Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.The Fleming Children.Instead of following the path, Clifton went round the knoll to the brook, and paused again at the sight of a pair or two of little bare feet in the water, and thus began his acquaintance with the Fleming children. There were several of them, but Clifton saw first a beautiful brown boyish face, and a pair of laughing eyes half hidden by a mass of tangled curls, and recognised Davie. Close beside the face was another so like it, and yet so different, that Clifton looked in wonder. The features were alike, and the eyes were the same bonny blue, and the wind was making free with the same dark curls about it. But it was a more delicate face, not so rosy and brown, though the sun had touched it too. There was an expression of sweet gravity about the mouth, and the eyes that were looking up through the leaves into the sky had no laughter in them. It was a fair and gentle face, but there was something in it that made Clifton think of stern old Mr Fleming sitting on the Sabbath-day among his neighbours in the church.“That must be sister Lizzie’s wee Katie,” said Clifton to himself.The slender girlish figure leaned against the rock on which the boy was lying so that the two faces were nearly on a level, and a pretty picture they made together. Clifton had been making facetious remarks to his sister about the old-fashioned finery of the dressed-up village girls on their way to church, but he saw nothing to criticise in the straight, scant dress, of one dim colour, unrelieved by frill or collar, which Katie Fleming wore. He did not think of her dress at all, but of the slim, graceful figure and the bonny girlish face turned so gravely up to the sky. He was not sure whether it was best to go forward and speak or not. Ben stood still, looking also.“I say, Katie,” said the boy, lifting his head, “what is the seven-and-twentieth?”“Oh fie, Davie! to be thinking of propositions and such-like worldly things, and this the Sabbath-day,” said Katie, reprovingly.“Just as if you werena thinking of them yourself, Katie.”“No, I’m no’ thinking of them. They come into my head whiles. But I’m no’ fighting with them, or taking pleasure in them, as I do other days. I’m just resting myself in this bonny quiet place, looking at the sky and the bonny green grass. Eh, Davie, it’s a grand thing to have the rest and the quietness of the Sabbath-day.”The girl shook her head at the answer which Clifton did not hear, and went on.“It gives us time to come to ourselves, and to mind that there is something else in the world besides just cheese and butter-making, and these weary propositions. Of course it’s right to go to the kirk, and I promised grannie I would go this afternoon to the Scott school-house with the bairns. But I like to bide quiet here a while, too.”“I would far rather bide here,” said Davie.“Yes, but, Davie, we mustna think light of the Sabbath-day. Think what it is to grandfather. He would like it better if we were better bairns. I’m just glad of the rest.”“You’re tired of your books,” said Davie, with a little brotherly contempt in his voice. “You’re but a lassie, however, and it canna be helped.”“I canna do two things at once. I’m tired of making cheese and keeping up with girls at the school too. And I’m glad it’s the Sabbath-day for the rest. And, Davie,” she added, after a pause, “I’m not going to the school after you stop. Grannie needs me at home, and I’m no’ going.”“Catch me staying at home if I could go,” said Davie.“But, Davie, it is my duty to help grannie to make all the money we can to pay the debt, and get grandfather out of the hands of those avaricious Holts. What noise was yon, Davie?”Listeners seldom hear good of themselves, and the mention of the “avaricious Holts” startled Clifton into the consciousness that he was listening to that which was not intended for his ears, and he drew to Ben’s side.“It’s the little Flemings,” said Ben; “aint they Scotchy? That is the way they always speak to one another at home.”They went round the knoll through the trees among the broken pieces of rock scattered over the little eminence. Before they reached the brook the other way a voice hailed them.“Hallo, Ben! Does your Aunt Betsey know that you’re going about in such company on Sunday?”“If meeting’s out she knows, or she mistrusts,” said Ben, taking the matter seriously. “We’re going over to the Scott school-house to meeting. Aunt Betsey’ll like that, anyhow.”They all laughed, for Ben and the Fleming children had long been friends.“Here’s Clif got home sooner than he expected to, and Jacob, he’s reading a sermon by himself because the minister didn’t come, and so—we came away. This is Clif.”The smile which had greeted Ben went out of Katie’s eyes, and surprise and a little offence took its place, as she met Clifton’s look. But she laughed merrily when the lad, stepping back, took off his hat and bowed low, as he might have done to any of the fine ladies of B—, where he had been living of late.But in a little while she grew shy and uncomfortable, and conscious of her bare feet, and moved away. Clifton noticed the change, and said to himself that she was thinking of the mortgage, and of “those avaricious Holts.”“Your grandfather did not go to meeting, either,” said Ben, anxious to set himself right in Katie’s eyes. “We saw him turning the corner as we went down to the river.”“Grandfather!” repeated Katie. “I wonder why?”“I suppose it was because Jacob was going to read the sermon,” said Ben, reddening, and looking at his cousin.Katie reddened too and turned to go.“Grandfather must be home, then, Davie; it’s time to go in,” and Kate looked grave and troubled.“Davie,” repeated she, “it’s time to come home.”Davie followed her a step or two, and they heard him saying:“There’s no hurry, Katie; if my grandfather didna go to the kirk, he’ll be holding a meeting all by himself in Pine-tree Hollow, and he’ll not be at the house this while, and I want to speak to Ben.”“Davie,” said his sister, “mind it’s the Sabbath-day.”The chances were against his minding it very long. It was a good while before he followed his sister to the house, and he brought the Holts with him to share their dinners of bread and milk.“We’re all going to the meeting together, grannie,” said he, “and Kate,” he added in a whisper, “Clif Holt has promised to lend me the book that the master gave you a sight of the other day, and I am to keep it as long as I like; and he’s not so proud as you would think from his fine clothes and his fine manners; but he couldna tell me the seven-and-twentieth, more shame to him, and him at the college.”“He thinks much of himself,” said Katie, “for all that.”The little Flemings and their mother and the two Holts went to the Scott school-house, as had been proposed, and the house was left to Mrs Fleming as a general thing. This “remarkable old lady,” as the Gershom people had got into the way of calling her to strangers, greatly enjoyed the rare hours of rest and quiet that came at long intervals in her busy life, but she did not enjoy them to-day. Her Bible lay open upon the table, and “Fourfold State” and her “Solitude Sweetened” were within reach of her hand, but she could not settle to read either of them. She wandered from the door to the gate and back again in a restless, anxious way, that made her indignant with herself at last.“As gin he wasna to be trusted out of my sight an hour past the set time,” said she, going into the house and sitting resolutely down with her book in her hand. “And it is not only to him, but to his master, that my anxious thoughts are doing dishonour, as though I had really anything to fear. But he was unco’ downhearted when he went away.”She looked a very remarkable old lady as she sat there, still and firm. She was straight as an arrow, small and slender, wrinkled indeed, but with nothing of the weazened, sunken look which is apt to fall on small women when they grow old. She was a beautiful old woman, with clear bright eyes, and a broad forehead, over which the bands of hair lay white as snow.She had known a deal of trouble in her life, and, for the sake of those she loved, had striven hard to keep her strength and courage through it all, and the straight lines of her firmly-closed lips told of courage and patience still. But a quiver of weakness passed over her face, and over all her frame, as at last a slow, heavy footstep came up to the door. She listened a moment, and then rising up, she said cheerfully:“Is this you, gudeman? You’re late, arena you? Well, you’re dinner is waiting you.”She did not wait for an answer, nor did she look at him closely till she had put food before him. Then she sat down beside him. He, too, was remarkable-looking. He had no remains of the pleasant comeliness of youth as she had, but there were the same lines of patience and courage in his face. He was closely shaven, with large, marked features and dark, piercing eyes. It was a strong face, good and true, but still it was a hard face, and it was a true index of his character. He was firm and just always, and almost always he was kind, slow to take offence, and slow to give it; but being offended, he could not forgive. He looked tired and troubled to-night—a bowed old man.“Where are the bairns?” were the first words he uttered, and his face changed and softened as he spoke. She told him where they had gone, and that their mother had gone with them. Then she made some talk about the bonny day and the people he had seen at church, speaking quietly and cheerfully till he had finished his meal, and then, having set aside the dishes, she came close to him, and, laying her hand on his arm, said gently: “David, we are o’er lane in the house. Tell me what it is that’s troubling you.”He did not answer her immediately.“Is it anything new?” she asked.“No, no. Nothing new,” said he, turning toward her. At the sight of her fond wet eyes he broke down.“Oh, Katie! my woman,” he groaned, “it’s ill with me this day. I hae come to a strait bit o’ the way and I canna win through. ‘Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven,’ the Book says, and this day I feel that I havena forgiven.”Instead of answering, she bent over him till his grey head lay on her shoulder and rested there. He was silent for a little.“When I saw him younder to-day, smooth and smiling, standing so well with his fellow-men, my heart rose up against him; I daredna bide, lest I should cry out in the kirk before them all and call God’s justice in question—God that lets Jacob Holt go about in His sunshine, with all men’s good word on him, when our lad’s light went out in darkness so long ago. Is it just, Katie? Call ye it right and just?”She did not answer a word, but soothed him with hand and voice as she might have soothed a child. She had done it many times before during the forty years that she had been his wife, but she had never, even in the time of their sorest troubles, seen him so moved. She sat down quietly beside him and patiently waited.“Has anything happened, or is anything threatening that I dinna ken of?” asked she after a little.“No, nothing new has happened. But I am growing an old failed man, Katie, and no’ able to stand up against my ain fears.”“Ay, we are growing old and failed; our day is near over, and so are our fears. Why should we fear? Jacob Holt canna move the foundations of the earth. And even though he could, we needna fear, for ‘God is our refuge and strength.’”He was leaning back with closed eyes, tired and fainthearted, and he did not answer.“There’s no fear for the bairns,” she went on, cheerfully. “They are good bairns. There are few that hae the sense and discretion of our Katie, and her mother’s no’ without judgment, though she is but a feckless body as to health, and has been a heavy handful to us. They’ll be taken care of. The Lord is ay kind.”And so she went on, gentle soothing alternating with more gentle chiding, all the time keeping away from the sore place in his heart, not daring for his sake and for her own to touch it till this rare moment of weakness should be past.“You are wearied, and no wonder, with the heat and your long fast; lie down on your bed and rest till it be time to catechise the bairns—though I’m no’ for Sabbath sleeping as an ordinary thing. Will you no’ lie down? Well, you might step over as far as the pasture-bars and see if all is right with old Kelso and her foal, for here come the bairns and their mother, and there will be no peace with them till they get their supper, and your head will be none the better for their noise.”And so she got him away, going with him a few steps up the field. She turned in time to meet the troop of children who, in a state of subdued mirthfulness suitable to the day and their proximity to their grandfather, were drawing near. She had a gentle word of caution or chiding to each, and then she said softly to Katie:“You’ll go up the brae with your grandfather and help him if there is anything wrong with old Kelso. And cheer him up, my lassie. Tell him about the meeting, and the Sunday-school; say anything you think of to hearten him. You ken well how to do it.”“But, grannie,” said Katie, startled, “there is nothing wrong, is there?”“Wrong,” repeated her grandmother. “Ken you anything wrong, lassie, that you go white like that?”The brave old woman grew white herself as she asked, but she stood between Katie and the rest, that none might see.“I ken nothing, grannie, only grandfather didna bide to the meeting to-day, Ben told me.”“Didna bide to the meeting? Where went he, then? He has only just come home.”“It was because of Jacob Holt,” Ben said.“But Katie, my woman, you had no call surely to speak about the like of that to Ben Holt?”“I didna, grannie. I just heard him and came away. And, grannie, I think maybe grandfather was at Pine-tree Hollow. It would be for a while’s peace, you ken, as the bairns were at home.”“Pine-tree Hollow! Well, and why not?” said grannie, too loyal to the old man to let Katie see that she was startled by her words. “It has been for a while’s peace, as you say. And now you’ll run up the brae after him, and take no heed, but wile him from his vexing thoughts, like a good bairn as you are.”“And there’s nothing wrong, grannie?” said Katie, wistfully.“Nothing more than usual; nothing the Lord doesna ken o’, my bairn. Run away and speak to him, and be blithe and douce, and he’ll forget his trouble with your hand in his.”Katie’s voice was like a bird’s as she called: “Grandfather, grandfather, bide for me.”The old man turned and waited for her.“Doesna your grandmother need you, nor your mother, and can you come up the brae with that braw gown on?”Katie smiled and took his hand.“My gown will wash, and I’ll take care, and grannie gave me leave to come.”And so the two went slowly up the hill, saying little, but content with the silence. When they came back again Mrs Fleming, who was waiting for them at the door, felt her burden lightened, for her first glance at her husband’s face told her he was comforted.“My bonny Katie, gentle and wise, a bairn with the sense of a woman,” said she to herself, but she did not let her tenderness overflow. “We have gotten the milking over without you, Katie, my woman. And now haste you and take your supper, for it is time for the bairns’ catechism and we mustna keep your grandfather waiting.”That night when Ben Holt went home he found the house dark and apparently forsaken. Miss Betsey sat rocking in her chair in solitude and darkness, and she rocked on, taking no notice when Ben came in.“Have you got a sick headache, Aunt Betsey?” said Ben after a little; he did not ask for information, but for the sake of saying something to break the ominous silence. He knew well Aunt Betsey always had a sick headache and was troubled when he had been doing wrong.“I shall get over it, I expect, as I have before; talking won’t help it.”Ben considered the matter a little. “I don’t know that,” said he, “it depends some on what there is to say, and you don’t need to have sick headache this time, for I haven’t been doing anything that you would think bad.”Miss Betsey laughed unpleasantly.“What has that to do with it?”“Well, I haven’t been doing anything bad, anyhow.”“Only just breaking Sunday in the face and eyes of all Gershom. You are not a child to be punished now. Go to bed.”“I don’t know about breaking Sunday; I didn’t any more than old Mr Fleming. He didn’t care about going to Jacob’s meeting, and no more did Clif and me. We went along a piece, and then we went to the Scott school-house to meeting. It was a first-rate meeting.”“What about Mr Fleming; has he and Jacob been having trouble?” asked Miss Betsey, forgetting in her curiosity her controversy with Ben.“Nothing new, I don’t suppose. And Clif, he says that he don’t believe but what Jacob’ll do the right thing, and he says he’ll see to it himself.”“There, that’ll do,” interrupted Miss Betsey. “If Clifton Holt was to tell you that white was black you’d believe him.”“I’d consider it,” said Ben, gravely.“If you want any supper it’s in the cupboard,” said Miss Betsey, rising, “I’ve had supper and dinner too, up to Mr Fleming’s, and we went to meeting at the Scott school-house. It wasn’t Clif’s fault this time, Aunt Betsey, and we haven’t done anything very bad either. And Clif, he’s going to be awful steady, I expect, and stick to his books more than a little, and he sent his respects to you, Aunt Betsey, and he says—”“There, that’ll do. Go to bed if you don’t want to drive me crazy.”“I’ll go to bed right off if you’ll come and take away my candle, Aunt Betsey. No, I don’t want a candle; but if you’ll come in and tuck me up as you used to, for I haven’t been doing anything this time, nor Clif either. Will you, Aunt Betsey?”“Well, hurry up, then,” said Aunt Betsey, with a break in her voice, “for this day has been long enough for two, and I’m thankful it’s done,” and then she added to herself:“I sha’n’t worry about him if I can help it. But it is so much more natural for boys to go wrong than to go right, that I can’t help it by spells. After all I’ve seen, it isn’t strange either.”“Ben,” said she, when she took his candle in a little while, “you mustn’t think you haven’t done wrong because the day turned out better than it might have done. It only happened so. It was Sabbath-breaking all the same to leave meeting and go up the river. There, I aint going to begin again. But wrong is wrong, and sin is sin whichever way it ends.”“That’s so,” said Ben, penitently.“And there is only one way for sin to end, however it may look at the beginning, and it won’t help you to have Clif fall into the same condemnation. There, good-night.”“I don’t know about that last,” said Ben to himself. “It would seem kind o’ good to have Clif round ’most anywhere. But he’s going to work straight this time, I expect, and I guess he’ll have all the better chance to walk straight too.”

