‘For the bit laddie,’ continued Bob with a slight fall and wistful yearning in his voice, ‘he’s but a wee chappie of three years. We lost twa weans between him and the lasses. He’s no stout--I’m whiles frightened that he has his mither’s constitution. But his sisters and a gude auld body of a wife in our cotton do the best they can for him, and wha kens but that we’ll be permitted to pu’ him through--and live to see him a braw man some day?’ Bob lifted his bent head with glistening eyes at the remote but inspiring prospect. Jean thought of a manse child that had died in its infancy, on which she had doted as women like her are apt to lavish passionate affection on little children. ‘I hope sae too, Bob, my man,’ she said in the kindly phraseology of her class, and addressing him all the more gently, because she sought, in her own mind, to atone for the unreasonable, unrighteous anger she had felt stirring in her heart against him, for his very fatherliness, only a moment before. ‘I’ll be right glad to hear that your laddie has thriven.’ Bob’s face brightened more and more, as he leapt down from the cart-head, and stood by Jean’s side. But in spite of the decided action a certain hesitation and agitation began to appear in his manner. The movement served to remind Jean of what she had been losing consciousness of, that she and Bob Meffin were central figures in an attentive circle scrutinising their proceedings, and probably catching scraps of their conversation. ‘Jean,’ said her old lover, lost to, or careless of, their public position, a broken red rising in his face while his eyes fell before hers, ‘I’m pleased to have seen you here, lass; and I own I had a notion we might forgather, after I had been with the cart for draff at the brewery, and made up my mind to come this way, because I had a doubt about a nail in ane of Bruce the horse’s shoon--the back fit on the hinder side--which Jamie Caird could put richt. Jean, I leed to you when we were young, I’ll never deny it; but oh! woman, ye dinna ken what it is for a man to own to a lee, whether to man or woman. And ye dinna ken how I was tempted--a thochtless lad as I was, in the same place with a bonnie fulish young lass who took a liking to him, and would let him see her heart richt or wrang. Jean, I’ll no say ill of the dead to whom I did wrang, who was the mither of my bairns. She did her best, puir feckless thing, when she had gotten me--no sic a bargain after all, since I was neither so clever nor so handy as to make up for her lack of pith and experience--and she was a tried woman, racked wi’ pain and faint with heart sickness, longing to be gane to her rest, her worst enemy might have pitied her, puir Leezbeth! long before she gaed aff the face of the earth. I would be a muckle brute to blame her at this time of the day, and to throw a’ the wyte of my faut on her. Still, Jean, the truth must be spoken, and gin ye had