“Ou, ay; that’s true as far as we, short-lived and short-sichtit craturs, see o’ them! but this warl’s but the beginnin; and the glory o’ Christ, wha’s the vera Love o’ the Father, spreads a heap further nor that. It’s no for naething we’re tellt hoo the sinner-women cam til him frae a’ sides! They needit him sair, and cam. Never ane o’ them was ower black to be latten gang close up til him; and some o’ sic women un’erstede things he said ’at mony a respectable wuman cudna get a glimp o’! There’s aye rain eneuch, as Maister Shaksper says, i’ the sweet haivens to wash the vera han’ o’ murder as white as snow. The creatin hert is fu’ o’ sic rain. Loe _him_, lassie, and ye’ll never glaur the bonny goon ye broucht white frae his hert!” The soutar’s face was solemn and white, and tears were running down the furrows of his cheeks. Maggie too was weeping. At length she said— “Supposin the mither o’ my bairnie a wuman like that, can ye think it fair that _her_ disgrace should stick til _him?_” “It sticks til him only in sic minds as never saw the lovely greatness o’ God.” “But sic bairns come na intil the warl as God wad hae them come!” “But your bairnie _is_ come, and that he couldna withoot the creatin wull o’ the Father! Doobtless sic bairnies hae to suffer frae the prood jeedgment o’ their fellow-men and women, but they may get muckle guid and little ill frae that—a guid naebody can reive them o’. It’s no a mere veesitin o’ the sins o’ the fathers upo’ the bairns, but a provision to haud the bairns aff o’ the like, and to shame the fathers o’ them. Eh, but sic maun be sair affrontit wi’ themsels, that disgrace at ance the wife that should hae been and the bairn that shouldna! Eh, the puir bairnie that has sic a father! But he has anither as weel—a richt gran’ father to rin til!—The ae thing,” the soutar went on, “that you and me, Maggie, has to do, is never to lat the bairn ken the miss o’ father or mother, and sae lead him to the ae Father, the only real and true ane.—There he’s wailin, the bonny wee man!” Maggie ran to quiet her little one, but soon returned, and sitting down again beside her father, asked him for a piece of work. All this time, through his own cowardly indifference, the would-be-grand preacher, James Blatherwick, knew nothing of the fact that, somewhere in the world, without father or mother, lived a silent witness against him. CHAPTER VII