noble carriage, directed her steps homeward, where she found her
husband in a state of intense fear and anxiety, both on account of the
danger he was exposed to, and of the meeting that was about to take
place with his wife. On the latter account, there might apparently
have been little reason for apprehension; for their meetings were very
unlike those mentioned in the old song--

"Then up scho gate ane mekle rung,
And the gudeman he made to the door;
Quoth he, 'Dame, I sall hald my tung,
For an we fecht, I'll get the woir.'"

Her mode of conducting her rule was different _toto caelo_. She walked
into the house with the same erect carriage she usually exhibited,
especially when upon duty, and closing the door after her, without
using any such jealous precaution as turning the key in the lock--a
mode of enforcing the conjugal authority she despised--she went up to
the table where her husband sat, with his hand upon his brow. That
flag of distress she paid little attention to; for she had often
before seen Andrew endeavour to make her own pity plead the cause of
his imprudence.

"Here is the key of the treasury-box, Mr Todd," said she.

Andrew was greatly relieved; but wonder took the place of his fear,
for he could not conceive how his wife could so soon have got the key
out of the hands of the deacon--and yet for certain the key was before
his eyes.

"See you that ring?" continued the dame, holding out a steel key-hoop,
on which were hung a score of keys, shining as bright as silver, from
the eternal motion to which they were exposed in the red pocket of
their mistress.

"Ay, weel do I see it," replied Andrew, "and weel do I ken't. It is by
that magic ring that a' my guids and gear are girded and prevented
frae fa'in into the staves o' that bankruptcy and ruin I threatened
this day to bring upon them."

The dame replied nothing to the remark of her husband, though she was
inwardly well pleased to see him penitent; but, opening the
spring-clasp, she deliberately placed the treasury-box key upon the
ring, along with the score of others that had hung there for a score
of years. She did not deign to accompany this act by a single word of
objurgation. Her faith rested altogether upon the ring, and to have
tried to add to the security it afforded her, by impressing her
husband with a deeper sense of his imprudence, appeared to her to be
sheer supererogation. Opening the entrance to her red "pouc