Instead of following the path, Clifton went round the knoll to the brook, and paused again at the sight of a pair or two of little bare feet in the water, and thus began his acquaintance with the Fleming children. There were several of them, but Clifton saw first a beautiful brown boyish face, and a pair of laughing eyes half hidden by a mass of tangled curls, and recognised Davie. Close beside the face was another so like it, and yet so different, that Clifton looked in wonder. The features were alike, and the eyes were the same bonny blue, and the wind was making free with the same dark curls about it. But it was a more delicate face, not so rosy and brown, though the sun had touched it too. There was an expression of sweet gravity about the mouth, and the eyes that were looking up through the leaves into the sky had no laughter in them. It was a fair and gentle face, but there was something in it that made Clifton think of stern old Mr Fleming sitting on the Sabbath-day among his neighbours in the church.

“That must be sister Lizzie’s wee Katie,” said Clifton to himself.

The slender girlish figure leaned against the rock on which the boy was lying so that the two faces were nearly on a level, and a pretty picture they made together. Clifton had been making facetious remarks to his sister about the old-fashioned finery of the dressed-up village girls on their way to church, but he saw nothing to criticise in the straight, scant dress, of one dim colour, unrelieved by frill or collar, which Katie Fleming wore. He did not think of her dress at all, but of the slim, graceful figure and the bonny girlish face turned so gravely up to the sky. He was not sure whether it was best to go forward and speak or not. Ben stood still, looking also.

“I say, Katie,” said the boy, lifting his head, “what is the seven-and-twentieth?”

“Oh fie, Davie! to be thinking of propositions and such-like worldly things, and this the Sabbath-day,” said Katie, reprovingly.

“Just as if you werena thinking of them yourself, Katie.”

“No, I’m no’ thinking of them. They come into my head whiles. But I’m no’ fighting with them, or taking pleasure in them, as I do other days. I’m just resting myself in this bonny quiet place, looking at the sky and the bonny green grass. Eh, Davie, it’s a grand thing to have the rest and the quietness of the Sabbath-day.”

The girl shook her head at the answer which Clifton did not hear, and went on.

“It gives us time to come to ourselves, and to mind that there is something else in the world besides just cheese and butter-making, and these weary propositions. Of course it’s right to go to the kirk, and I promised grannie I would go this afternoon to the Scott school-house with the bairns. But I like to bide quiet here a while, too.”

“I would far rather bide here,” said Davie.

“Yes, but, Davie, we mustna think light of the Sabbath-day. Think what it is to grandfather. He would like it better if we were better bairns. I’m just glad of the rest.”

“You’re tired of your books,” said Davie, with a little brotherly contempt in his voice. “You’re but a lassie, however, and it canna be helped.”

“I canna do two things at once. I’m tired of making cheese and keeping up with girls at the school too. And I’m glad it’s the Sabbath-day for the rest. And, Davie,” she added, after a pause, “I’m not going to the school after you stop. Grannie needs me at home, and I’m no’ going.”

“Catch me staying at home if I could go,” said Davie.

“But, Davie, it is my duty to help grannie to make all the money we can to pay the debt, and get grandfather out of the hands of those avaricious Holts. What noise was yon, Davie?”

Listeners seldom hear good of themselves, and the mention of the “avaricious Holts” startled Clifton into the consciousness that he was listening to that which was not intended for his ears, and he drew to Ben’s side.

“It’s the little Flemings,” said Ben; “aint they Scotchy? That is the way they always speak to one another at home.”

They went round the knoll through the trees among the broken pieces of rock scattered over the little eminence. Before they reached the brook the other way a voice hailed them.

“Hallo, Ben! Does your Aunt Betsey know that you’re going about in such company on Sunday?”

“If meeting’s out she knows, or she mistrusts,” said Ben, taking the matter seriously. “We’re going over to the Scott school-house to meeting. Aunt Betsey’ll like that, anyhow.”

They all laughed, for Ben and the Fleming children had long been friends.

“Here’s Clif got home sooner than he expected to, and Jacob, he’s reading a sermon by himself because the minister didn’t come, and so—we came away. This is Clif.”

The smile which had greeted Ben went out of Katie’s eyes, and surprise and a little offence took its place, as she met Clifton’s look. But she laughed merrily when the lad, stepping back, took off his hat and bowed low, as he might have done to any of the fine ladies of B—, where he had been living of late.

But in a little while she grew shy and uncomfortable, and conscious of her bare feet, and moved away. Clifton noticed the change, and said to himself that she was thinking of the mortgage, and of “those avaricious Holts.”

“Your grandfather did not go to meeting, either,” said Ben, anxious to set himself right in Katie’s eyes. “We saw him turning the corner as we went down to the river.”

“Grandfather!” repeated Katie. “I wonder why?”

“I suppose it was because Jacob was going to read the sermon,” said Ben, reddening, and looking at his cousin.

Katie reddened too and turned to go.

“Grandfather must be home, then, Davie; it’s time to go in,” and Kate looked grave and troubled.

“Davie,” repeated she, “it’s time to come home.”

Davie followed her a step or two, and they heard him saying:

“There’s no hurry, Katie; if my grandfather didna go to the kirk, he’ll be holding a meeting all by himself in Pine-tree Hollow, and he’ll not be at the house this while, and I want to speak to Ben.”

“Davie,” said his sister, “mind it’s the Sabbath-day.”

The chances were against his minding it very long. It was a good while before he followed his sister to the house, and he brought the Holts with him to share their dinners of bread and milk.

“We’re all going to the meeting together, grannie,” said he, “and Kate,” he added in a whisper, “Clif Holt has promised to lend me the book that the master gave you a sight of the other day, and I am to keep it as long as I like; and he’s not so proud as you would think from his fine clothes and his fine manners; but he couldna tell me the seven-and-twentieth, more shame to him, and him at the college.”

“He thinks much of himself,” said Katie, “for all that.”

The little Flemings and their mother and the two Holts went to the Scott school-house, as had been proposed, and the house was left to Mrs Fleming as a general thing. This “remarkable old lady,” as the Gershom people had got into the way of calling her to strangers, greatly enjoyed the rare hours of rest and quiet that came at long intervals in her busy life, but she did not enjoy them to-day. Her Bible lay open upon the table, and “Fourfold State” and her “Solitude Sweetened” were within reach of her hand, but she could not settle to read either of them. She wandered from the door to the gate and back again in a restless, anxious way, that made her indignant with herself at last.

“As gin he wasna to be trusted out of my sight an hour past the set time,” said she, going into the house and sitting resolutely down with her book in her hand. “And it is not only to him, but to his master, that my anxious thoughts are doing dishonour, as though I had really anything to fear. But he was unco’ downhearted when he went away.”

She looked a very remarkable old lady as she sat there, still and firm. She was straight as an arrow, small and slender, wrinkled indeed, but with nothing of the weazened, sunken look which is apt to fall on small women when they grow old. She was a beautiful old woman, with clear bright eyes, and a broad forehead, over which the bands of hair lay white as snow.

She had known a deal of trouble in her life, and, for the sake of those she loved, had striven hard to keep her strength and courage through it all, and the straight lines of her firmly-closed lips told of courage and patience still. But a quiver of weakness passed over her face, and over all her frame, as at last a slow, heavy footstep came up to the door. She listened a moment, and then rising up, she said cheerfully:

“Is this you, gudeman? You’re late, arena you? Well, you’re dinner is waiting you.”

