"I am going to see him soon. My father was speaking about him yesterday. I shall certainly go."

"And you'll be kind to him, I'm sure," said Allison, wistfully. "He is not bad, though that has been said. He is only foolish and not wicked, as they tried to make him out. And ye'll surely go?"

"That I will. Even if you hadn't asked me, I would have gone. And, afterwards, if he has a mind to cross the sea, he shall have a fair chance to begin a new life over there. I will be his friend. He shall be like a young brother to me."

Allison uttered a glad cry and covered her face with her hands.

"I mauna greet. But oh! you have lightened my heavy heart."

"I only wish you could come with him," said Mr Hadden sadly. "It would be well for you both."

"But I cannot--for a while--because I am going to lose myself, and if I were with Willie I would be found again. But you will tell him that I will ay have him in my heart--and sometime I will come to him, maybe.

I'll ay have that hope before me."

"But, Allison--where are you going?--I hope--"

"I must tell no one where I am going. Somebody might ask you about me, and it is better that you should not ken even if I could tell you. Even Willie mustna ken--for a while."

There was time for no more words. A little bowed old woman with a great mutch on her head, and a faded plaid upon her shoulders, came creeping through among the graves.

"Allie, my woman," she whispered, "ye'll need to lose no time. I hae seen the factor riding round the hill by the ither road. He lookit unco angry-like, and his big dog was wi' him. Lie laich for a whilie till he's weel by, and then tak aff ye're hose and shoon and step into the burn and gae doon beyont the steppin'-stanes till ye get in to the hallow and ye'll bide safe in my bit hoosie till the first sough be past."

Allison took a bundle of papers from beneath her shawl.

"They are for the minister. It is about the keepin' o' the place till Willie comes home," said she.

But the little old woman interposed:

"You maun gie them to me. The minister maun hae nae questions to answer about them, but just to say that auld Janet Mair gie'd them to him, and he can send the factor to me."

She took the papers and put them in her pocket and went her way.

Allison looked after her for a moment, then drew nearer to the wall.

"Sir," said she in a whisper, "I have something to give your father. He will ken best what to do with it. I had something to say to him, but maybe it is as well to say nothing. And what could I say? Tell him not to think ill of me for what I must do."

"Allison," said Mr Hadden gravely, "my father loves you dearly. It would break his heart to think of harm coming to you. I am afraid for you, Allison."

"Can anything worse come to me than has come already? Tell him I will ay try to be good. And he will tell my mother, if he goes first where she has gone--" Her voice failed her.

"Have you friends anywhere to whom you can go?"

"I'll go to Willie some time, if you take him home with you. Only it must be a long, long time first, for _he_ will keep his eye on Willie, and he would find me. And Willie himself mustna ken where I am, for if he came to me he might be followed. I must just lose myself for a while, for if _he_--_that man_--were to find me--"

Her colour had come back, and her eyes shone with feverish brightness.

What could he say to her? He tore a leaf from his note-book, and wrote his name and his American address upon it.

"Come to me and you shall have a safe home with my wife and children.

Come now, or when you feel that you can come safely, though it be ten years hence. You shall have a welcome and a home."

She gave him her hand, and thanked him, and prayed G.o.d to bless him, and then she turned to do as Janet Mair had bidden her. But first she knelt down beside the new-made grave, and, at the sight, Alexander Hadden bared and bowed his head. When he raised it again she was gone.

When the minister opened the parcel which Allison Bain had sent him, he found folded within it her marriage lines and a plain gold ring.

CHAPTER TWO.

"Martinmas dowie did wind up the year."

The little town of Nethermuir stands in the shire of "bonnie Aberdeen,"

though not in the part of it which has been celebrated in song and story for beauty or for grandeur. But in summertime the "gowany braes" which lie nearest to it, and the "heather braes" into which they gradually change as they rise higher in the distance, have a certain beauty of their own. So have the clear brown burns which water its narrow fields, and the belts of wood which are planted here and there on the hillsides.

In summertime, even the little town itself, as it was fifty years ago and more, might be called a pretty place, at least the lanes about it were pretty. There were many lanes about it, some of them shaded by tall firs or spreading beeches, others shut in by gra.s.sy dikes which inclosed the long, narrow "kail-yards" running back from the cl.u.s.ters of dwellings which fronted the narrow streets. There were tall laburnums here and there, and larch and rowan trees, and hedges of hawthorn or elder, everywhere, some of them shutting in gardens full of such fruits and flowers as flourish in the north.

