“Yon's a gay fule,” he said to Janet, when she answered his call to hitch the log farther into the cabin. “He was wanting to marry on you.” “Ay?” she indifferently returned,--adding, without change of feature, “There's no lack o' fules round here.” Meanwhile Timmins was making his way through the woods to his own place. As he walked along, the brightness gradually faded from his face, and by the time he reached the trysting-corner his mood was more in harmony with his case. His face would have graced a funeral. Now Cap'en McKay's farm lay cheek by jowl with the elder's, and as the mariner happened to be fixing his fence at the corner, he noted Timmins's signals of distress. “Man!” he greeted, “ye're looking hipped.” Then, alluding to a heifer of Timmins's which had _bloated_ on marsh-grass the day before, he added, “The beastie didna die?” Assured that it was only a wife that Timmins lacked, he sighed relief. “Ah, weel, that's no so bad; they come cheaper. But tell us o't.” “Hecks, lad!” he commented, on Timmins's dole, “I'd advise ye to drive your pigs til anither market.” “Were?” Timmins asked--“w'ere'll I find one?” “That's so.” The mariner thoughtfully shaved his jaw with a red forefinger, while his comprehensive glance took in the other's bow-legs. “There isna anither lass i' Zorra that wad touch ye with a ten-foot pole.” Reddening, Timmins breathed hard, but the mariner met his stare with the serene gaze of one who deals in undiluted truth; so Timmins gulped and went on: “Say! I 'ear that you're mighty clever in these 'ere affairs. Can't you 'elp a feller out?” The cap'en modestly bowed to reputation, admitting that he had assisted “a sight of couples over the broomstick,” adding, however, that the knack had its drawbacks. There were many door-stones in Zorra that he dared not cross. And he wagged his head over Timmins's case, wisely, as a lawyer ponders over the acceptance of a hopeless brief. Finally he suggested that if Timmins was “no stuck on his Methodisticals,” he might join the kirk. “You think that would 'elp?” The cap'en thought that, but he was not prepared to endorse Timmins's following generalization that it didn't much matter what name a man worshipped under. It penetrated down through the aforesaid rubble of disintegration and touched native granite. Stiffly enough he returned that Presbyterianism was good enough for him, but it rested on Timmins to follow the dictates of his own conscience. Now when bathed in love's elixir conscience becomes very pliable indeed, and as the promptings of Timmins's inner self were all toward Janet, his outer man was not long in making up his mind. But though, following the cap'en's advice, he joined himself to the elect of Zorra, his change of faith brought him only a change of name.