“I believe you had only a lover’s quarrel with Lord Rintoul last night,” she said to Babbie in the afternoon.  “Ah, you see I can guess what is taking you to the window so often.  You must not think him long in coming for you.  I can assure you that the rain which keeps my son from me must be sufficiently severe to separate even true lovers.  Take an old woman’s example, Babbie.  If I thought the minister’s absence alarming, I should be in anguish; but as it is, my mind is so much at ease that, see, I can thread my needle.”

It was in less than an hour after Margaret spoke thus tranquilly to Babbie that the precentor got into the manse.

CHAPTER XLII.

Margaret, the precentor.  And god between.

Unless Andrew Luke, who went to Canadas be still above ground, I am now the only survivor of the few to whom Lang Tammas told what passed in the manse parlor after the door closed on him and Margaret.  With the years the others lost the details, but before I forget them the man who has been struck by lightning will look at his arm without remembering what shrivelled it.  There even came a time when the scene seemed more vivid to me than to the precentor, though that was only after he began to break up.

“She was never the kind o’ woman,” Whamond said, “that a body need be nane feared at.  You can see she is o’ the timid sort.  I couldna hae selected a woman easier to speak bold out to, though I had ha’en my pick o’ them.”

He was a gaunt man, sour and hard, and he often paused in his story with a puzzled look on his forbidding face.

“But, man, she was so michty windy o’ him.  If he had wanted to put a knife into her, I believe that woman would just hae telled him to take care no to cut his hands.  Ay, and what innocent-like she was!  If she had heard enough, afore I saw her, to make her uneasy, I could hae begun at once; but here she was, shaking my hand and smiling to me, so that aye when I tried to speak I gaed through ither.  Nobody can despise me for it, I tell you, mair than I despise mysel’.

“I thocht to mysel’, ’Let her hae her smile out, Tammas Whamond; it’s her hinmost,’ Syne wi’ shame at my cowardliness, I tried to yoke to my duty as chief elder o’ the kirk, and I said to her, as thrawn as I could speak, ’Dinna thank me; I’ve done nothing for you.’

“‘I ken it wasna for me you did it,’ she said, ’but for him; but, oh, Mr. Whamond, will that make me think the less o’ you?  He’s my all,’ she says, wi’ that smile back in her face, and a look mixed up wi’t that said as plain, ‘and I need no more.’  I thocht o’ saying that some builds their house upon the sand, but—­dagont, dominie, it’s a solemn thing the pride mithers has in their laddies.  I mind aince my ain mither—­what the devil are you glowering at, Andrew Luke?  Do you think I’m greeting?

“‘You’ll sit down, Mr. Whamond,’ she says next.”