We will not name the village where the actors in the following incidents resided; and it is sufficient for our purpose to say that it lay in the county of Berwick, and within the jurisdiction of the Presbytery of Dunse. Eternity has gathered forty winters into its bosom since the principal events took place. Janet Jeffrey was left a widow before her only child had completed his tenth year. While her husband lay upon his deathbed, he called her to his bedside, and, taking her hand within his, he groaned, gazed on her face, and said, "Now, Janet, I'm gaun a lang and a dark journey; but ye winna forget, Janet--ye winna forget--for ye ken it has aye been uppermost in my thoughts and first in my desires, to mak Thamas a minister; promise me that ae thing, Janet, that, if it be HIS will, ye will see it performed, an' I will die in peace." In sorrow the pledge was given, and in joy performed. Her life became wrapt up in her son's life; and it was her morning and her evening prayer that she might live to see her "dear Thamas a shining light in the kirk." Often she declared that he was an "auld farrant bairn, and could ask a blessing like ony minister." Our wishes and affections, however, often blind our judgment. Nobody but the mother thought the son fitted for the kirk, nor the kirk fitted for him. There was always something original, almost poetical about him; but still Thomas was "no orator as Brutus was." His mother had few means beyond the labour of her hands for their support. She had kept him at the parish school until he was fifteen, and he had learned all that his master knew; and in three years more, by rising early and sitting late at her daily toils, and the savings of his field labour and occasional teaching, she was enabled to make preparation for sending him to Edinburgh. Never did her wheel spin so blithely since her husband was taken from her side, as when she put the first lint upon the rock for his college sarks. Proudly did she show to her neighbours her double spinel yarn--observing, "It's nae finer than he deserves, poor fallow, for he'll pay me back some day." The web was bleached and the shirts made by her own hands; and the day of his departure arrived. It was a day of joy mingled with anguish. He attended the classes regularly and faithfully; and truly as St. Giles's marked the hour, the long, lean figure of Thomas Jeffrey, in a suit of shabby black, and half a dozen volumes under his arm, was seen issuing from his garret in the West Bow, darting down the frail stair with the velocity of a shadow, measuring the Lawnmarket and High Street with gigantic strides, gliding like a ghost up the South Bridge, and sailing through the Gothic archway of the College, till the punctual student was lost in its inner chambers. Years rolled by, and at length the great, the awful day arrived-- "Big with the fate of Thomas and his mother."