She did not wait for an answer, nor did she look at him closely till she had put food before him. Then she sat down beside him. He, too, was remarkable-looking. He had no remains of the pleasant comeliness of youth as she had, but there were the same lines of patience and courage in his face. He was closely shaven, with large, marked features and dark, piercing eyes. It was a strong face, good and true, but still it was a hard face, and it was a true index of his character. He was firm and just always, and almost always he was kind, slow to take offence, and slow to give it; but being offended, he could not forgive. He looked tired and troubled to-night—a bowed old man.

“Where are the bairns?” were the first words he uttered, and his face changed and softened as he spoke. She told him where they had gone, and that their mother had gone with them. Then she made some talk about the bonny day and the people he had seen at church, speaking quietly and cheerfully till he had finished his meal, and then, having set aside the dishes, she came close to him, and, laying her hand on his arm, said gently: “David, we are o’er lane in the house. Tell me what it is that’s troubling you.”

He did not answer her immediately.

“Is it anything new?” she asked.

“No, no. Nothing new,” said he, turning toward her. At the sight of her fond wet eyes he broke down.

“Oh, Katie! my woman,” he groaned, “it’s ill with me this day. I hae come to a strait bit o’ the way and I canna win through. ‘Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven,’ the Book says, and this day I feel that I havena forgiven.”

Instead of answering, she bent over him till his grey head lay on her shoulder and rested there. He was silent for a little.

“When I saw him younder to-day, smooth and smiling, standing so well with his fellow-men, my heart rose up against him; I daredna bide, lest I should cry out in the kirk before them all and call God’s justice in question—God that lets Jacob Holt go about in His sunshine, with all men’s good word on him, when our lad’s light went out in darkness so long ago. Is it just, Katie? Call ye it right and just?”

She did not answer a word, but soothed him with hand and voice as she might have soothed a child. She had done it many times before during the forty years that she had been his wife, but she had never, even in the time of their sorest troubles, seen him so moved. She sat down quietly beside him and patiently waited.

“Has anything happened, or is anything threatening that I dinna ken of?” asked she after a little.

“No, nothing new has happened. But I am growing an old failed man, Katie, and no’ able to stand up against my ain fears.”

“Ay, we are growing old and failed; our day is near over, and so are our fears. Why should we fear? Jacob Holt canna move the foundations of the earth. And even though he could, we needna fear, for ‘God is our refuge and strength.’”

He was leaning back with closed eyes, tired and fainthearted, and he did not answer.

“There’s no fear for the bairns,” she went on, cheerfully. “They are good bairns. There are few that hae the sense and discretion of our Katie, and her mother’s no’ without judgment, though she is but a feckless body as to health, and has been a heavy handful to us. They’ll be taken care of. The Lord is ay kind.”

And so she went on, gentle soothing alternating with more gentle chiding, all the time keeping away from the sore place in his heart, not daring for his sake and for her own to touch it till this rare moment of weakness should be past.

“You are wearied, and no wonder, with the heat and your long fast; lie down on your bed and rest till it be time to catechise the bairns—though I’m no’ for Sabbath sleeping as an ordinary thing. Will you no’ lie down? Well, you might step over as far as the pasture-bars and see if all is right with old Kelso and her foal, for here come the bairns and their mother, and there will be no peace with them till they get their supper, and your head will be none the better for their noise.”

And so she got him away, going with him a few steps up the field. She turned in time to meet the troop of children who, in a state of subdued mirthfulness suitable to the day and their proximity to their grandfather, were drawing near. She had a gentle word of caution or chiding to each, and then she said softly to Katie:

“You’ll go up the brae with your grandfather and help him if there is anything wrong with old Kelso. And cheer him up, my lassie. Tell him about the meeting, and the Sunday-school; say anything you think of to hearten him. You ken well how to do it.”

“But, grannie,” said Katie, startled, “there is nothing wrong, is there?”

“Wrong,” repeated her grandmother. “Ken you anything wrong, lassie, that you go white like that?”

The brave old woman grew white herself as she asked, but she stood between Katie and the rest, that none might see.

“I ken nothing, grannie, only grandfather didna bide to the meeting to-day, Ben told me.”

“Didna bide to the meeting? Where went he, then? He has only just come home.”

“It was because of Jacob Holt,” Ben said.

“But Katie, my woman, you had no call surely to speak about the like of that to Ben Holt?”

“I didna, grannie. I just heard him and came away. And, grannie, I think maybe grandfather was at Pine-tree Hollow. It would be for a while’s peace, you ken, as the bairns were at home.”

“Pine-tree Hollow! Well, and why not?” said grannie, too loyal to the old man to let Katie see that she was startled by her words. “It has been for a while’s peace, as you say. And now you’ll run up the brae after him, and take no heed, but wile him from his vexing thoughts, like a good bairn as you are.”

“And there’s nothing wrong, grannie?” said Katie, wistfully.

“Nothing more than usual; nothing the Lord doesna ken o’, my bairn. Run away and speak to him, and be blithe and douce, and he’ll forget his trouble with your hand in his.”

Katie’s voice was like a bird’s as she called: “Grandfather, grandfather, bide for me.”

The old man turned and waited for her.

“Doesna your grandmother need you, nor your mother, and can you come up the brae with that braw gown on?”

Katie smiled and took his hand.

“My gown will wash, and I’ll take care, and grannie gave me leave to come.”

And so the two went slowly up the hill, saying little, but content with the silence. When they came back again Mrs Fleming, who was waiting for them at the door, felt her burden lightened, for her first glance at her husband’s face told her he was comforted.

“My bonny Katie, gentle and wise, a bairn with the sense of a woman,” said she to herself, but she did not let her tenderness overflow. “We have gotten the milking over without you, Katie, my woman. And now haste you and take your supper, for it is time for the bairns’ catechism and we mustna keep your grandfather waiting.”

That night when Ben Holt went home he found the house dark and apparently forsaken. Miss Betsey sat rocking in her chair in solitude and darkness, and she rocked on, taking no notice when Ben came in.

“Have you got a sick headache, Aunt Betsey?” said Ben after a little; he did not ask for information, but for the sake of saying something to break the ominous silence. He knew well Aunt Betsey always had a sick headache and was troubled when he had been doing wrong.

“I shall get over it, I expect, as I have before; talking won’t help it.”

Ben considered the matter a little. “I don’t know that,” said he, “it depends some on what there is to say, and you don’t need to have sick headache this time, for I haven’t been doing anything that you would think bad.”

Miss Betsey laughed unpleasantly.

“What has that to do with it?”

“Well, I haven’t been doing anything bad, anyhow.”

“Only just breaking Sunday in the face and eyes of all Gershom. You are not a child to be punished now. Go to bed.”

“I don’t know about breaking Sunday; I didn’t any more than old Mr Fleming. He didn’t care about going to Jacob’s meeting, and no more did Clif and me. We went along a piece, and then we went to the Scott school-house to meeting. It was a first-rate meeting.”

“What about Mr Fleming; has he and Jacob been having trouble?” asked Miss Betsey, forgetting in her curiosity her controversy with Ben.

“Nothing new, I don’t suppose. And Clif, he says that he don’t believe but what Jacob’ll do the right thing, and he says he’ll see to it himself.”

“There, that’ll do,” interrupted Miss Betsey. “If Clifton Holt was to tell you that white was black you’d believe him.”

“I’d consider it,” said Ben, gravely.

“If you want any supper it’s in the cupboard,” said Miss Betsey, rising, “I’ve had supper and dinner too, up to Mr Fleming’s, and we went to meeting at the Scott school-house. It wasn’t Clif’s fault this time, Aunt Betsey, and we haven’t done anything very bad either. And Clif, he’s going to be awful steady, I expect, and stick to his books more than a little, and he sent his respects to you, Aunt Betsey, and he says—”

“There, that’ll do. Go to bed if you don’t want to drive me crazy.”

“I’ll go to bed right off if you’ll come and take away my candle, Aunt Betsey. No, I don’t want a candle; but if you’ll come in and tuck me up as you used to, for I haven’t been doing anything this time, nor Clif either. Will you, Aunt Betsey?”

“Well, hurry up, then,” said Aunt Betsey, with a break in her voice, “for this day has been long enough for two, and I’m thankful it’s done,” and then she added to herself:

“I sha’n’t worry about him if I can help it. But it is so much more natural for boys to go wrong than to go right, that I can’t help it by spells. After all I’ve seen, it isn’t strange either.”

“Ben,” said she, when she took his candle in a little while, “you mustn’t think you haven’t done wrong because the day turned out better than it might have done. It only happened so. It was Sabbath-breaking all the same to leave meeting and go up the river. There, I aint going to begin again. But wrong is wrong, and sin is sin whichever way it ends.”

“That’s so,” said Ben, penitently.

“And there is only one way for sin to end, however it may look at the beginning, and it won’t help you to have Clif fall into the same condemnation. There, good-night.”

“I don’t know about that last,” said Ben to himself. “It would seem kind o’ good to have Clif round ’most anywhere. But he’s going to work straight this time, I expect, and I guess he’ll have all the better chance to walk straight too.”

