“ It was fortunate for Mary Grey that the distance was not long, for, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, Yabel McQuhirr drave furiously. But at the bend of the highway called the Far-away Turn, just at the point at which the road dives down under a tangle of birch and alder, the old white mare was pulled suddenly up. For there was Dr. Brydson, riding cautiously on his little round-barrelled sheltie, his saddle-bags in front of him, and a silver-headed Malacca cane held in his hand like a riding-whip.
It was no long time before the good old doctor was raising the lax head of Yabel McQuhirr's wife. ”

“ Nothing so young, so winsome, or so gay had ever set foot within that solemn dreich old manse. It was like a light-heart city beauty coming to change the life and disturb the melancholy of some stern woman-despising hermit. But Jemima Girnigo's case was infinitely worse, in that she was a woman and the disturber of her peace little better than a foolish boy.
But Gilbert Denholm, kindly lad though he was, saw no harm. He was only, he thought, impressing himself upon the parish. He saw himself daily becoming more popular. ”

“ Yabel went out again with the lantern in his hand. Without entering, he held it over the lower half of the barn door which had swung to after him. A young woman, clad in the habit of a "gypsy" or "gaun body," lay huddled on the straw, while over her, whimpering and nosing like a puppy, crawled the most beautiful child Yabel had ever seen. As the light broke into the darkness of the barn the little fellow stood up, a golden-haired boy of two years of age. He smiled and blinked, then, with his hands outstretched, he came running across the floor to Yabel. ”

“ All that Sabbath day there hung, palpable and almost visible, about Nixon's Wynd a sweet savour as of "Naphtali," and the Persecutions, and Last Testimonies in the Grassmarket; but in the shrine itself there was nothing grim, but only graciousness and consolation and the sense of the living presence of the Hope of Israel. For our Doctor was there sitting throned among his elders. The sun shone through the narrow windows, and just over the wall, it it were your good fortune to be near those on the left-hand side, you could see the top of the Martyrs' monument in the kirkyard of Old Greyfriars. ”

“ But Mrs. Morrison was that most foolish of womankind—an old woman striving to appear young. She had taken a strong dislike to the girl mistress of the white cottage at her gates, and was never tired of railing at her pretensions to beauty, at her lightheadedness, and at the suitors who stayed their horses for a word or a flower from across the cropped yew hedge of Carnation Maybold's cottage.
But John Charles, steadfast in all things, was particularly admirable in his silences. He let his mother rail on, and then, at the quiet hour of e'en stole down to the dyke-side for a "word." ”

“ If I could only be buried in the hills, under the heather, and a table tombstone like the martyrs; 'where the whaups and plovers are crying!' Did you see a man who wrote 'The Stickit Minister,' and dedicated it to me, in words that brought the tears to my eyes every time I looked at them? 'Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying—his heart remembers how.' Ah, by God, it does! Singular that I should fulfil the Scots destiny throughout, and live a voluntary exile and have my head filled with the blessed, beastly place all the time! ”

“ She has done more for me than ever I deserved——"
"That is the way of women," said the doctor, "but you cannot thank her now. She is dead."
"Dead—dead!" gasped Gilbert, stricken to the heart; "then she gave her life for me!"
"Something like it," said the doctor, a trifle grimly. For though he was a wise man, the ways of women were dark to him. He thought that Gilbert, though a fine lad, was not worth all this.
"Dead," muttered Gibby, "and I cannot even tell her—make it up to her——"
"She left you a message," said the doctor very quietly. ”

“ The hearts of my people are dearer to me than life. Ye can twine them from me if you will. Ye can out me from my kirk, send me forth of my manse—cast me upon the world as a man disgraced. But, as I am a sinner answerable to God, there are two things you cannot do, ye cannot make me break my plighted word nor make me other than proud of the love I have won from God's fairest creature upon earth. ”

“ And every night before Nathan goes to bed he steps quietly to the low place in the privet hedge, over which he lifted little Dahlia Ogilvy more than fifty years ago. He does nothing when he gets there. He does not even pray. He has none to pray for, and he wants nothing for himself save God's ultimate gift, easeful death, and that, he knows, cannot long be delayed. ”

