Down by the Effick side was a meadow where the villagers washed and dried their clothes, and their cattle browsed. The grass was short and thick, and the stream slid by with a low soft lapping among the stones. An aged beech tree formed a landmark, and there on summer evenings the minister was wont to assemble his class. The faint evening breezes nestled drowsily among the leaves overhead, and the glassy surface of the stream shone in the yellow radiance of the evening light. No scene could be more peaceful and still, or lent itself better to the earnest exhortations of the teacher, and the unflagging attention of his auditors, who had grown to comprise the whole inhabitants of the village, old people and children as well as the youths and maidens for whom the meeting was designed. 'Free Church Principles,' or the superiority of the church to the interference of civil authority, were the stated subjects of consideration, but this pious and indefatigable teacher would not let slip the opportunity of pressing all other branches of religious truth, as occasion offered, in a way more familiar and impressive, as his people thought, than even the regular services of the church. It was dark ere all was over, and after singing a hymn the meeting dispersed. Then Roderick remembered the errand of mercy with which he had proposed to himself to conclude his day, and set out at once for Widow Tirpie's cottage, which was about a mile from the village. Reaching it, he found the daughter on the threshold, gazing motionless towards the western sky, where the last faint gleams of evening still struggled with the coming night. A girl of about twenty, but looking older, worn with care or illness, but with a face superior to her station, she sat like an image of regret, pale-cheeked and thin, with her great dark eyes looking out into the ebbing twilight. She rose on Roderick's approach and followed him inside. There knelt the mother crouching on the hearth, where with distended cheeks she was endeavouring to blow two peats into a blaze, that she might boil her pot and prepare their evening meal.