Chapter Five.The Minister.The event of the summer to the people of Gershom was the coming of the new minister. It is not to be supposed that with a population of a good many hundreds there was uniformity of opinion in religious matters in the town. To say nothing of the North Gore people, the people of Gershom generally believed in the right of private judgment, and exercised it to such purpose that, within the limits of the township, at least a half dozen denominations were represented. The greater number of these, however, had not had much success in establishing their own peculiar form of worship, except for a little while at a time, and the greater part of the people were at this time more or less closely identified with the village corporation. So that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that all Gershom was moved to welcome the Reverend William Maxwell among them.Never, except perhaps in their most confidential whispers among themselves, did the wise men of Gershom confess that they were disappointed in their minister. They had not expected perfection, or they said they had not, but each and every one of them had expected some one very different from the silent, sallow, heavy-eyed young man whom Jacob Holt, at whose home he was for the present to live, introduced to them.Something had been said of the getting up of a monster tea-meeting to welcome him, but uncertainty in the time of his coming, because of illness, had prevented this, and as soon as he was seen there was a silent, but general decision among those in authority that this would not have been a successful measure. So he was conducted from house to house by Jacob Holt, or some other of the responsible people, and he was praised to his flock, and his flock were praised to him, but there was not much progress made toward acquaintance for a while, and even the least observing of them could see that there were times when contact with strangers, to say nothing of the necessity of making himself agreeable to them, was almost more than the poor young man could bear.Still, nobody confessed to disappointment. On the contrary, Jacob Holt and the rest of the leaders of public opinion declared constantly that he was “the right man in the right place.” Of Scottish parentage, brought up from his boyhood in Canada, and having received his theological education in the United States, if he were not the man to unite the various contending national elements in Gershom society, where was such a man to be found?No man could have every gift, it was said, and whatever Mr Maxwell might seem to lack as to social qualities, he was a preacher. All agreed that his sermons were wonderful. It was the elaborately prepared discourses of his seminary days, that the young man moved by a vague, but awful dread of breaking down, gave to his people first. It was well that the learned professor’s opinion of them and of their author had come to Gershom before him. There could be no doubt as to the sermons after that testimony, so it was no uncertain sound that went forth about his first pulpit efforts.They were clear, they were logical, they were profound. Above all, they were pronounced by the orthodox North Gore people to be “sound.” It is true he read them, but even that did not spoil them; and it was a decided proof that these people were sincere in their admiration, and in earnest in their desire for union and “the healing of breaches” that this was the case. In old times, that is, in the time of old Mr Grant, and old Mr Sangster, to be a “proper minister” was in their opinion to be a “dumb dog that could not bark,” and such a one had ever been an object of compassion, not to say of contempt among them. But Mr Maxwell’s sermons were worth reading, they said, and they waited. And so the first months were got safely over.Safely, but, alas! not happily, for the young minister; scarcely recovered from severe illness, weak in body and desponding in mind, he had no power to accommodate himself to the circumstances toward which all the preparation and discipline of his life had been tending. Over a time of sickness and suffering he looked back to days of congenial occupation and companionship, with a regret so painful that the future seemed to grow aimless and hopeless in its presence. As men struggle in dreams with unseen enemies, so he struggled with the sense of unfitness for the work he had so joyfully chosen, and for which he had so earnestly prepared, with the fear that he had mistaken his calling, and that he might dishonour, by the imperfect fulfillment of his duty, the Master that he loved.He despised himself for the weakness which made it a positive pain for him to come in contact with strangers with whom he had no power to make friends. He began to regard the hopes that had sustained him during the time of preparation, the pleasure he had taken in such remnants of other people’s work in the way of preaching as had fallen to him as a student; and the encouragement which had been given to him as to his gifts and talents, as so many temptations of Satan. It was this sense of unfitness for his work that made him fall back at first on the sermons of his student days, and which made the pulpit services, praised by his hearers, seem to him like a mockery. It was a miserable time to him. He distrusted himself utterly, and at all points; which would not have been so bad a thing if he had not also distrusted his Master.But such a state of things could not continue long. It must become either worse or better, and better it was to be. As Mr Maxwell’s health improved, he became less despondent, and more capable of enjoying society. Clifton Holt was at home again, but no one, not even Miss Elizabeth, could have anticipated that he would be almost the first one in Gershom to put the minister for the moment at his ease.Clifton had gone back to his college examinations at the appointed time; and had so far retrieved his character for steadiness and scholarship, that he was permitted to start fair another year, the last in his college course. He was now at home for the regular vacation, and was proving the sincerity and strength of his good resolutions to his sister’s satisfaction, by remaining in Gershom, and contenting himself with the moderate enjoyments of such pleasures as village society, and the neighbouring woods and streams afforded.Miss Elizabeth had seconded Jacob’s rather awkward attempts to bring her brother and the young minister together, taking a vague comfort in the idea that the intercourse must do Clifton good. But as a general thing Clifton kept aloof a little more decidedly than she thought either kind or polite, so that it was a surprise to her, as well as a pleasure, when one night they came in together; and they had not been long in the house, before she saw that whether the minister was to do her brother good or not, her brother had already done good to the minister. They were dripping wet from a summer shower, that had overtaken them; but Mr Maxwell looked a good deal more like other people, Miss Elizabeth thought, than ever she had seen him look before.“Mr Maxwell was in despair at the thought of venturing with muddy boots into Mrs Jacob’s ‘spick and span’ house, so I brought him here,” said Clifton. “We have been down at the Black Pool, and I have been taking a lesson in fly-fishing. We have earned our tea, and we are ready for it.”“And you shall have it. But I thought we were to—well, never mind. Go up-stairs and make yourselves comfortable, and tea will be ready when you come down.”“No one knows how to do things quite so well as Lizzie,” said Clifton to himself, when they came down to find the tea-table laid, not in the great chilly dining-room, but in the smaller sitting-room, on the hearth of which a bright wood-fire was burning. The old squire had been examining their fish, and listened with almost boyish interest to his son’s description of their sport. In the effort he made to entertain the old gentleman Mr Maxwell looked still more like other people, and Clifton’s coat, which he wore, helped to the same effect.“I stumbled over him lying on his face in Finlay’s grove,” said Clifton to his sister. “He would have run away, if I had not been too much for him. We borrowed Joe Finlay’s rod, and he went fishing with me. It is a great deal better for him than being stunned by women’s talk at Mrs Jacob’s.”“Yes, the sewing-circle!” said Elizabeth, “What will Mrs Jacob say? Did he forget it? Of course he was expected home.”“He said nothing about it, nor did I. Jacob asked me to go over in the evening. Why are you not there?”“I have been there all the afternoon. I came home to make father’s tea. I told Mrs Jacob I would go back. I am afraid Mr Maxwell’s coming here to-night will offend her.”“Of course, but what if it does?”“And do you like him? Does he improve on acquaintance?”“He turns out to be flesh and blood, not a skin stuffed with logic, and the odds and ends of other people’s theological opinions. He is a dyspeptic being, homesick and desponding, but he is a man. And look here, Lizzie; if you really want to do a good work, you must take him in hand, and not let Mrs Jacob, and the deacons, and all the rest of them sit on him.”“How am I to help it, if such be their pleasure?”“I have helped it to-night. Don’t say a word about the sewing-circle, lest his conscience should take alarm. I hope I shall see Mrs Jacob’s face when she hears that he has spent the evening here.”“I don’t care for Mrs Jacob, but I am afraid the people may be disappointed.” For in Gershom the ladies met week by week in each other’s houses to sew for the benefit of some good cause, and their husbands and brothers came to tea in the evening, and there was to be a more than usually large gathering on this occasion, Elizabeth knew. “However, I am not responsible,” thought she.So she said nothing, and her father in a little while said rather querulously, that he hoped she was not going out again.“Not if you want me, father. It will not matter much, I suppose.”“You will not be missed,” said her brother.Mr Maxwell did not seem to think it was a matter with which he had anything to do. He made no movement to go away when tea was over, and Elizabeth put away all thought of the disappointment of the people assembled, and of her sister-in-law’s displeasure, and enjoyed the evening. Mr Maxwell seemed to enjoy it too, though he did not say much. Clifton kept himself within bounds, and was amusing without being severe or disagreeable in his descriptions of some of the village customs and characters, and though he said some things to the minister that made his sister a little anxious and uncomfortable for the moment, she could see that their interest in each other increased as the evening wore on.It came out in the course of the conversation that Mr Maxwell had made the acquaintance of Ben Holt in his rambles, but he had never been at the Hill-farm, and had very vague ideas as to the Hill Holts or their circumstances, or as to their relationship to the Holts of the village. Clifton professed to be very much surprised.“Has not Mrs Jacob introduced you to Cousin Betsey? Has she not told you how many excellent qualities Cousin Betsey has? Only just a little set in her ways,” said Clifton, imitating so exactly Mrs Jacob’s voice and manner, that no one could help laughing.“Cousin Betsey is rather set in her ways, and not always agreeable in her manners to Mrs Jacob,” said Elizabeth. “But you are not to make Mr Maxwell suppose that there is any disagreement between them.”“By no means. They are the best of friends when they keep apart, and they don’t meet often. Mrs Jacob has company when the sewing-circle is to meet at the Hill, and when it meets at Mrs Jacob’s, Betsey has a great soap-making to keep her at home, or a sick headache, or something. To tell the truth, Cousin Betsey does not care a great deal about any of her village relations, except the squire. But she is a good soul, and a pillar in the church, though she says less about it than some people. I’ll drive you over to the farm some day. Cousin Betsey will put you through your catechism, I can tell you, if she happens to be in a good humour.”Mr Maxwell laughed. “I have had some experience of that sort of thing already,” said he. “But I fear it has not been a satisfactory affair to any one concerned.”“Cousin Betsey will manage better,” said Clifton.They went to the Hill at the time appointed, and the visit, and some others that they made, were so far successful that the minister took real pleasure in them, and that was more than could be said of any visit he had made before. Miss Betsey did not put him through his catechism in Clifton’s presence; that ceremony was reserved for a future occasion. She was rather stiff and formal in her reception of them, but she thawed out and consented to be pleased and interested before the after noon was over. She smiled and assented with sufficient graciousness when Clifton not only bespoke Ben’s company, on an expedition with gun and rod, which he and Mr Maxwell were going to make further down the river, but he invited himself and the minister to tea on their way home.“For you know, Cousin Betsey, that Ben and I won’t be very likely to get into mischief in the minister’s company, and you can’t object to our going this time.”“If anybody doesn’t object to the minister’s going in your company. That is the thing to be considered, I should say,” said Cousin Betsey, smiling grimly.“Oh, cousin! do you mean that going fishing with me will compromise the minister? No wonder that you are afraid to trust me with Ben. But I say that a day in the woods with Ben and me will do Mr Maxwell more good than two or three tea-meetings or sewing-circles. Only you have a good supper ready for us, and I will bring him home hungry as a hunter.”“Which hasn’t happened very often to him of late, if one may judge from his looks,” said Miss Betsey.“No, he ought to be living here at the Hill. It would suit him better than Jacob’s. And when are you coming to see us? Lizzie wanted to come with us to-day, but she was afraid you wouldn’t be glad to see her. You never come to our house, and she mustn’t do all the visiting. And, besides, you don’t ask her.”“It aint likely that she’ll be so hard up for something to amuse her, that she’ll want to fall back on a visit to the Hill. But if she should be, she can come along over, and try how it would seem to visit with mother and Cynthy and me. She’ll always find some of us here.”“All right. I’ll tell her you asked her, and she’ll be sure to come.”The success of this visit encouraged Clifton to try more in the minister’s company. For a reason that it was not difficult to understand, Jacob in his rounds had not taken him to visit at Mr Fleming’s, nor had any one else, and Clifton, remembering his own visit there, took the introduction of Mr Maxwell at Ythan Brae into his own hands, and Elizabeth went with him. They sailed up the river, and went through the woods as he and Ben had done. It was a lovely autumn day, but there were few tokens of decay in the woods and fields through which they took their way, and they lingered in the sweet air with a pleasure that made them unconscious of the flight of time, and the afternoon was far spent before they sat down to rest on the rocky knoll where Clifton in Ben’s company had renewed his acquaintance with the Fleming children. The remembrance of the time and the scene came back so vividly, that he could not help telling his companions about it. Elizabeth’s face clouded as he repeated Katie’s words about “those avaricious Holts” which had brought him to a sense of the indiscretion he was committing in listening.“The Flemings are hard upon Jacob. Mr Maxwell might have been more fortunate in his escort,” said she.“Nonsense, Lizzie! Mrs Fleming is far too sensible to confound us with Jacob; and, Lizzie, you used to be a pet of hers.”“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “long ago.”And as they lingered, she went on to tell them about the Flemings, and their opinions and manner of life, and about the troubles which had fallen on them. She grew earnest as she went on, telling about poor Hugh whom everybody had loved so well, whom she herself remembered as the handsomest, gentlest, and best of all those who had frequented their house, when her brothel Jacob was young and she was a child; and in her earnestness she said some things that surprised her brother as he listened.“My father and Mr Fleming were always friendly, and sometimes I went with my father to their house. I did not often see Mr Fleming, but I remember his coming into the room one day, when I was sitting on a low stool, holding the first baby of his son’s family in my lap. She was a lovely little creature, little Katie, just beginning to coo, and murmur, and smile at me with her bonny blue eyes, and I suppose the child, and my pride and delight in her, must have been a pretty sight to see, for the grandfather sat down beside us, and smiled as he looked and listened, and made some happy, foolish talk with us both. My father was very much surprised, he told me afterward; and in a little while, when I went into another room, I found Mrs Fleming crying, with her apron over her face. But they were happy tears, for she smiled when she saw us, and clasped and kissed baby and me, with many sweet Scottish words of endearment to us both. It was the first time she had seen her husband smile since their troubles, she said. The dark cloud was lifting, and wee Katie’s smile would bring sunshine again. I was a favourite with her a long time after that, but we have fallen out of acquaintance of late.”“Which is a great mistake on your part,” said her brother.“Yes; I hope she will be glad to see us. She will be glad to see you, Mr Maxwell.”“She will be glad to see us all,” said Clifton.