“ The tear had trickled thus far now, but Aunt Mary did not know it. It is only youth that tastes its own tears. And generally rather likes the flavour.
Elspeth did not stop petting her aunt. She stroked the soft hair, thinning now and silvering. Then she smiled a little.
"No," she said, "I will not obey my father, Aunt Mary. I am no child to be put in the corner. I am a woman, and know what I want."
Yet it was only during the past night watches that she had known it for certain. But yesterday her desire to see Allan Syme had been no more than a little ache deep down in her heart. ”

“ The two men stood looking after him. Drows stroked his shaggy fringe of beard. Matthew Carment put his hand to his eyes and gazed under it as if he had been looking into the sunset. There was a long silence. At last the two turned and looked at each other.
"Weel, what think ye?" said Drows, ruling elder and natural leader in debate.
There was a still longer pause, for Matthew Carment was a man slow by nature and slower by habit.
"He's a fine lad!" he said at last.
Drows broke a twig elaborately from the hedge and chewed the ends. ”

“ For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post—that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. ”

“ The woman I had seen in the lane stood before me, as it were, projected out of the dense darkness behind, her shawl fallen back from her face, and her features all pale and changeful in the flicker of the candle I had snatched up to take with me into the little hall. For the front door was only used on state occasions, as when the parish minister came to call, and at funerals. ”

“ May God bless the good folk of the Open Door who, with sons and daughters of their own, set wide their portals and invite the stranger within where there is the sound of girlish laughter, the boisterous give-and-take of youthful wit, and—yes, as much as anything else, the clatter of hospitable knives and forks working together.
Such an Open Door has saved many from destruction, and in That Day it shall be counted to that Man (or, more often, that Woman) for righteousness.
For consider how lonely a lad's life is when first he comes up from the country. ”

“ And lo! there in the doorway, framed in the outer dark, his broad blue bonnet in his hand, his checked plaid waving back from his shoulders, stood a man, pale as if he had come to them up through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. With a hand white as bone, he beckoned to his brother, who stood with his hands on the table smiling and swaying a little with tipsy gravity.
"Why, Robert, what are you doing here——?" he was beginning. But the Stickit Minister broke in. ”

“ Now Kirkchrist is one of the farm-towns of Galloway, many of which in the old days have been set like fortilices high on every defenced hill. Indeed, the ancient tower still stands at one angle of the square of houses, where it is used for a peat-shed. But by an outside stair it is possible to get on the roof and view the country for miles round. On one side the Cooran burn runs down a deep ravine full of hazel copses feathering to the meadow-edges, where big bumble bees have their bykes, and where I first courted Rachel, sitting behind a cole of hay on the great day of the meadow ingathering. ”

“ Do not speak thus to your mother!"
"I will not sit down—I will not compose myself—I will never sit down in this house again—I will marry Lizzie in spite of you all!"
And almost before I could get round to the front yard again Willie had come whirling all disorderedly out of the kitchen door, shutting it to with a clash that shook the house. Then with wild and angry eyes he strode across the straw-littered space, taking no notice of me, but leaping the gate and so down the little loaning and up towards the heather like a man walking in his sleep. ”

“ Our gentle humourist is Nathan Monypenny. No man ever heard him laugh aloud, yet as few had ever seen him without a gleam of something akin to kindly humour in his eye. Even now, when the bitterness of life and its ultimate loneliness are upon him, it is a pleasure to be next Nathan, even at a funeral. During that dreadful ten minutes when the black-coated, crinkle-trousered company waits outside for the "service" to be over, his company is universally considered "as good as a penny bap and a warm drink." ”

“ The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake. Once Dahlia Ogilvy had been a bright frolicsome girl, winding the young fellows of the parish round her fingers with arch mischief, granting a favour here and denying one there, with that pleasant and innocent abuse of power which comes so suddenly to a girl who, in any rank of life, awakes to find herself beautiful.
There was nothing of the wilful beauty now about Dahlia Carnochan. A stronger woman might have mastered her fate, a weaker would have fled from it ”

