422 The Little Minister

and I was saying a’ the time to mysel’, ‘ You’re
chief elder o’ the kirk, Tammas Whamond, and
you maun speak out the next time she stops to
draw breath.’ They were terrible sma’, common
things she telled me, sic as near a’ mithers minds
about their bairns, but the kind o’ holy way she
said them drove my words down my throat, like
as if I was some infidel man trying to break out
wi’ blasphemy in a kirk.

“«< Tl] let you see something,’ says she, ‘ that I
ken will interest you.’ She brocht it out o’ a
drawer, and what do you think it was? As sure
as death it was no more than some o’ his hair
when he was a litlin, and it was tied up sic care-
fully in paper that you would hae thocht it was
some valuable thing.

“« Mr. Whamond,’ she says, solemnly, ‘ you’ve

.come thrice to the manse to keep me frae being
uneasy about my son’s absence, and you was the
chief instrument under God in bringing him to
Thrums, and I'll gie you a little o’ that hair.’

-“ Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and
yet to see her fondling it! I says to mysel’,
‘Mrs. Dishart,’ I says to mysel’, ‘I was the
chief instrument under God in bringing him to
Thrums, and I’ve come here to tell you that I’m
to be the chief instrument under God in driving
him out o’t.’ Ay, but when I focht to bring out
these words, my mouth snecked like a box.

“«* Pinna gie me his hair,’ was a’ I could say,
and I wouldna take it frae her; but she laid it in
my hand, and —and syne what could I do? Ay,
it’s easy to speak about thae things now, and to
wonder how I could hae so disgraced the position