“Ow aye,” said Meg, sardonically, “I ken yer graund view.  It’s o’ yer last wife’s tombstane, wi’ the inscriptions the length o’ my airm aboot Betty Mowdiewort an’ a’ her virtues, that Robert Paterson cuttit till ye a year past in Aprile.  Na, na, ye’ll no get me to leeve a’ my life lookin’ oot on that ilk’ time I wash my dishes.  It wad mak’ yin be wantin’ to dee afore their time to get sic-like.  Gang an’ speer [ask] Manse Bell.  She’s mair nor half blind onyway, an’ she’s fair girnin’ fain for a man, she micht even tak’ you.”

With these cruel words Meg lifted her milking-stool and vanished within.  The cuif sat for a long time on his byne lost in thought.  Then he arose, struck his flint and steel together, and stood looking at the tinder burning till it went out, without having remembered to put it to the pipe which he held in his other hand.  After the last sparks ran every way and flickered, he threw the glowing red embers on the ground, kicked the pail on which he had been sitting as solemnly as if he had been performing a duty to the end of the yard, and then stepped stolidly into the darkness.

The hag-clog was now left alone against the wall beneath Winsome’s window, within which there was now the light of a candle and a waxing and waning shadow on the blind as some one went to and fro.  Then there was a sharp noise as of one clicking in the “steeple” or brace of the front door (which opened in two halves), and then the metallic grit of the key in the lock, for Craig Ronald was a big house, and not a mere farm which might be left all night with unbarred portals.

Winsome stepped lightly to her own door, which opened without noise.  She looked out and said, in a compromise between a coaxing whisper and a voice of soft command: 

“Meg, I want ye.”

Meg Kissock came along the passage with the healthy glow of the night air on her cheeks, and her candle in her hand.  She seemed as if she would pause at the door, but Winsome motioned her imperiously within.  So Meg came within, and Winsome shut to the door.  Then she simply held out her hand, at which Meg gazed as silently.

“Meg!” said Winsome, warningly.

A queer, faint smile passed momentarily over the face of Winsome’s handmaid, as though she had been long trying to solve some problem and had suddenly and unexpectedly found the answer.  Slowly she lifted up her dark-green druggit skirt, and out of a pocket of enormous size, which was swung about her waist like a captured leviathan heaving inanimate on a ship’s cable, she extracted a sheet of crumpled paper.

Winsome took it without a word.  Her eye said “Good-night” to Meg as plain as the minister’s text.

Meg Kissock waited till she was at the door, and then, just as she was making her silent exit, she said: 

“Ye’ll tak’ as guid care o’t as the ither yin ye fand.  Ye can pit them baith thegither.”