The event of the summer to the people of Gershom was the coming of the new minister. It is not to be supposed that with a population of a good many hundreds there was uniformity of opinion in religious matters in the town. To say nothing of the North Gore people, the people of Gershom generally believed in the right of private judgment, and exercised it to such purpose that, within the limits of the township, at least a half dozen denominations were represented. The greater number of these, however, had not had much success in establishing their own peculiar form of worship, except for a little while at a time, and the greater part of the people were at this time more or less closely identified with the village corporation. So that it is scarcely an exaggeration to say, that all Gershom was moved to welcome the Reverend William Maxwell among them.

Never, except perhaps in their most confidential whispers among themselves, did the wise men of Gershom confess that they were disappointed in their minister. They had not expected perfection, or they said they had not, but each and every one of them had expected some one very different from the silent, sallow, heavy-eyed young man whom Jacob Holt, at whose home he was for the present to live, introduced to them.

Something had been said of the getting up of a monster tea-meeting to welcome him, but uncertainty in the time of his coming, because of illness, had prevented this, and as soon as he was seen there was a silent, but general decision among those in authority that this would not have been a successful measure. So he was conducted from house to house by Jacob Holt, or some other of the responsible people, and he was praised to his flock, and his flock were praised to him, but there was not much progress made toward acquaintance for a while, and even the least observing of them could see that there were times when contact with strangers, to say nothing of the necessity of making himself agreeable to them, was almost more than the poor young man could bear.

Still, nobody confessed to disappointment. On the contrary, Jacob Holt and the rest of the leaders of public opinion declared constantly that he was “the right man in the right place.” Of Scottish parentage, brought up from his boyhood in Canada, and having received his theological education in the United States, if he were not the man to unite the various contending national elements in Gershom society, where was such a man to be found?

No man could have every gift, it was said, and whatever Mr Maxwell might seem to lack as to social qualities, he was a preacher. All agreed that his sermons were wonderful. It was the elaborately prepared discourses of his seminary days, that the young man moved by a vague, but awful dread of breaking down, gave to his people first. It was well that the learned professor’s opinion of them and of their author had come to Gershom before him. There could be no doubt as to the sermons after that testimony, so it was no uncertain sound that went forth about his first pulpit efforts.

They were clear, they were logical, they were profound. Above all, they were pronounced by the orthodox North Gore people to be “sound.” It is true he read them, but even that did not spoil them; and it was a decided proof that these people were sincere in their admiration, and in earnest in their desire for union and “the healing of breaches” that this was the case. In old times, that is, in the time of old Mr Grant, and old Mr Sangster, to be a “proper minister” was in their opinion to be a “dumb dog that could not bark,” and such a one had ever been an object of compassion, not to say of contempt among them. But Mr Maxwell’s sermons were worth reading, they said, and they waited. And so the first months were got safely over.

Safely, but, alas! not happily, for the young minister; scarcely recovered from severe illness, weak in body and desponding in mind, he had no power to accommodate himself to the circumstances toward which all the preparation and discipline of his life had been tending. Over a time of sickness and suffering he looked back to days of congenial occupation and companionship, with a regret so painful that the future seemed to grow aimless and hopeless in its presence. As men struggle in dreams with unseen enemies, so he struggled with the sense of unfitness for the work he had so joyfully chosen, and for which he had so earnestly prepared, with the fear that he had mistaken his calling, and that he might dishonour, by the imperfect fulfillment of his duty, the Master that he loved.

He despised himself for the weakness which made it a positive pain for him to come in contact with strangers with whom he had no power to make friends. He began to regard the hopes that had sustained him during the time of preparation, the pleasure he had taken in such remnants of other people’s work in the way of preaching as had fallen to him as a student; and the encouragement which had been given to him as to his gifts and talents, as so many temptations of Satan. It was this sense of unfitness for his work that made him fall back at first on the sermons of his student days, and which made the pulpit services, praised by his hearers, seem to him like a mockery. It was a miserable time to him. He distrusted himself utterly, and at all points; which would not have been so bad a thing if he had not also distrusted his Master.

But such a state of things could not continue long. It must become either worse or better, and better it was to be. As Mr Maxwell’s health improved, he became less despondent, and more capable of enjoying society. Clifton Holt was at home again, but no one, not even Miss Elizabeth, could have anticipated that he would be almost the first one in Gershom to put the minister for the moment at his ease.

Clifton had gone back to his college examinations at the appointed time; and had so far retrieved his character for steadiness and scholarship, that he was permitted to start fair another year, the last in his college course. He was now at home for the regular vacation, and was proving the sincerity and strength of his good resolutions to his sister’s satisfaction, by remaining in Gershom, and contenting himself with the moderate enjoyments of such pleasures as village society, and the neighbouring woods and streams afforded.

Miss Elizabeth had seconded Jacob’s rather awkward attempts to bring her brother and the young minister together, taking a vague comfort in the idea that the intercourse must do Clifton good. But as a general thing Clifton kept aloof a little more decidedly than she thought either kind or polite, so that it was a surprise to her, as well as a pleasure, when one night they came in together; and they had not been long in the house, before she saw that whether the minister was to do her brother good or not, her brother had already done good to the minister. They were dripping wet from a summer shower, that had overtaken them; but Mr Maxwell looked a good deal more like other people, Miss Elizabeth thought, than ever she had seen him look before.

“Mr Maxwell was in despair at the thought of venturing with muddy boots into Mrs Jacob’s ‘spick and span’ house, so I brought him here,” said Clifton. “We have been down at the Black Pool, and I have been taking a lesson in fly-fishing. We have earned our tea, and we are ready for it.”

“And you shall have it. But I thought we were to—well, never mind. Go up-stairs and make yourselves comfortable, and tea will be ready when you come down.”

“No one knows how to do things quite so well as Lizzie,” said Clifton to himself, when they came down to find the tea-table laid, not in the great chilly dining-room, but in the smaller sitting-room, on the hearth of which a bright wood-fire was burning. The old squire had been examining their fish, and listened with almost boyish interest to his son’s description of their sport. In the effort he made to entertain the old gentleman Mr Maxwell looked still more like other people, and Clifton’s coat, which he wore, helped to the same effect.

“I stumbled over him lying on his face in Finlay’s grove,” said Clifton to his sister. “He would have run away, if I had not been too much for him. We borrowed Joe Finlay’s rod, and he went fishing with me. It is a great deal better for him than being stunned by women’s talk at Mrs Jacob’s.”

“Yes, the sewing-circle!” said Elizabeth, “What will Mrs Jacob say? Did he forget it? Of course he was expected home.”

“He said nothing about it, nor did I. Jacob asked me to go over in the evening. Why are you not there?”

“I have been there all the afternoon. I came home to make father’s tea. I told Mrs Jacob I would go back. I am afraid Mr Maxwell’s coming here to-night will offend her.”

“Of course, but what if it does?”

“And do you like him? Does he improve on acquaintance?”

“He turns out to be flesh and blood, not a skin stuffed with logic, and the odds and ends of other people’s theological opinions. He is a dyspeptic being, homesick and desponding, but he is a man. And look here, Lizzie; if you really want to do a good work, you must take him in hand, and not let Mrs Jacob, and the deacons, and all the rest of them sit on him.”

“How am I to help it, if such be their pleasure?”

“I have helped it to-night. Don’t say a word about the sewing-circle, lest his conscience should take alarm. I hope I shall see Mrs Jacob’s face when she hears that he has spent the evening here.”

“I don’t care for Mrs Jacob, but I am afraid the people may be disappointed.” For in Gershom the ladies met week by week in each other’s houses to sew for the benefit of some good cause, and their husbands and brothers came to tea in the evening, and there was to be a more than usually large gathering on this occasion, Elizabeth knew. “However, I am not responsible,” thought she.

So she said nothing, and her father in a little while said rather querulously, that he hoped she was not going out again.

“Not if you want me, father. It will not matter much, I suppose.”

“You will not be missed,” said her brother.

Mr Maxwell did not seem to think it was a matter with which he had anything to do. He made no movement to go away when tea was over, and Elizabeth put away all thought of the disappointment of the people assembled, and of her sister-in-law’s displeasure, and enjoyed the evening. Mr Maxwell seemed to enjoy it too, though he did not say much. Clifton kept himself within bounds, and was amusing without being severe or disagreeable in his descriptions of some of the village customs and characters, and though he said some things to the minister that made his sister a little anxious and uncomfortable for the moment, she could see that their interest in each other increased as the evening wore on.

It came out in the course of the conversation that Mr Maxwell had made the acquaintance of Ben Holt in his rambles, but he had never been at the Hill-farm, and had very vague ideas as to the Hill Holts or their circumstances, or as to their relationship to the Holts of the village. Clifton professed to be very much surprised.

“Has not Mrs Jacob introduced you to Cousin Betsey? Has she not told you how many excellent qualities Cousin Betsey has? Only just a little set in her ways,” said Clifton, imitating so exactly Mrs Jacob’s voice and manner, that no one could help laughing.

“Cousin Betsey is rather set in her ways, and not always agreeable in her manners to Mrs Jacob,” said Elizabeth. “But you are not to make Mr Maxwell suppose that there is any disagreement between them.”

“By no means. They are the best of friends when they keep apart, and they don’t meet often. Mrs Jacob has company when the sewing-circle is to meet at the Hill, and when it meets at Mrs Jacob’s, Betsey has a great soap-making to keep her at home, or a sick headache, or something. To tell the truth, Cousin Betsey does not care a great deal about any of her village relations, except the squire. But she is a good soul, and a pillar in the church, though she says less about it than some people. I’ll drive you over to the farm some day. Cousin Betsey will put you through your catechism, I can tell you, if she happens to be in a good humour.”

Mr Maxwell laughed. “I have had some experience of that sort of thing already,” said he. “But I fear it has not been a satisfactory affair to any one concerned.”

“Cousin Betsey will manage better,” said Clifton.

They went to the Hill at the time appointed, and the visit, and some others that they made, were so far successful that the minister took real pleasure in them, and that was more than could be said of any visit he had made before. Miss Betsey did not put him through his catechism in Clifton’s presence; that ceremony was reserved for a future occasion. She was rather stiff and formal in her reception of them, but she thawed out and consented to be pleased and interested before the after noon was over. She smiled and assented with sufficient graciousness when Clifton not only bespoke Ben’s company, on an expedition with gun and rod, which he and Mr Maxwell were going to make further down the river, but he invited himself and the minister to tea on their way home.

“For you know, Cousin Betsey, that Ben and I won’t be very likely to get into mischief in the minister’s company, and you can’t object to our going this time.”

“If anybody doesn’t object to the minister’s going in your company. That is the thing to be considered, I should say,” said Cousin Betsey, smiling grimly.

“Oh, cousin! do you mean that going fishing with me will compromise the minister? No wonder that you are afraid to trust me with Ben. But I say that a day in the woods with Ben and me will do Mr Maxwell more good than two or three tea-meetings or sewing-circles. Only you have a good supper ready for us, and I will bring him home hungry as a hunter.”

“Which hasn’t happened very often to him of late, if one may judge from his looks,” said Miss Betsey.

“No, he ought to be living here at the Hill. It would suit him better than Jacob’s. And when are you coming to see us? Lizzie wanted to come with us to-day, but she was afraid you wouldn’t be glad to see her. You never come to our house, and she mustn’t do all the visiting. And, besides, you don’t ask her.”

“It aint likely that she’ll be so hard up for something to amuse her, that she’ll want to fall back on a visit to the Hill. But if she should be, she can come along over, and try how it would seem to visit with mother and Cynthy and me. She’ll always find some of us here.”

“All right. I’ll tell her you asked her, and she’ll be sure to come.”

