fell flat, and now the likeness to Monypenny was absolute.

Again all the sound in the land was the melancholy sweet kink, kink, kink of the smith’s hammer.