362 The Little Minister

boats, but I thought it was my father who —I
mean —”’

“[ know whom you mean,” I said. ‘“ That
was our last day together, but you were not three
years old. Yet you remembered me when you
came to Thrums. You shake your head, but it
is true. Between the diets of worship that first
Sabbath I was introduced to you, and you must
have had some shadowy recollection of my face, for
you asked, ‘Surely I saw you in church in the
forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ but I
had not been in the church in the forenoon.
You have forgotten even that, and yet I treasured
it.

I could hear that he was growing impatient,
though so far he had been more indulgent than I
had any right to expect.

“Tt can all be put into a sentence,” I said,
calmly. ‘ Margaret married Adam Dishart, and
afterwards, believing herself a widow, she married
me. You were born, and then Adam _ Dishart
came back.”

That is my whole story, and here was I telling
it to my son, and not a tear between us. It
ended abruptly, and I fell to mending the fire.

“When I knew your mother first,” I went on,
after Gavin had said some boyish things that were
of no avail to me, “I did not think to end my
days asa dominie. I was a student at Aberdeen,
with the ministry in my eye, and sometimes on
Saturdays J walked forty miles to Harvie to go
to church with her. She had another lover,
Adam Dishart, a sailor turned fisherman; and
while I lingered at corners, wondering if I could