The success of this visit encouraged Clifton to try more in the minister’s company. For a reason that it was not difficult to understand, Jacob in his rounds had not taken him to visit at Mr Fleming’s, nor had any one else, and Clifton, remembering his own visit there, took the introduction of Mr Maxwell at Ythan Brae into his own hands, and Elizabeth went with him. They sailed up the river, and went through the woods as he and Ben had done. It was a lovely autumn day, but there were few tokens of decay in the woods and fields through which they took their way, and they lingered in the sweet air with a pleasure that made them unconscious of the flight of time, and the afternoon was far spent before they sat down to rest on the rocky knoll where Clifton in Ben’s company had renewed his acquaintance with the Fleming children. The remembrance of the time and the scene came back so vividly, that he could not help telling his companions about it. Elizabeth’s face clouded as he repeated Katie’s words about “those avaricious Holts” which had brought him to a sense of the indiscretion he was committing in listening.

“The Flemings are hard upon Jacob. Mr Maxwell might have been more fortunate in his escort,” said she.

“Nonsense, Lizzie! Mrs Fleming is far too sensible to confound us with Jacob; and, Lizzie, you used to be a pet of hers.”

“Yes,” said Elizabeth, “long ago.”

And as they lingered, she went on to tell them about the Flemings, and their opinions and manner of life, and about the troubles which had fallen on them. She grew earnest as she went on, telling about poor Hugh whom everybody had loved so well, whom she herself remembered as the handsomest, gentlest, and best of all those who had frequented their house, when her brothel Jacob was young and she was a child; and in her earnestness she said some things that surprised her brother as he listened.

“My father and Mr Fleming were always friendly, and sometimes I went with my father to their house. I did not often see Mr Fleming, but I remember his coming into the room one day, when I was sitting on a low stool, holding the first baby of his son’s family in my lap. She was a lovely little creature, little Katie, just beginning to coo, and murmur, and smile at me with her bonny blue eyes, and I suppose the child, and my pride and delight in her, must have been a pretty sight to see, for the grandfather sat down beside us, and smiled as he looked and listened, and made some happy, foolish talk with us both. My father was very much surprised, he told me afterward; and in a little while, when I went into another room, I found Mrs Fleming crying, with her apron over her face. But they were happy tears, for she smiled when she saw us, and clasped and kissed baby and me, with many sweet Scottish words of endearment to us both. It was the first time she had seen her husband smile since their troubles, she said. The dark cloud was lifting, and wee Katie’s smile would bring sunshine again. I was a favourite with her a long time after that, but we have fallen out of acquaintance of late.”

“Which is a great mistake on your part,” said her brother.

“Yes; I hope she will be glad to see us. She will be glad to see you, Mr Maxwell.”

“She will be glad to see us all,” said Clifton.

Chapter Six.A Visit to Ythan Brae.It was a great deal later in the afternoon than it ought to have been for the first visit of the minister, and the chances were he would have been told so in any other house in the parish. But Mrs Fleming welcomed him warmly, and all the more warmly, she intimated, that he came in such good company. The lateness of the hour made this difference in the order of events: they had their tea first, and their visit afterward; a very good arrangement, for their tramp through the fields and woods had made them hungry, and Mrs Fleming’s oat-cakes and honey were delicious. There were plenty of other good things on the table, but the honey and oat-cakes were the characteristic part of the meal, never omitted in Mrs Fleming’s preparations for visitors. She had not forgotten the old Scottish fashion of pressing the good things upon her guests, but there was not much of this needed now, and she looked on with much enjoyment.“Will you go ben the house, or bide still where you are?” asked she, when tea was over and they still lingered. “Ben the house”—in the parlour there were tall candles burning, and other arrangements made, but no one seemed inclined to move. The large kitchen in which they were sitting was, at this time of the year, the pleasantest place in the house. Later the cooking-stove, which in summer stood in the outer kitchen would be brought in, and the great fire-place would be shut up, but to-night there was a fire of logs on the wide hearth. It flickered and sparkled, and lighted up the dark face of old Mr Fleming, and the fair face of Miss Elizabeth, as they sat on opposite sides of the hearth, and made shadows in the corners where the shy little Flemings had gathered. It lighted, too, the beautiful old face of the grandmother as she sat in her white cap and kerchief, with folded hands, making, to the minister’s pleased eye, a fair picture of the homely scene.And so they sat still. Katie and her mother moved about quietly for a while, removing the tea-things and doing what was to be done about the house. When all this was over, and they sat down with the rest, Clifton, and even Elizabeth, awaited with a certain curiosity and interest the discussion of some important matter of opinion or doctrine between the old people and the minister, as was the way during the minister’s visits to most of the old Scotch houses of the place. But Mrs Fleming had changed, and the times had changed, since the days when old Mr Hollister and his friend went about to discuss the question of a union with the good folks of North Gore, and the household had changed also. The children sitting there so quiet, yet so observant, came in for a share of the minister’s notice, and when their grandmother proposed that they should arrange themselves before him in the order of their ages to be catechised by him, he entered into the spirit of the occasion as nobody in Gershom had seen him enter into anything yet. He knew all about it. He had been catechised in his youth in the orthodox manner of his country, and he acquitted himself well. From “What is the chief end of man?” until one after another of the children stopped, and even Katie hesitated, he went with shut book. It was very creditable to him in Mrs Fleming’s opinion, quite as satisfactory as a formal discussion would have been in assuring her of the nature and extent of his doctrinal knowledge, and the soundness of his views generally.“He’ll win through,” said she to herself; “he has been dazed with books till he has fallen out of acquaintance with his fellow-creatures, and he’ll need to ken mair about them before he can do much good in his work. But he’ll learn, there is no fear.”The minister had other questions to ask at “the bairns” that had never been written in any catechism, and he had new things to tell them, and old things to tell them in a new way, and, as she looked and listened, Mrs Fleming nodded to her husband and said to herself again, “He’ll win through.”“Bairns,” said she impressively, “you see the good of learning your Bible and your catechism when you are young; take an example from the minister.”And with this the bairns were dismissed from their position; for the rest of the evening till bedtime it was expected that they were “to be seen and not heard,” as was the way with bairns when their grandmother was young. The two eldest, Katie and Davie, were put forward a little, in a quiet way, and encouraged to display their book-learning to their visitors. But Katie was shy and uncomfortable, and did not do herself as much credit as usual. Her grandfather put her forward as a little girl, and the visitors treated her as a grown woman, and she did not like it, and at last took refuge with her knitting at her grandfather’s side, and left the field to Davie.As for Davie, he was shy too, but in some things he was bold to a degree that filled Katie with astonishment. He held his own opinion about various things against the minister, who, to be sure, “was only just trying him.” And he and young Mr Holt wrangled together over their opinions and questions good-humouredly enough, but still very much in earnest. Young Mr Holt was the better of the two as to the subjects under discussion, but he was not so well up as he thought he was, or as he ought to have been, considering his advantages, and Davie knew enough to detect his errors, though not enough to correct them. The minister, appealed to by both, would not interfere, but listened smiling. Mr Fleming sat silent, as his manner was, sometimes smiling, but oftener looking grave.“Softly, Davie. Take heed to your words, my laddie,” said his grandmother now and then, and Elizabeth listened well pleased to see her brother, about whom she was sometimes anxious and afraid, taking evident pleasure in it all.By and by the Book was brought, and Mr Fleming, as head and priest of the household, solemnly asked God’s blessing on the Word they were to read, before he gave it to the minister to conduct the evening worship. It chanced that the chapter read was the one from which Mr Maxwell’s Sunday text had been taken; and in the pause that followed the unwilling, but unresisting departure of the little ones to bed, Clifton said so. Then he added that he wished Mrs Fleming had been there to hear the sermon, as he would have liked to hear her opinion as to some of the sentiments given in it by the minister. It was said with the hope of drawing the old lady into one of the discussions of which they had heard, Elizabeth knew, but it did not succeed.“I heard the sermon, and had no fault to find with it; had you?” said Mrs Fleming.“Fault! No. One would hardly like to find fault with it before the minister,” said Clifton, laughing. “I am not very well up in theology myself, but it struck me that the sermon was not just in the style of old Mr Hollister’s.”“I doubt you werena in the way of taking much heed of Mr Hollister’s sermons, and you can ask Mr Maxwell the meaning of his words if you are not satisfied. What was lacking in the sermon the years will supply to those that are to follow it. It was written at the bidding of the doctors o’ divinity at the college, was it not?”“Yes,” said Mr Maxwell with some hesitation, “it was written for them.”“Oh! they would surely be pleased with it. It was sound and sensible and conclusive; that is, you said in it what you set out to say, and that doesna ay happen in sermons. You’ll put more heart in your ministrations when you have been a while among us, I hope.”There was a few minutes’ silence.“There is a grave charge implied in your words, Mrs Fleming, and I fear a true one,” said the minister.“I meant none,” said Mrs Fleming earnestly. “As for your sermon, what could you expect? It was all the work of your head, your heart had little part in it. It was the doctors of divinity, and the lads, your fellow-students—ilka ane o’ them waiting to get a hit at you—that you had in your mind when you were writing it, and no’ the like of us poor folk, who are needing to be guided and warned and fed. But it is a grand thing to have a clear head, and to be able to put things in the right way, and, according to the established rules: yon was a fine discourse; though you seemed to take little pleasure in it yourself, sir, I thought, as you went on.”Mr Maxwell smiled rather ruefully. “I took little pleasure in it indeed.”“I saw that. But you have no call to be discouraged. We have the treasure in earthen vessels, as Paul says himself. But a clear head and a ready tongue are wonderful gifts for the Master’s use, when they go with a heart that He has made His dwelling. Have patience with yourself. If you are the willing servant of your Master, His word is given for your success in His work. It is Him you are to look to, and not to yourself.”“Ay! there is comfort in that.”“It must be a great change for you coming to a place like this from the companionship of wise men, living and dead, and you are but young and likely to feel it. But you’ll come to yourself when the strangeness wears off. Your work lies at your hand, and plenty of it. You’ll have thraward folk to counter you, and folk kind and foolish to praise you and your words and works, whatever they may be. A few will give you wholesome counsel, and a smaller few wholesome silence, and you must take them as they come, and carry them one and all to His feet, and there’s no fear of you.”The minister said nothing. Clifton looked curiously at his grave face over his sister’s shoulder.“Wholesome silence! It’s not much of that he is likely to get in Gershom,” said he.“But,” said Mrs Fleming earnestly, “you are not to put on a grave face like that, or I shall think your visit hasna done you good, and that would grieve me. You have no call to look doubtfully before you. You have the very grandest of work laid ready to your hand, and you have the will to do it, and I daresay you are no just that ill prepared for it. At least you are prepared to learn in God’s school that He has put you in. And you have His promise that you cannot fail. It is wonderful to think of.”“Who is sufficient for these things?” said the minister gravely.“Him that God sends He makes sufficient,” said Mrs Fleming, cheerfully. “Put your trust in Him, and take good care of yourself, and above all, I would have you to beware of Mrs Jacob Holt’s Yankee pies and cakes and hot bread, for they would be just the ruination of you, health and temper, and all. But you needna say I told you.”Elizabeth and Clifton laughed heartily at the anticlimax. Mr Maxwell laughed too, and hung his head, remembering Mrs Jacob’s dainties, which he had not yet been able to do justice to. Mrs Fleming might have enlarged on the subject if time allowed, but they had a long walk before them.“I hope you’ll no be such a stranger now that you have found your way back again,” said Mrs Fleming, as Elizabeth was putting on her shawl. “I mind the old days, and you have ay been kind to my Katie, who is growing a woman now, and more in need of kindness and counsel than ever,” added she, looking wistfully from the one to the other. For answer, Elizabeth turned and kissed Katie, and then touched with her lips the brown wrinkled hand of the grandmother.“God bless you and keep you, and give you the desire of your heart,” said Mrs Fleming, “if it be the best thing for you,” she added, moved by a prudent after-thought, which came to her to-night more quickly than such thoughts were apt to come to her. “I’m no feared for you or Katie. Why should I be? You are both in good keeping. And if you are no dealt with to your pleasure, you will be to your profit, and that is the chief thing.”They had a pleasant walk through the dewy fields in the moonlight, and much to say to one another, but they had fallen into silence before they paused at the gate to say “good-night.”“I suppose on the whole our visit may be considered a success,” said Clifton as they lingered.“Altogether a success,” said Elizabeth.“I am glad I went in your company,” said the minister.“Thank you,” said Elizabeth.“Your are welcome,” said her brother, and then he added, laughing, “I hope all the rest of the world will be as well pleased.”This was to be doubted. Mrs Jacob was by no means pleased for one. She had said nothing to Elizabeth on the occasion when Mr Maxwell had stayed away from the sewing-circle, but Elizabeth knew that her silence did not imply either forgetfulness or forgiveness. She could wait long for an opportunity to speak, and could then put much into a few words for the hearing of the offender. It was a renewal of the offence that the minister should have been taken to the hill-farm by Clifton, and then to Ythan Brae by him and his sister, though why she could not have easily explained. Whatever Clifton did was apt to take the form of an indiscretion in her eyes, but neither her sharp words nor her soft words were heeded by him, and she rarely wasted them upon him. But it was different where his sister was concerned. She had turns now and then of taking upon herself the responsibility of Elizabeth, as of a young girl to whom she stood as the nearest female relation, and she knew how to hurt her when she tried. Elizabeth rarely resented openly her little thrusts, but all the same, she unconsciously armed herself for defence in Mrs Jacob’s presence, and an attitude of defence is always uncomfortable where relations who meet often are concerned.They had met a good many times, however, before any allusion was made to the visits which had displeased her. She came one day into Elizabeth’s sitting-room to find Mr Maxwell there in animated discussion with Clifton. She hardly recognised him in the new brightness of his face, and the animation of his voice and manner. He was as unlike as possible to the silent, constrained young man who daily sat at her table, and who responded so inadequately to her efforts for his entertainment. She liked the minister, and wished to make him happy in her house, and there was real pain mingled with the unreasonable anger she felt as she watched him. Her first few minutes were occupied in answering the old squire’s questions about Jacob and the children. She had startled him from his afternoon’s sleep, and he was a little querulous and exacting, as was usual at such times. But in a little she said:“Mr Maxwell had good visits at the Hill, and at Mr Fleming’s, he told us. It is a good thing you thought of going with him, Elizabeth. You and Cousin Betsey have become reconciled.”“Reconciled!” repeated Elizabeth; “we have never quarrelled.”“Oh, of course not. That would not do at all. But you have never been very fond of one another, you know.”“I respect Cousin Betsey entirely, though we do not often see one another,” said Elizabeth. “I did not go to the Hill the other day, however. Clifton went with Mr Maxwell, and they enjoyed it, as you say.”The squire was a little deaf, and not catching what was said, needed to have the whole matter explained to him.“Betsey is a good woman,” said he; “I respect Betsey. Her mother isn’t much of a business woman, and it is well Betsey is spared to her. It’ll be all right about the place; I’ll make it all right, and Jacob won’t be hard on them.”And so the old man rambled on, till the talk turned to other matters, and Mrs Jacob kept the rest of her remarks for Elizabeth’s private ear.“I am so glad you like Mr Maxwell, Elizabeth. I was afraid you would not; you are so fastidious, you know, and he seems to have so little to say for himself.”“I like him very much, and so does Clifton,” said Elizabeth, waiting for more.“I am very glad. He seems to be having a good influence on Clifton. He hasn’t been in any trouble this time, at all, has he? How thankful you must be. Jacob is pleased. I only hope it may last.”The discussion of her younger brother’s delinquencies, real or supposed, was almost the only thing that irritated Elizabeth beyond her power of concealment; and if she had been in her sister-in-law’s house, this would have been the moment when she would have drawn her visit to a close. Now she could only keep silence.“I hope Clifton may do well next year,” went on Mrs Jacob; “you will miss him, and so shall we.”“We must do as well as we can without him. In summer he will be home for good, I hope.”“Yes, if he should conclude to settle down steadily to business. Time will show, and this winter we have Mr Maxwell. It depends some on Miss Martha Langden, I suppose, how long we shall have him in our house. You have heard all about that, I suppose?” said she, smiling significantly.Elizabeth smiled too, but shook her head.“I have heard the name,” said she.“Well, you must not ask me about her. I only know that she gets a good many letters from Gershom about this time. It is not to be spoken of yet.”She rose to go, and Elizabeth went with her to the door, and she laughed to herself as she followed her with her eye down the street. She had heard Miss Martha Langden’s name once. It was on the night when Mr Maxwell called on his way from the Hill-farm. He had said that he liked Miss Betsey, and that she reminded him of one of his best friends, Miss Martha Langden, one who had been his mother’s friend when he was a child.Miss Elizabeth laughed again as she turned to go into the house, and she might have laughed all the same, if she had known that the frequent letters to Miss Martha Langden never went without a little note to some one very different from Miss Martha. But she did not know this till long after.Clifton Holt went back to college again, and Elizabeth prepared for a quiet winter. She knew that, as in other winters, she would be held responsible for a certain amount of entertainment to the young people of the village in the way of gigantic sewing-circles, and no less gigantic evening parties. But these could not fall often to her turn, and they were not exciting affairs, even when the whole responsibility of them fell on herself, as was the case when her brother was away. So it was a very quiet winter to which she looked forward.And because she did not dread the utter quiet, as she had done in former winters, and because she was able to dismiss from her thoughts, with very little consideration of the matter, a tempting invitation to pass a month or two in the city of Montreal, she fancied she was drawing near to that period in a woman’s life, when she is supposed to be becoming content with the existing order of things, when the dreams and hopes, and expectations vague and sweet, which make so large a part in girlish happiness, give place to graver and more earnest thoughts of life and duty, to a juster estimate of what life has to give, and an acquiescent acceptance of the lot which she has not chosen, but which has come to her in it. It is not very often that so desirable a state of mind and heart comes to girls of four-and-twenty. It certainly had not come to Elizabeth. However, it gave her pleasure—and a little pain as well—to think so, and it was a good while before she found out that she had made a mistake.As for Mr Maxwell, he was “coming to himself,” as Mrs Fleming had predicted. His health improved, and as he grew familiar with his new circumstances, the despondency that had weighed him down was dispelled. Before the snow came, he was making visits among the people, without any one to keep him in countenance. Not regular pastoral visits, but quite informal ones, to the farmer in his pasture or wood-lot, or as he followed his oxen over the autumn fields. He dropped now and then into the workshop of Samuel Green, the carpenter, and exchanged a word with John McNider as he passed his forge, where he afterward often stopped to have a talk. The first theological discussion he had in Gershom was held in Peter Longley’s shoe-shop, one morning when he found that amiable sceptic alone and disposed—as he generally was—for a declaration of his rather peculiar views of doctrine and practice; and his first temperance lecture was given to an audience of one, as he drove in Mark Varney’s ox-cart over that poor man’s dreary and neglected fields.

