As we came within the shadow, they two divided the one from the other, the wild lass going to her father’s side, Jean being left to come to mine. “I saw you not at the ordination, Alexander-Jonita!” said her father. “No,” she answered sharply, “it was a brave day for the nowt to stray broadcast over the fell, and there was never a man, woman, or bairn about the house. Well might I remain to keep the evil-doers from the doors.” I felt a soft hand touch mine as if by accident, and a low voice whispered close to my ear. “But I was there. I watched it all, and when I saw you were kneeling before them all with the hands of the ministers upon your head, I had almost swooned away!” The soft hand was fully in mine now. I was not conscious of having taken it, but nevertheless it lay trembling a little and yet nestling contentedly in my palm. And because I was tired and the day had been a labour and a burden to me, I was comforted that thus Jean’s hand abode in mine. I pressed it and said, perhaps more gently than I ought, “Little one, I am glad you were there. But the work is a great one for so young and unworthy as I. It presses hard upon me!” “But you have good friends,” said Jean, “friends that--that think of you always and wish you well.” We had fallen a little way behind, and I could hear Alexander-Jonita in her high clear voice telling her father how she had found a sick sheep on the Duchrae Craigs and carried it all the way home on her back. “What,” cried her father, “ower the heather and the moss-hags?” “Aye,” she answered, as if the thing were nothing, “and what is more the poor beast is like to live and thrive.” CHAPTER XVII. THE BONNY LASS OF EARLSTOUN. So I was settled in my parish, which was a good one as times went. The manse had recently been put in order. It was a pleasant stone house which sat in the bieldy hollow beneath the Kirk Knowe of Balmaghie. Snug and sheltered it lay, an encampment of great beeches sheltering it from the blasts, and the green-bosomed hills looking down upon it with kindly tolerant silence. The broad Dee Water floated silently by, murmuring a little after the rains; mostly silent however--the water lapping against the reeds and fretting the low cavernous banks when the wind blew hard, but on the whole slipping past with a certain large peace and attentive stateliness. My brother Hob abode with me in the manse of Balmaghie to be my man. It was great good fortune thus to keep him; and in the coming troublous days I ken not what I should have done without his good counsel and strongly willing right hand. My father and mother came over to see me on the old pony from Ardarroch, my mother riding on a pillion behind my father, and both of them ready on the sign of the least brae to get off and walk most of the way, with the bridle over my father’s arm, while my mother discoursed of the terrible thing it was to have two of your sons so far from home, strangers, as it were, in a strange land.