With cheeks burning with shame and knees trembling with weakness, she reached Malcom's gate, to which she clung panting for a moment, and then passed in. The little man had his coat off, and, stooping in his strawberry-bed, he did look very small indeed. Edith approached quite near before he noticed her. He suddenly straightened himself up almost as a jumping-jack might, and gave her a sharp, surprised look. He had heard the gossip in several distorted forms, but what hurt him most was that she did not come or send to him. But when he saw her standing before him with her head bent down like a moss-rosebud wilting in the sun, when he met her timid, deprecating glance, his soft heart relented instantly, and coming toward her he said: "An' ha' ye coom to see ould Malcom at last? What ha' I dune that I suld be sae forgotten?" "You were not forgotten, Mr. McTrump. God knows that I have too few friends to forget the best of them," answered Edith, in a voice of tremulous pathos. After that Malcom was wax in her hands, and with moistened eyes he stood gazing at her in undisguised admiration. "I have been through deep trouble, Mr. McTrump," continued she, "and perhaps you, like so many others, may think me not fit to speak to you any more. Besides, I have been very sick, and really ought not to be out to-day. Indeed I feel very weak. Isn't there some place where I could sit down?" "Now God forgie me for an uncoo Highlander," cried Malcom, springing forward, "to think that I suld let ye ston there, like a tall, white, swayin' calla lily, in the rough wind. Take me arm till I support ye to the best room o' me house." Edith did take and cling to it with the feeling of one ready to fall. "Oh, Mr. McTrump, you are too kind," she murmured. "Why suld I not be kind?" he said, heartily, "when I see ye nipt by the wourld's unkindness? Why suld I not be kind? Is the rose there to blame because a weed has grown alongside? Ye could na help it that the wild bird flitted, and I heerd how ye roon like a brave lassie to stop her. But the evil wourld is quick to see the bad and slow to see the gude." And Malcom escorted her like a "leddy o' high degree" to his little parlor, and there she told him and his wife all her trouble, and Malcom seemed afflicted with a sudden cold in his head. Then Mrs. McTrump bustled in and out in a breezy eagerness to make her comfortable. "Ye're a stranger in our toon," she said, "and sae I was once mysel, an' I ken how ye feel." "An' the Gude Book, which I hope ye read," added the gallant Malcom, "says hoo in entertainin' a stranger ye may ha' an angel aroond." "Oh, Mr. McTrump," said Edith, with peony-like face, "Hannibal is the only one who calls me that, and he doesn't know any better." "Why suld he know ony better?" responded Malcom quickly. "I ha' never seen an angel, na mair than I ha' seen a goolden harp, but I'm a thinkin' a modest bonny lassie like yoursel cooms as near to ane as anything can in this world."