“Will ye, though?” said Sanders.

“What d’ ye think?” asked Sam’l.

“If ye wid rayther,” said Sanders, politely.

“There’s my han’ on ’t,” said Sam’l.  “Bless ye, Sanders; ye’ve been a true frien’ to me.”

Then they shook hands for the first time in their lives, and soon afterward Sanders struck up the brae to T’nowhead.

Next morning Sanders Elshioner, who had been very busy the night before, put on his Sabbath clothes and strolled up to the manse.

“But—­but where is Sam’l?” asked the minister; “I must see himself.”

“It’s a new arrangement,” said Sanders.

“What do you mean, Sanders?”

“Bell’s to marry me,” explained Sanders.

“But—­but what does Sam’l say?”

“He’s willin’,” said Sanders.

“And Bell?”

“She’s willin’ too.  She prefers ’t.”

“It is unusual,” said the minister.

“It’s a’ richt,” said Sanders.

“Well, you know best,” said the minister.

“You see the hoose was taen, at ony rate,” continued Sanders, “an’ I’ll juist ging in til ‘t instead o’ Sam’l.”

“Quite so.”

“An’ I cudna think to disappoint the lassie.”

“Your sentiments do you credit, Sanders,” said the minister; “but I hope you do not enter upon the blessed state of matrimony without full consideration of its responsibilities.  It is a serious business, marriage.”

“It’s a’ that,” said Sanders, “but I’m willin’ to stan’ the risk.”

So, as soon as it could be done, Sanders Elshioner took to wife T’nowhead’s Bell, and I remember seeing Sam’l Dickie trying to dance at the penny wedding.

Years afterward it was said in Thrums that Sam’l had treated Bell badly, but he was never sure about it himself.

“It was a near thing—­a michty near thing,” he admitted in the square.

“They say,” some other weaver would remark, “’at it was you Bell liked best.”

“I d’na kin,” Sam’l would reply; “but there’s nae doot the lassie was fell fond o’ me; ou, a mere passin’ fancy, ’s ye micht say.”

“THE HEATHER LINTIE”, By S. R. Crockett

Janet Balchrystie lived in a little cottage at the back of the Long Wood of Barbrax.  She had been a hard-working woman all her days, for her mother died when she was but young, and she had lived on, keeping her father’s house by the side of the single-track railway-line.  Gavin Balchrystie was a foreman plate-layer on the P.P.R., and with two men under him, had charge of a section of three miles.  He lived just where that distinguished but impecunious line plunges into a moss-covered granite wilderness of moor and bog, where there is not more than a shepherd’s hut to the half-dozen miles, and where the passage of a train is the occasion of commotion among scattered groups of black-faced sheep.  Gavin Balchrystie’s