“Many years ago there were two students, poor in money but rich in their mutual love.  They were closer in affection than twin brothers.  The elder was betrothed to be married to a beautiful girl in the country; so he took down his friend with him to the village where the maid dwelt to stand by his side and look upon the joy of the bridegroom.  He saw the trysted (betrothed) of his friend.  He and she looked into one another’s eyes and were drawn together as by a power beyond them.  The elder was summoned suddenly back to the city, and for a week he, all unthinking, left the friends of his love together glad that they should know one another better.  They walked together.  They spoke of many things, ever returning back to speak of themselves.  One day they held a book together till they heard their hearts beat audibly, and in the book read no more that day.

“Upon the friend’s return he found only an empty house and distracted parents.  Bride and brother had fled.  Word came that they had been joined by old Joseph Paisley, the Gretna Green ‘welder,’ without blessing of minister or kirk.  Then they hid themselves in a little Cumbrian village, where for six years the unfaithful friend wrought for his wife—­for so he deemed her—­till in the late bitterness of bringing forth she died, that was the fairest of women and the unhappiest.”

The minister ceased.  Outside the rain had come on in broad single drops, laying the dust on the road.  Ralph could hear it pattering on the broad leaves of the plane-tree outside the window.  He did not like to hear it.  It sounded like a woman’s tears.

But he could not understand how all this bore on his case.  He was silenced and awed, but it was with the sight of a soul of a man of years and approved sanctity in deep apparent waters of sorrow.

The minister lifted his head and listened.  In the ancient woodwork of the manse, somewhere in the crumbling wainscoting, the little boring creature called a death-watch ticked like the ticking of an old verge watch.  Mr. Welsh broke off with a sudden causeless auger very appalling in one so sage and sober in demeanour.

“There’s that beast again!” he said; “often have I thought it was ticking in my head.  I have heard it ever since the night she died—­”

“I wonder at a man like you,” said Ralph, “with your wisdom and Christian standing, caring for a worm—­”

“You’re a very young man, and when you are older maybe you’ll wonder at a deal fewer things,” answered the minister with a kind of excited truculence very foreign to his habit, “for I myself am a worm and no man,” he added dreamily.  “And often I tried to kill the beast.  Ye see thae marks—­” he broke off again—­“I bored for it till the boards are a honeycomb, but the thing aye ticks on.”