[Illustration:  “Oh, my cheeny, my cheeny!”]

“Oh, my cheeny, my cheeny!  Oh, my bonnie cups that I hae used for forty years, and no’ a piece broken afore!”

“Ah, weel, Janet,” said the elder, “you shouldna badger an angry man when he’s drinking from your best cups.”

“I canna mend nor match it in the whole Province, Elder.  Oh, my bonnie cup.”

“I was thinking, Janet, o’ Katherine’s good name.  If it is gane, it is neither to mend nor to match in the whole wide world.  I’ll awa’ and see Joris and Lysbet.  And put every cross thought where you’ll never find them again, Janet; an tak’ your good-will in your hands, and come wi’ me.  Lysbet will want to see you.”

“Not her, indeed!  I can tell you, Elder, that Lysbet was vera cool and queer wi’ me yesterday.”

“Come, Janet, dinna keep your good-nature in remnants.  Let’s hae enough to make a cloak big enough to cover a’ bygone faults.”

“I think, then, I ought to stay wi’ Neil.”

“Neil doesna want anybody near him.  Leave him alane.  Neil’s a’ right.  Forty years syne I would hae broke my mother’s cheeny, and drawn steel as quick as Neil did, if I heard a word against bonnie Janet Gordon.”  And the old man made his wife a bow; and madam blushed with pleasure, and went upstairs to put on her bonnet and India shawl.

“Woman, woman,” meditated the smiling elder; “she is never too angry to be won wi’ a mouthful o’ sweet words, special if you add a bow or a kiss to them.  My certie! when a husband can get his ain way at sic a sma’ price, it’s just wonderfu’ he doesna buy it in perpetuity.”

Joris was somewhat comforted by his old friend’s sympathy; for the elder, in the hour of trial, knew how to be magnanimous.  But the father’s wound lay deeper than human love could reach.  He was suffering from what all suffer who are wounded in their affections; for alas, alas, how poorly do we love even those whom we love most!  We are not only bruised by the limitations of their love for us, but also by the limitations of our own love for them.  And those who know what it is to be strong enough to wrestle, and yet not strong enough to overcome, will understand how the grief, the anger, the jealousy, the resentment, from which he suffered, amazed Joris; he had not realized before the depth and strength of his feelings.

He tried to put the memory of Katherine away, but he could not accomplish a miracle.  The girl’s face was ever before him.  He felt her caressing fingers linked in his own; and, as he walked in his house and his garden, her small feet pattered beside him.  For as there are in creation invisible bonds that do not break like mortal bonds, so also there are correspondences subsisting between souls, despite the separation of distance.

“I would forget Katherine if I could,” he said to Dominie Van Linden; and the good man, bravely putting aside his private grief, took the hands of Joris in his own, and bending toward him, answered, “That would be a great pity.  Why forget?  Trust, rather, that out of sorrow God will bring to you joy.”