“Ca’ they her _that_, sir?—Eh, gar her come, gar her come! I wud fain cry upo _Isy_ ance mair!—Sit ye doon, sir, shame upo’ me!—and tak a bite efter yer lang walk!—Will ye no bide the nicht wi’ ’s, and gang back by the mornin’s co’ch?” “I wull that, mem—and thank ye kindly! I’m a bit fatiguit wi’ the hill ro’d, and the walk a wee langer than I’m used til.—Ye maun hae peety upo my kittle temper, mem, and no drive me to ower muckle shame o’ myself!” he concluded, wiping his forehead. “And to think,” cried his hostess, “that my hard hert sud hae drawn sic a word frae ane o’ the Lord’s servans that serve him day and nicht! I beg yer pardon, and that richt heumbly, sir! I daurna say I’ll never do the like again, but I’m no sae likly to transgress a second time as the first.—Lord, keep the doors o’ my lips, that ill-faured words comena thouchtless oot, and shame me and them that hear me!—I maun gang and see aboot yer denner, sir! I s’ no be lang.” “Yer gracious words, mem, are mair nor meat and drink to me. I could, like Elijah, go i’ the stren’th o’ them—maybe something less than forty days, but it wad be by the same sort o’ stren’th as that angels’-food gied the prophet!” Marion hurried none the less for such a word; and soon the minister had eaten his supper, and was seated in the cool of a sweet summer-evening, in the garden before the house, among roses and lilies and poppy-heads and long pink-striped grasses, enjoying a pipe with the farmer, who had anticipated the hour for unyoking, and hurried home to have a talk with Mr. Robertson. The minister opened wide his heart, and told them all he knew and thought of Isy. And so prejudiced were they in her favour by what he said of her, and the arguments he brought to show that the judgment of the world was in her case tyrannous and false, that what anxiety might yet remain as to the new relation into which they were about to enter, was soon absorbed in hopeful expectation of her appearance. “But,” he concluded, “you will have to be wise as serpents, lest aiblins (_possibly_) ye kep (_intercept_) a lost sheep on her w’y back to the shepherd, and gar her lie theroot (_out of doors_), exposed to the prowlin wouf. Afore God, I wud rether share wi’ her in _that_ day, nor wi’ them that keppit her!” But when he reached home, the minister was startled, indeed dismayed by the pallor that overwhelmed Isy’s countenance when she heard, following his assurance of the welcome that awaited her, the name and abode of her new friends. “They’ll be wantin to ken a’thing!” she sobbed. “Tell you them,” returned the minister, “everything they have a right to know; they are good people, and will not ask more. Beyond that, they will respect your silence.”