But unless in the involuntary shiver which ran through her--while long rays of sunshine were finding their way into the kirk windows and into the open door, lighting up and warming even the remotest corner--and in the breath drawn in and let out again with a dry inaudible sob, Jean gave no sign. She neither screamed nor fainted, she made no ‘dust’ or disturbance in the kirk of all places, she would have thought that neither maidenly--‘wiselike’ she would have called it--nor reverent. Bob Meffin was a fallen sinner, that was all, though it was enough for her to carry branded on her heart to her dying day. And she would never see or speak with him again, though she had loved him with all her heart. And what power of passion and depth of tenderness existed in that heart may be fairly conceived in the light of a biblical compliment which her master the minister once paid her. He had been watching Jean with his younger children when he exclaimed suddenly, ‘Jean, your mistress is right, you’re a fine young woman; you remind me of that riddle of Samson’s, “Out of the strong came forth sweetness.”’ CHAPTER II. BOB MEFFIN’S AMENDS. Fourteen years passed--not without their changes. It was a fine frosty winter afternoon when two knots of homely men and women--forming two distinct coteries--were gathered at one end of Dalroy village, where, on the right side of the little street stood the Dalroy ‘smiddy,’ and on the left was ‘the smiddy well’--a dipping-in-well famous throughout the village for the excellence of its ‘tea-water.’ Horses were waiting to be shod round the smiddy door, while their temporary owners--dark figures in the ruddy glow of the furnace, prepared to hold their rustic parliament. At the centre of attraction over the way maids and matrons took their turn in filling their cans and pitchers. Very nearly at the same moment Jean Kinloch came in sight--emerging from the blue haze made up of the frost and the gloaming, while there was heard, with the peculiar distinctness of such a sound in such weather, the rumbling of a cart, with cart, horse, and driver still unseen, sounding louder and louder as it drew near in the opposite direction. Jean had a plaid pinned over her cap, and carried a bright pitcher dangling lightly from one wrist; she was sniffing with satisfaction ‘the caller air,’ which sent her rich blood coursing through her veins, and yet not refusing to welcome the hot blast which met her as she crossed in front of the smiddy door. Of course, Jean’s arrival was hailed before she was within ear-shot by a double chorus of half-approving, half-ironical comments--the purport of which she could very well guess--beginning with ‘Here comes the Miss Fraser’s Jean.’