237 XXIX. Story of the Egyptian. 244 XXX. The Meeting for Rain. 252 XXXI. Various Bodies Converging on the Hill. 259 XXXII. Leading Swiftly to the Appalling Marriage. 268 XXXIII. While the Ten O'Clock Bell Was Ringing. 274 XXXIV. The Great Rain. 281 XXXV. The Glen at Break of Day. 285 XXXVI. Story of the Dominie. 299 XXXVII. Second Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the Twenty-Four Hours. 308 XXXVIII. Thrums during the Twenty-Four Hours--Defence of the Manse. 315 XXXIX. How Babbie Spent the Night of August Fourth. 324 XL. Babbie and Margaret--Defence of the Manse Continued. 330 XLI. Rintoul and Babbie--Breakdown of the Defence of the Manse. 337 XLII. Margaret, the Precentor, and God Between. 345 XLIII. Rain--Mist--The Jaws. 353 XLIV. End of the Twenty-Four Hours. 363 XLV. Talk of a Little Maid Since Grown Tall. 369 [Illustration: "I'LL GI'E YOU MY RABBIT," MICAH SAID, "IF YOU'LL GANG AWA'."--PAGE 215.] NOTE The illustrations in this book have been made especially for this edition of The Little Minister by arrangement with Mr. Charles Frohman, through whose courtesy they are here reproduced. Many of them were drawn by C. Allen Gilbert, while others are from photographs which appear here for the first time. Chapter One. THE LOVE-LIGHT. Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king's soldier without whistling impudently, "Come ower the water to Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The meeting had only one witness, a weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards, "They didna speak, but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them human to us for ever. It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.