“Hout, ay;” and the toll-keeper brought a liberal length of roll tobacco, which the weary traveller grasped eagerly and paid for promptly with his penny. He bit off a piece and chewed it fiercely, his eye resting steadily the while on the face of one of the toll-keeper’s children, a rosy-cheeked girl of seven or eight, who was gazing on the gaunt face and figure in a species of awe. “It’s good for killing hunger,” he observed, with his eye still meditatively fixed upon the child; “not that I’ve felt much of it,” he hastily added, as if in fear that the toll-keeper would think that he meant to beg; “I haven’t had time to think of that. That’s a pretty child,” he abruptly added, alluding to the girl. “Yes, but she’s not looking so well as she did,” answered the toll-keeper, with a father’s pleased look at the compliment. “We nearly lost her with fever a while ago.” “Imphm!” grimly returned the white-haired tramp. “Mebbe some day you’ll wish she had been taken. She’ll grow up to a fine lass, and then some one will envy you of your bonny flower and crush it up in his fingers, never thinking or caring to think that your heart’s inside of it. You’ll go mad, then, and think how happy you could have been smoothing the turf on her grave when she was a little child.” “God forbid!” fervently exclaimed the toll-keeper, catching the child up in his arms, as if to shield her there. “God? What’s God got to do with it, I’d like to know?” cried the white-haired tramp, with his hard tones rising to a despairing snarl. “Is there any God? I never see him, though there’s plenty of devil about—that everybody can see with their eyes shut. Look you, sir!” he added, clenching one bony hand and smiting the palm of the other in fearful excitement, “I’ve done with God for ever! When my girl was like that little one I used to go to church o’ Sundays, and feel pious and good, and have my heart full of softness and gratitude. I’ve felt as if I could have took the whole world into my arms to bless it. But that’s all gone now, and the devil’s the one I speak to. He’s been with me all the way, cheering and helping me over the weary miles, and I won’t turn agen him now when I’m near the end of it.” The toll-keeper shrank back before the terrible words and sudden hurricane of passion which convulsed the speaker; then he gathered the two children in his arms, and said softly to them— “Run round into the garden, bairns, and pull some bonnie flowers, and make a fairy’s feast in a corner, with rose leaves for plates. I’ll come round and see it when it’s done. Haste ye now!” and, with a kiss and a smile, he dismissed them.