After Tibbie's bold stroke of invasion, there was nothing left for him but to succumb. Resistance would have raised such a scandal as must have lost him his beadleship, and would probably have driven him from the parish, so he had felt compelled to admit his marriage as the lesser evil, even although it involved a severe private _rebuke_ before the assembled kirk-session for the matrimonial irregularity. The bitterest day of his life was probably the Sunday on which he 'kirket' his wife. Shambling down the village street in front of his mother-in-law, who stepped out behind with the briskness and precision of a corporal's guard, he seemed 'going,' as Mrs. Ebenezer Prittie, who surveyed them out of her window, observed to her spouse, 'like a fool to the correction of the stocks,' and Mrs. P. was not sorry for him. There was a twinkle of scornful pity in the eye of the onlookers at seeing this notorious lady-killer thus taken in charge, which stung Joseph's self-love like the cut of a whip; but his discomfiture was not complete till they met Jean Macaulay. Jean surveyed their procession with open eyes, and then looking her old sweetheart full in the face, she threw back her head and uttered an echoing laugh. There was a ring of vexation in the sound which might have brought consolation for the affront, but Joseph was already too miserable to be nicely observant. His eyes fell before her, and his head hung forward in abject confusion; and he crept about his duties that day around the tent more like a whipped cur than the brisk and consequential beadle of other days. As Kenneth drove his friend home to Inchbracken, his kind heart was rejoicing to note the improvement in his condition. The happy discovery had acted on him like a cordial given to a fainting man. His very bearing was altered. He sat squarely in his seat looking about him with clear and animated eyes, a different person from the limp and nerveless invalid, seeing nothing left to him in earth or sky worth a moment's regard, whom he had driven out a few hours before. Finding there was still something left in his own life to interest him, Steele began also to interest himself in the life of his fellows. He talked to Kenneth about the Browns who had so tenderly cared for his child, and the Browns with Kenneth was an inexhaustible subject. Now that he had found a friendly listener, he talked about them freely enough, and by the time they had reached Inchbracken, Steele knew all about his engagement. Understanding in what direction the morning drive had been made, the sympathetic Julia had arranged herself for dinner in a species of half mourning, and her voice and mien were more subduedly sorrowful than ever. As the disconsolate entered the drawing room, she lifted her head from a book over which she had been drooping in willowy fashion, all mournful sympathy for the haggard desolation she expected to see depicted on his face; but for once she found herself completely out of tune.