It was a great deal later in the afternoon than it ought to have been for the first visit of the minister, and the chances were he would have been told so in any other house in the parish. But Mrs Fleming welcomed him warmly, and all the more warmly, she intimated, that he came in such good company. The lateness of the hour made this difference in the order of events: they had their tea first, and their visit afterward; a very good arrangement, for their tramp through the fields and woods had made them hungry, and Mrs Fleming’s oat-cakes and honey were delicious. There were plenty of other good things on the table, but the honey and oat-cakes were the characteristic part of the meal, never omitted in Mrs Fleming’s preparations for visitors. She had not forgotten the old Scottish fashion of pressing the good things upon her guests, but there was not much of this needed now, and she looked on with much enjoyment.

“Will you go ben the house, or bide still where you are?” asked she, when tea was over and they still lingered. “Ben the house”—in the parlour there were tall candles burning, and other arrangements made, but no one seemed inclined to move. The large kitchen in which they were sitting was, at this time of the year, the pleasantest place in the house. Later the cooking-stove, which in summer stood in the outer kitchen would be brought in, and the great fire-place would be shut up, but to-night there was a fire of logs on the wide hearth. It flickered and sparkled, and lighted up the dark face of old Mr Fleming, and the fair face of Miss Elizabeth, as they sat on opposite sides of the hearth, and made shadows in the corners where the shy little Flemings had gathered. It lighted, too, the beautiful old face of the grandmother as she sat in her white cap and kerchief, with folded hands, making, to the minister’s pleased eye, a fair picture of the homely scene.

And so they sat still. Katie and her mother moved about quietly for a while, removing the tea-things and doing what was to be done about the house. When all this was over, and they sat down with the rest, Clifton, and even Elizabeth, awaited with a certain curiosity and interest the discussion of some important matter of opinion or doctrine between the old people and the minister, as was the way during the minister’s visits to most of the old Scotch houses of the place. But Mrs Fleming had changed, and the times had changed, since the days when old Mr Hollister and his friend went about to discuss the question of a union with the good folks of North Gore, and the household had changed also. The children sitting there so quiet, yet so observant, came in for a share of the minister’s notice, and when their grandmother proposed that they should arrange themselves before him in the order of their ages to be catechised by him, he entered into the spirit of the occasion as nobody in Gershom had seen him enter into anything yet. He knew all about it. He had been catechised in his youth in the orthodox manner of his country, and he acquitted himself well. From “What is the chief end of man?” until one after another of the children stopped, and even Katie hesitated, he went with shut book. It was very creditable to him in Mrs Fleming’s opinion, quite as satisfactory as a formal discussion would have been in assuring her of the nature and extent of his doctrinal knowledge, and the soundness of his views generally.

“He’ll win through,” said she to herself; “he has been dazed with books till he has fallen out of acquaintance with his fellow-creatures, and he’ll need to ken mair about them before he can do much good in his work. But he’ll learn, there is no fear.”

The minister had other questions to ask at “the bairns” that had never been written in any catechism, and he had new things to tell them, and old things to tell them in a new way, and, as she looked and listened, Mrs Fleming nodded to her husband and said to herself again, “He’ll win through.”

“Bairns,” said she impressively, “you see the good of learning your Bible and your catechism when you are young; take an example from the minister.”

And with this the bairns were dismissed from their position; for the rest of the evening till bedtime it was expected that they were “to be seen and not heard,” as was the way with bairns when their grandmother was young. The two eldest, Katie and Davie, were put forward a little, in a quiet way, and encouraged to display their book-learning to their visitors. But Katie was shy and uncomfortable, and did not do herself as much credit as usual. Her grandfather put her forward as a little girl, and the visitors treated her as a grown woman, and she did not like it, and at last took refuge with her knitting at her grandfather’s side, and left the field to Davie.

As for Davie, he was shy too, but in some things he was bold to a degree that filled Katie with astonishment. He held his own opinion about various things against the minister, who, to be sure, “was only just trying him.” And he and young Mr Holt wrangled together over their opinions and questions good-humouredly enough, but still very much in earnest. Young Mr Holt was the better of the two as to the subjects under discussion, but he was not so well up as he thought he was, or as he ought to have been, considering his advantages, and Davie knew enough to detect his errors, though not enough to correct them. The minister, appealed to by both, would not interfere, but listened smiling. Mr Fleming sat silent, as his manner was, sometimes smiling, but oftener looking grave.

“Softly, Davie. Take heed to your words, my laddie,” said his grandmother now and then, and Elizabeth listened well pleased to see her brother, about whom she was sometimes anxious and afraid, taking evident pleasure in it all.

