hoever was the mother of him.

"Hoo cam ye to tyne yer bairn, wuman?" she asked.

But Mistress Croale was careful also, and had her reasons.

"He ran frae the bluidy han'," she said enigmatically.

Janet recalled how Gibbie came to her, scored by the hand of
cruelty. Were there always innocents in the world, who in their own
persons, by the will of God, unknown to themselves, carried on the
work of Christ, filling up that which was left behind of the
sufferings of their Master--women, children, infants,
idiots--creatures of sufferance, with souls open to the world to
receive wrong, that it might pass and cease? little furnaces they,
of the consuming fire, to swallow up and destroy by uncomplaining
endurance--the divine destruction!

"Hoo cam he by the bonnie nickname?" she asked at length.

"Nickname!" retorted Mistress Croale fiercely; "I think I hear ye!
His ain name an' teetle by law an' richt, as sure's ever there was
a King Jeames 'at first pat his han' to the makin' o' baronets!--as
it's aften I hae h'ard Sir George, the father o' 'im, tell the
same."

She ceased abruptly, annoyed with herself, as it seemed, for having
said so much.

"Ye wadna be my lady yersel', wad ye, mem?" suggested Janet in her
gentlest voice.

Mistress Croale made her no answer. Perhaps she thought of the days
when she alone of women did the simplest of woman's offices for Sir
George. Anyhow, it was one thing to rush of herself to the verge of
her secret, and quite another to be fooled over it.

"Is't lang sin' ye lost him?" asked Janet, after a bootless pause.

"Ay," she answered, gruffly and discourteously, in a tone intended
to quench interrogation.

But Janet persisted.

"Wad ye ken 'im again gien ye saw 'im?"

"Ken 'im? I wad ken 'im gien he had grown a gran'father. Ken 'im,
quo' she! Wha ever kenned 'im as I did, bairn 'at he was, an' wadna
ken 'im gien he war deid an' an angel made o' 'im!--But weel I wat,
it's little differ that wad mak!"

She rose in her excitement, and going to the other window, stood
gazing vacantly out upon the rushing sea. To Janet it was plain she
knew more about Gibbie than she was inclined to tell, and it gave
her a momentary sting of apprehension.

"What was aboot him ye wad ken sae weel?" she asked in a tone of
indifference, as if speaking only through the meshes of her work.

"I'll ken them 'at speirs afore I tell," she replied sullenly.--But
the next instant she scream