“ Gentlemen, I do not complain, I own I am well punished. These twenty years I have lived for my pride. I have lied to each one of you—to the minister, to you the elders, and to the hale congregation, making a roose of my wife, and sticking at nothing to hide the shame of my house. ”

“ A proud man, a Highland gentleman of old family, was the minister of Dullarg. He kept his head erect, and for any notice he had taken of the Cameronian elders, they might just as well not have been on the boat at all. And in their turn the elders of the Cameronian Kirk compressed their lips more firmly and their eyes seemed deeper set in their heads when their glances fell on this pillar of Erastianism. For nowhere is the racial antipathy of north and south so strong as in Galloway. ”

“ And she roguishly twirled imaginary tips between her finger and thumb.
"Let me see!" said John Charles, drawing nearer as if to examine into the facts.
"Oh, no," said Carnation hastily, fending him off with a glance, "I'm grown up now, and it's different! Besides——"
And she glanced behind her along the red-gray ribbon of dusty road, along which for lack of company the March dust was dancing little jigs of its own.
"Why different?" began John Charles, thrusting his hands deep into his pockets. ”

“ Ignatius Campbell with his great pipe, his low-crowned hat, his seedy black clothes with the fluff sticking here and there upon them, was not the man to impress the Glenkells. For in Galloway the minister may go about in fishing-boots, shooting-jacket, and deerstalker if he will—nobody thinks the worse of him for it. The lawyer may look as if he bought his clothes from a slopshop. The country gentleman may wear a suit of tweeds for ten years, till the leather gun-patch on the shoulder threatens to pervade the whole man, back and front. ”

“ I walked over to the Dullarg the very night I arrived from Edinburgh. I had a new volume of Tennyson with me, which I had bought with the thought that he would be pleased with it. For I loved Robert Fraser, and I will not deny that my heart beat with expectation as I went up the little loaning with the rough stone dyke upon either side—aye, as if it had been the way to Nether Neuk, and I going to see my sweetheart. ”

“ She pined and grew pale, like a woodland bird shut suddenly in a close cage at that season when mate begins to call to mate through all the copses of birch and alder.
"He does not love me—oh, he cannot love me!" she moaned. But again, as she thought of the stile on the way to Lowe's Seat—"But he does love me!" she said.
Then, sudden as a falling star, Fear fell on that green summer world. There came a weird sough through all the valley, a crying of folk to each other across level holms, shrill answerings of herd to herd on the utmost hills. ”

“ And the Doctor folded up the blue crackling paper and placed it carefully between the "leds" of the great pulpit Bible.
"It is the beginning of the week of Communion," he said; "it is not meet that I should mingle secular thoughts with the memory of the broken body and the shed blood. On your knees, Marcus Lawton, and ask forgiveness for your repining and discriminating among the sheep of the flock whom it is yours to feed on a coming Lord's day; and are they not all yours—your responsibility, your care, aye, Marcus—even—even Jacob Gullibrand?" ”

“ They minded so little that I was wounded and helpless, that if I had not been a changed man, I declare I could have cursed them in my heart.
"But suddenly from above came a sound that made all my heart beat and quiver. It was a woman's cry. All you who have never heard how soft a woman can make her speech when she fears for her true man's life, take this word. There is no sound so sweet, so low, so far-searching in the world.
"'Harry! Harry Wedderburn!' it said. And I knew that in the midnight Rachel Pringle was searching and calling for me. ”

“ But the lad still came forward, and laid a hand on his arm. He wore a suit of bottle green with silver buttons, a world too wide for his slim form. Knee breeches and buckled shoes completed his attire. Allan Syme stared wide-eyed, uncomprehending, his hand pressed to his aching brow in the effort to see truly.
"You are not dead. Thank God!" said the boy, in a voice that took him by the throat.
"Who—who are you?" The words came dry and gasping from the minister's parched lips.
"I am Elspeth—do you not know me?" ”