By and by the Book was brought, and Mr Fleming, as head and priest of the household, solemnly asked God’s blessing on the Word they were to read, before he gave it to the minister to conduct the evening worship. It chanced that the chapter read was the one from which Mr Maxwell’s Sunday text had been taken; and in the pause that followed the unwilling, but unresisting departure of the little ones to bed, Clifton said so. Then he added that he wished Mrs Fleming had been there to hear the sermon, as he would have liked to hear her opinion as to some of the sentiments given in it by the minister. It was said with the hope of drawing the old lady into one of the discussions of which they had heard, Elizabeth knew, but it did not succeed.

“I heard the sermon, and had no fault to find with it; had you?” said Mrs Fleming.

“Fault! No. One would hardly like to find fault with it before the minister,” said Clifton, laughing. “I am not very well up in theology myself, but it struck me that the sermon was not just in the style of old Mr Hollister’s.”

“I doubt you werena in the way of taking much heed of Mr Hollister’s sermons, and you can ask Mr Maxwell the meaning of his words if you are not satisfied. What was lacking in the sermon the years will supply to those that are to follow it. It was written at the bidding of the doctors o’ divinity at the college, was it not?”

“Yes,” said Mr Maxwell with some hesitation, “it was written for them.”

“Oh! they would surely be pleased with it. It was sound and sensible and conclusive; that is, you said in it what you set out to say, and that doesna ay happen in sermons. You’ll put more heart in your ministrations when you have been a while among us, I hope.”

There was a few minutes’ silence.

“There is a grave charge implied in your words, Mrs Fleming, and I fear a true one,” said the minister.

“I meant none,” said Mrs Fleming earnestly. “As for your sermon, what could you expect? It was all the work of your head, your heart had little part in it. It was the doctors of divinity, and the lads, your fellow-students—ilka ane o’ them waiting to get a hit at you—that you had in your mind when you were writing it, and no’ the like of us poor folk, who are needing to be guided and warned and fed. But it is a grand thing to have a clear head, and to be able to put things in the right way, and, according to the established rules: yon was a fine discourse; though you seemed to take little pleasure in it yourself, sir, I thought, as you went on.”

Mr Maxwell smiled rather ruefully. “I took little pleasure in it indeed.”

“I saw that. But you have no call to be discouraged. We have the treasure in earthen vessels, as Paul says himself. But a clear head and a ready tongue are wonderful gifts for the Master’s use, when they go with a heart that He has made His dwelling. Have patience with yourself. If you are the willing servant of your Master, His word is given for your success in His work. It is Him you are to look to, and not to yourself.”

“Ay! there is comfort in that.”

“It must be a great change for you coming to a place like this from the companionship of wise men, living and dead, and you are but young and likely to feel it. But you’ll come to yourself when the strangeness wears off. Your work lies at your hand, and plenty of it. You’ll have thraward folk to counter you, and folk kind and foolish to praise you and your words and works, whatever they may be. A few will give you wholesome counsel, and a smaller few wholesome silence, and you must take them as they come, and carry them one and all to His feet, and there’s no fear of you.”

The minister said nothing. Clifton looked curiously at his grave face over his sister’s shoulder.

“Wholesome silence! It’s not much of that he is likely to get in Gershom,” said he.

“But,” said Mrs Fleming earnestly, “you are not to put on a grave face like that, or I shall think your visit hasna done you good, and that would grieve me. You have no call to look doubtfully before you. You have the very grandest of work laid ready to your hand, and you have the will to do it, and I daresay you are no just that ill prepared for it. At least you are prepared to learn in God’s school that He has put you in. And you have His promise that you cannot fail. It is wonderful to think of.”

“Who is sufficient for these things?” said the minister gravely.

“Him that God sends He makes sufficient,” said Mrs Fleming, cheerfully. “Put your trust in Him, and take good care of yourself, and above all, I would have you to beware of Mrs Jacob Holt’s Yankee pies and cakes and hot bread, for they would be just the ruination of you, health and temper, and all. But you needna say I told you.”

Elizabeth and Clifton laughed heartily at the anticlimax. Mr Maxwell laughed too, and hung his head, remembering Mrs Jacob’s dainties, which he had not yet been able to do justice to. Mrs Fleming might have enlarged on the subject if time allowed, but they had a long walk before them.

“I hope you’ll no be such a stranger now that you have found your way back again,” said Mrs Fleming, as Elizabeth was putting on her shawl. “I mind the old days, and you have ay been kind to my Katie, who is growing a woman now, and more in need of kindness and counsel than ever,” added she, looking wistfully from the one to the other. For answer, Elizabeth turned and kissed Katie, and then touched with her lips the brown wrinkled hand of the grandmother.

“God bless you and keep you, and give you the desire of your heart,” said Mrs Fleming, “if it be the best thing for you,” she added, moved by a prudent after-thought, which came to her to-night more quickly than such thoughts were apt to come to her. “I’m no feared for you or Katie. Why should I be? You are both in good keeping. And if you are no dealt with to your pleasure, you will be to your profit, and that is the chief thing.”

They had a pleasant walk through the dewy fields in the moonlight, and much to say to one another, but they had fallen into silence before they paused at the gate to say “good-night.”

“I suppose on the whole our visit may be considered a success,” said Clifton as they lingered.

“Altogether a success,” said Elizabeth.

“I am glad I went in your company,” said the minister.

“Thank you,” said Elizabeth.

“Your are welcome,” said her brother, and then he added, laughing, “I hope all the rest of the world will be as well pleased.”

This was to be doubted. Mrs Jacob was by no means pleased for one. She had said nothing to Elizabeth on the occasion when Mr Maxwell had stayed away from the sewing-circle, but Elizabeth knew that her silence did not imply either forgetfulness or forgiveness. She could wait long for an opportunity to speak, and could then put much into a few words for the hearing of the offender. It was a renewal of the offence that the minister should have been taken to the hill-farm by Clifton, and then to Ythan Brae by him and his sister, though why she could not have easily explained. Whatever Clifton did was apt to take the form of an indiscretion in her eyes, but neither her sharp words nor her soft words were heeded by him, and she rarely wasted them upon him. But it was different where his sister was concerned. She had turns now and then of taking upon herself the responsibility of Elizabeth, as of a young girl to whom she stood as the nearest female relation, and she knew how to hurt her when she tried. Elizabeth rarely resented openly her little thrusts, but all the same, she unconsciously armed herself for defence in Mrs Jacob’s presence, and an attitude of defence is always uncomfortable where relations who meet often are concerned.

They had met a good many times, however, before any allusion was made to the visits which had displeased her. She came one day into Elizabeth’s sitting-room to find Mr Maxwell there in animated discussion with Clifton. She hardly recognised him in the new brightness of his face, and the animation of his voice and manner. He was as unlike as possible to the silent, constrained young man who daily sat at her table, and who responded so inadequately to her efforts for his entertainment. She liked the minister, and wished to make him happy in her house, and there was real pain mingled with the unreasonable anger she felt as she watched him. Her first few minutes were occupied in answering the old squire’s questions about Jacob and the children. She had startled him from his afternoon’s sleep, and he was a little querulous and exacting, as was usual at such times. But in a little she said:

“Mr Maxwell had good visits at the Hill, and at Mr Fleming’s, he told us. It is a good thing you thought of going with him, Elizabeth. You and Cousin Betsey have become reconciled.”

“Reconciled!” repeated Elizabeth; “we have never quarrelled.”

“Oh, of course not. That would not do at all. But you have never been very fond of one another, you know.”

“I respect Cousin Betsey entirely, though we do not often see one another,” said Elizabeth. “I did not go to the Hill the other day, however. Clifton went with Mr Maxwell, and they enjoyed it, as you say.”

The squire was a little deaf, and not catching what was said, needed to have the whole matter explained to him.

“Betsey is a good woman,” said he; “I respect Betsey. Her mother isn’t much of a business woman, and it is well Betsey is spared to her. It’ll be all right about the place; I’ll make it all right, and Jacob won’t be hard on them.”

And so the old man rambled on, till the talk turned to other matters, and Mrs Jacob kept the rest of her remarks for Elizabeth’s private ear.

“I am so glad you like Mr Maxwell, Elizabeth. I was afraid you would not; you are so fastidious, you know, and he seems to have so little to say for himself.”

“I like him very much, and so does Clifton,” said Elizabeth, waiting for more.

“I am very glad. He seems to be having a good influence on Clifton. He hasn’t been in any trouble this time, at all, has he? How thankful you must be. Jacob is pleased. I only hope it may last.”

The discussion of her younger brother’s delinquencies, real or supposed, was almost the only thing that irritated Elizabeth beyond her power of concealment; and if she had been in her sister-in-law’s house, this would have been the moment when she would have drawn her visit to a close. Now she could only keep silence.

“I hope Clifton may do well next year,” went on Mrs Jacob; “you will miss him, and so shall we.”

“We must do as well as we can without him. In summer he will be home for good, I hope.”

“Yes, if he should conclude to settle down steadily to business. Time will show, and this winter we have Mr Maxwell. It depends some on Miss Martha Langden, I suppose, how long we shall have him in our house. You have heard all about that, I suppose?” said she, smiling significantly.

Elizabeth smiled too, but shook her head.

“I have heard the name,” said she.

“Well, you must not ask me about her. I only know that she gets a good many letters from Gershom about this time. It is not to be spoken of yet.”

She rose to go, and Elizabeth went with her to the door, and she laughed to herself as she followed her with her eye down the street. She had heard Miss Martha Langden’s name once. It was on the night when Mr Maxwell called on his way from the Hill-farm. He had said that he liked Miss Betsey, and that she reminded him of one of his best friends, Miss Martha Langden, one who had been his mother’s friend when he was a child.

Miss Elizabeth laughed again as she turned to go into the house, and she might have laughed all the same, if she had known that the frequent letters to Miss Martha Langden never went without a little note to some one very different from Miss Martha. But she did not know this till long after.

Clifton Holt went back to college again, and Elizabeth prepared for a quiet winter. She knew that, as in other winters, she would be held responsible for a certain amount of entertainment to the young people of the village in the way of gigantic sewing-circles, and no less gigantic evening parties. But these could not fall often to her turn, and they were not exciting affairs, even when the whole responsibility of them fell on herself, as was the case when her brother was away. So it was a very quiet winter to which she looked forward.

And because she did not dread the utter quiet, as she had done in former winters, and because she was able to dismiss from her thoughts, with very little consideration of the matter, a tempting invitation to pass a month or two in the city of Montreal, she fancied she was drawing near to that period in a woman’s life, when she is supposed to be becoming content with the existing order of things, when the dreams and hopes, and expectations vague and sweet, which make so large a part in girlish happiness, give place to graver and more earnest thoughts of life and duty, to a juster estimate of what life has to give, and an acquiescent acceptance of the lot which she has not chosen, but which has come to her in it. It is not very often that so desirable a state of mind and heart comes to girls of four-and-twenty. It certainly had not come to Elizabeth. However, it gave her pleasure—and a little pain as well—to think so, and it was a good while before she found out that she had made a mistake.

As for Mr Maxwell, he was “coming to himself,” as Mrs Fleming had predicted. His health improved, and as he grew familiar with his new circumstances, the despondency that had weighed him down was dispelled. Before the snow came, he was making visits among the people, without any one to keep him in countenance. Not regular pastoral visits, but quite informal ones, to the farmer in his pasture or wood-lot, or as he followed his oxen over the autumn fields. He dropped now and then into the workshop of Samuel Green, the carpenter, and exchanged a word with John McNider as he passed his forge, where he afterward often stopped to have a talk. The first theological discussion he had in Gershom was held in Peter Longley’s shoe-shop, one morning when he found that amiable sceptic alone and disposed—as he generally was—for a declaration of his rather peculiar views of doctrine and practice; and his first temperance lecture was given to an audience of one, as he drove in Mark Varney’s ox-cart over that poor man’s dreary and neglected fields.

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