"You are a good girl, Flora, but you are not so clever as your father, oh no, for I hef been trying that hime on the hill, and it will sing beautiful to a Psalm tune. You will lie still and hear." Then Lachlan lifted up his voice in "French," "There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins, And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains." The singing was fairly good, with a whisper from Flora, till they came to that verse: "Then in a nobler, sweeter song I'll sing Thy power to save, When this poor lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent in the grave," when Lachlan seemed to lose the tune, and be falling into a coronach. "We must not be singing that to-day, father, for God iss fery good to us, and I will be stronger every week, and maybe you will be saying that we are thankful in your prayer." Then I realised my baseness, and went off on tiptoe (had the dogs been at home it had not been so easy to escape); but first I heard, "Our Father." It was a new word for Lachlan; he used to say Jehovah. The doctor paid his last visit one frosty winter day, and was merciless on Lachlan. "What for are ye cockering up this lassie, and no getting her doon tae the kirk? it's clean disgracefu' in an Elder, and if I were yir minister a' wud hae ye sessioned. Sall, ye're hard enough on ither fouk that are no kirk greedy." "You will not be speaking that way next Sabbath, for it iss in her pew Flora will be sitting with her father," said Lachlan, in great spirits. Flora caught him studying her closely for some days, as if he were taking her measure, and he announced that he had business in Muirtown on Friday. When he came up in the market train he was carrying a large paper parcel, and attempted a joke with Peter at a window of the third. From a critical point of view it was beneath notice, but as Lachlan's first effort it was much tasted. "Ye 'ill believe me noo, Peter, since ye've heard him. Did ye ever see sic a change? it's maist astonishin'." "Man, Hillocks, div ye no see he's gotten back his dochter, and it's made him anither man?" Lachlan showed Flora a new pair of shears he had bought in Muirtown, and a bottle of sheep embrocation, but she did not know he had hidden his parcel in the byre, and that he opened it four separate times on Saturday. From daybreak on Sabbath Lachlan went in and out till he returned with Marget Howe. "Mrs. Howe iss very kind, and she will be coming to help you with your dresses, Flora, for we will be wanting you to look well this day, and here iss some small thing to keep you warm," and Lachlan produced with unspeakable pride a jacket lined with flannel and trimmed with fur. So her father and Marget dressed Flora for the kirk, and they went together down the path on which the light had shone that night of her return. There were only two dog-carts in the Free Kirk Session, and Burnbrae was waiting with his for Flora at the foot of the hill.