“‘What is it you hinna done that you should hae done?’ she said.  ‘Oh, Mr. Whamond, if you want my help, it’s yours.’

“‘Your son’s a’ the earth to you,’ I cried, ’but my eldership’s as muckle to me.  Sax-and-twenty years hae I been an elder, and now I maun gie it up.’

“’Wha says that?” she speirs.

“‘I say it,’ I cried.  ’I’ve shirked my duty.  I gie ap my eldership now.  Tammas Whamond is no langer an elder o’ the kirk;’ ay, and I was chief elder.

“Dominie, I think she began to say that when the minister came hame he wouldna accept my resignation, but I paid no heed to her.  You ken what was the sound that keeped my ears frae her words; it was the sound o’ a machine coming yont the Tenements.  You ken what was the sicht that made me glare through the window instead o’ looking at her; it was the sicht o’ Mr. Dishart in the machine.  I couldna speak, but I got my body atween her and the window, for I heard shouting, and I couldna doubt that it was the folk cursing him.

“But she heard too, she heard too, and she squeezed by me to the window, I couldna look out; I just walked saft-like to the parlor door, but afore I reached it she cried joyously—­

“‘It’s my son come back, and see how fond o’ him they are!  They are running at the side o’ the machine, and the laddies are tossing their bonnets in the air.’

“‘God help you, woman!’ I said to mysel’, ’it canna be bonnets—­ it’s stanes and divits mair likely that they’re flinging at him.’  Syne I creeped out o’ the manse.  Dominie, you mind I passed you in the kitchen, and didna say a word?”

Yes, I saw the precentor pass through the kitchen, with such a face on him as no man ever saw him wear again.  Since Tammas Whamond died we have had to enlarge the Thrums cemetery twice; so it can matter not at all to him, and but little to me, what you who read think of him.  All his life children ran from him.  He was the dourest, the most unlovable man in Thrums.  But may my right hand wither, and may my tongue be cancer-bitten, and may my mind be gone into a dry rot, before I forget what he did for me and mine that day!

CHAPTER XLIII.

Rain—­mist—­thejaws.

To this day we argue in the glen about the sound mistaken by many of us for the firing of the Spittal cannon, some calling it thunder and others the tearing of trees in the torrent.  I think it must have been the roll of stones into the Quharity from Silver Hill, of which a corner has been missing since that day.  Silver Hill is all stones, as if creation had been riddled there, and in the sun the mica on them shines like many pools of water.