he understood so well that he would
fain have the writhing yoke-fellows think of it.

The lady's cheeks had been red before, but now they were redder.
She rose, cast an angry look at the dumb prophet, a look which
seemed to say "How dare you suggest such a thing?" and left the
room.

"What have you got there?" asked the minister, turning sharply upon
him. Gibbie showed him the passage.

"What have you got to do with it?" he retorted, throwing the book on
the table. "Go to bed."

"A detestable prig!" you say, reader?--That is just what Mr. and
Mrs. Sclater thought him that night, but they never quarrelled again
before him. In truth, they were not given to quarrelling. Many
couples who love each other more, quarrel more, and with less
politeness. For Gibbie, he went to bed--puzzled, and afraid there
must be a beam in his eye.

The very first time Donal and he could manage it, they set out
together to find Mistress Croale. Donal thought he had nothing to
do but walk straight from Mistress Murkison's door to hers, but, to
his own annoyance, and the disappointment of both, he soon found he
had not a notion left as to how the place lay, except that it was by
the river. So, as it was already rather late, they put off their
visit to another time, and took a walk instead.

But Mistress Croale, haunted by old memories, most of them far from
pleasant, grew more and more desirous of looking upon the object of
perhaps the least disagreeable amongst them: she summoned resolution
at last, went to the market a little better dressed than usual, and
when business there was over, and she had shut up her little box of
a shop, walked to Daur-street to the minister's house.

"He's aften eneuch crossed my door," she said to herself, speaking
of Mr. Sclater; "an' though, weel I wat, the sicht o' 'im never
bodit me onything but ill, I never loot him ken he was less nor
walcome; an' gien bein' a minister gies the freedom o' puir fowk's
hooses, it oucht in the niffer (exchange) to gie them the freedom o'
his."

Therewith encouraging herself, she walked up the steps and rang the
bell. It was a cold, frosty winter evening and as she stood waiting
for the door to be opened, much the poor woman longed for her own
fireside and a dram. Her period of expectation was drawn out not a
little through the fact that the servant whose duty it was to answer
the bell was just then waiting at table: because of a public
engagement, the m