Yes, in summer the place might have been called a pretty place; but under low, leaden skies, when the reaches of sodden gra.s.s-land and rain-bleached stubble had to relieve their grey dreariness only a newly ploughed brown ridge, or the long turnip fields, green still under the rain and sleet of the last November days, even the hills were not beautiful, and the place itself had a look of unspeakable dreariness.

On such a day the Reverend Robert Hume was leading his horse down the slope which looks on the town from the south, and though his eyes had the faculty of seeing something cheerful even in dismal things, he acknowledged that, to eyes looking on it for the first time, the place might seem a little dreary.

It did not look dreary to him, as he came into one of the two long streets which, crossing each other at right angles, made the town.

Though he bowed his high head to meet the bitter wind, and plashed through the muddy pools which the rain had left in the hollows here and there, he was glad at heart to see the place, and to be at home; and he smiled to himself as he came in sight of the corner, beyond which lay the house which held his treasures.

All the town seemed like home to him. As he went slowly on, he had a thought to give to many dwellers on the street. Was "auld Maggie's"

thatch holding out the wet? And surely there was danger that the water of that pool might find its way in beneath "Cripple Sandy's" door.

There were friendly faces regarding him from some of the narrow windows, and "welcome hame," came to him from more than one open door. The town pump was by no means a beautiful object in itself, but his eye rested with great satisfaction upon it. It stood on the square where the houses fell back a little, at the place where the two streets crossed, and it could be seen from the furthest end of either of them. It had not long stood there, and as it caught his eye, the pleasant thought came freshly to him, how the comfort and cleanliness of the homes might be helped, and how much the labour of busy housewives must be lightened by it.

But it was no Nethermuir woman who so deftly plied the heavy handle, and lifted her full buckets as if they had been empty, and who walked before him down the street with a step which made him think of the heather hills and the days of his youth. There was no woman of that height in Nethermuir, nor one who carried herself so freely and so lightly. It was no one he had ever seen before. But some one crossed the way to speak to him, and he lost sight of her, and a few steps brought him to his own door. His house was close upon the street. It was of grey stone, and only looked high because of the low thatched cottages near it, on both sides of the way. On the left, a little back from the street, stood the kirk, hardly higher than the house. It had no special features, and was not unlike in appearance to the low outbuildings of the manse, which extended behind it.

Its insignificance alone saved it from positive ugliness, but the minister gave it as he pa.s.sed, a fond admiring glance. He knew every grey stone in its walls, and every pane of gla.s.s in its narrow windows.

He had not built it with his own hands but his heart had been in the laying of every stone and the driving of every nail in it. And that was true of the house as well. He had only time for a glance. For through the close there came a shout, and his boys were upon him.

"Steady, lads. Is all well? Where is your mother, and how is your sister? Robert, you'll take good care of Bendie and rub her well down.

She's quite done out, poor beast; and John, you'll help your brother.

She must go to the smithy on Monday. There is something wrong with one of her shoes. I've been leading her for the last miles."

And so on. Not a spoken word of tenderness, but Davie leaned against his father in utter content, and little Norman clasped his arms round his knee. Jack eagerly helped to unsaddle the tired mare, not caring to speak, though as a general thing he had plenty to say. And Robert had enough to do with the lump that rose in his throat when he met his father's eye. The father ended as he began:

"Where is your mother?"

The mother was standing at the kitchen-door with a child in her arms.

"Well, dearie?" said the one to the other--their eyes said the rest. It was the child that the minister stooped to kiss, but the touch of his hand on his wife's shoulder was better to her than a caress. Fond words were rare between these two, who were indeed one--and fond words were not needed between them.

Mrs Hume set down the child and helped her husband off with his wet coat, and if he would have permitted it, she would have helped him off with his boots also, since the wet and the chill had made him helpless.

But it was not needed this time. For a woman with a step like a princess crossed the floor and bent down to the work.

"Thank you, my la.s.sie. You have both strength and skill, and you have a good will to use them, though I may have no right to demand it at your hands. It is perhaps your way of doing the Lord's bidding. 'If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet!' Do you not mind?"

The smile which rose to Mrs Hume's face had a little surprise in it.