'I fear she and General Drysdale are too much displeased with my brother for bringing the Free Church controversy into the parish, and with me for following him, even to waste another thought upon either of us. And perhaps, Captain Drysdale, it is wrong in me to stand here talking to you, when I know how deeply we have offended your family. Perhaps they might not like it.' 'And what then? Miss Brown. Am I still in pinafores at eight-and-twenty, that my mamma is to give consent before I may be allowed to speak to my very oldest friend? Why! Mary, girl, I have had you in my arms before you could walk, and I have fished you out of more than one burn, where you might very well have been drowned if I had not been near. And you know when you were eight years old you promised'-- 'Pray stop! Captain Drysdale. Those are old stories, and neither you nor I are to be bound by the foolish speeches of our childhood. Dear old Kilrundle! I shall never forget our happy days there. But things have changed--I think this must be your gig.' It _was_ his gig, and with a very hearty shake-hands on either side, he got into it, and drove away. 'Prettier than ever,' he kept saying to himself, and the touch of the soft hands and the light in the violet eyes seemed to remain with him, and to vibrate about his heart, like the echo of a pleasant strain, till an hour later be alighted at Inchbracken. Mary Brown strolled back to the village, her thoughts running on many things at once, the pleasant memories of the long ago and the somewhat sordid experiences of the present. Had Mrs. Sangster of Auchlippie been by, and known what was passing in her mind, she would surely have told her she was looking back to the fleshpots of Egypt, and exhorted her to take warning by the melancholy fate of Lot's wife. Mrs. Sangster was a lady who took a particular interest in her own side of the ecclesiastical contest; and indeed it paid her to do so. She was the wife of the great man of the congregation, and seeing how mightily her consequence had prospered under the schism, she might well be zealous. From being an unpretending gentleman farmer, and the smallest heritor in the parish, her husband was now one of the few landed proprietors adhering to the Free Church, and one of those, therefore, whom she delighted to honour. Their snug home with its arable land and pastures, had now become a territorial designation attached to his name by an accented 'of,' like a German 'von,' and when he attended the General Assembly at Edinburgh he found himself sitting in committee and on platforms with the Church's solitary Marquis and the great magnates of the cause, while Madame had her seat in the Assembly among the honourable women, behind the Moderator's chair.