, and hurry down the road homeward.
Not then, and there, would she think of the insult. She put it
passionately beneath the surface, until she reached her home, and had
locked herself within its shelter. Then, she gave way utterly to her
chagrin and sorrow, and wounded pride, and wept such bitter, cruel
tears, as no other sorrow had ever caused her. She wept like a wounded
child, who knows it has been cruelly treated, who comprehends the
injustice of its pain and its own inability to defend itself, and
finds no friend or helper in its suffering.

Finally, when perfectly exhausted, she fell asleep and slept till the
sun set and the shadows of the night were on sea and land. Then she
arose, washed her tear-stained face, and made her tea. In her sleep
she had been counseled and comforted, and she looked at the
circumstance now with clear eyes.

"I got just what I deserved," she said bluntly to herself. "Why did I
go to the fishing at all? I wasna sent there. God took me awa' from
the fishing, and showed me what to do, just as He took King David from
the sheep-cotes, and made him a soldier. If David had feared and
doubted, and gone back to the sheep-cotes, he wouldna hae been King o'
Israel. Weel, when God took the nets out o' my hands, and told me to
sing, I got feared singing and story-telling wouldna feed me, and I
went back to the nets. Now then, Christine, thank God for the snubbing
you got. Yesterday I knew money was coming, plenty o' it. Why didn't I
sit still or go to the wark He wants me to do. Why? Weel, if I must
tell the bottom truth, I rayther fancied mysel' in my fisher dress. I
was pleased wi' the admiration I got baith frae the men and the women.
Something else, Christine? Ay, my Conscience, if I be to tell all, I
liked the gossip o' the women--also the pride I had in my ain strength
and beauty, and the power it gave me o'er baith men and women--ay, and
I liked to mak' the siller in my ain fingers, as it were--to say to
folk, 'here's your fish,' and then feel their siller in the palm o' my
hand. I was wrang. I was vera wrang. I wad be served as I deserve, if
thae book people went back on their word."

Just here the Domine and Jamie came, and the Domine had the letter
with the money in it. Then he noticed that she had been crying, and he
asked, "Who has been hurting you, Christine?" and she answered:

"Mysel', Sir. I hae been hurting mysel'." Then while he drank a cup of
tea, she told him the little circu