't know. It looked a little like it, last night and come to
think of it, he talked a little like it, too."

"He is no' the man to ask any woman, till he is sure he will not ask in
vain. He may, but I dinna think it."

"Well, perhaps not. Of course, I could see last night, that it was all
fixed, their being together. But I thought she stood it pretty well,
better than she would if she hadn't liked it."

"Hoot, man! She thought nothing about it. Her thoughts were far enough
from him, and his likes, and dislikes," said Mrs Snow, with a sigh.

"As a general thing, girls are quick enough to find out when a man cares
for them, and he showed it plainly to me. I guess she mistrusts."

"No, a woman kens when a man his lost his heart to her. He lets her see
it in many ways, when he has no thought of doing so. But a woman is not
likely to know it, when a man without love wishes to marry her, till he
tells her in words. And what heart has twenty years cheat'ry of his
fellow men left to yon man, that my bairn should waste a thought on a
worldling like him?"

Mr Snow was silent. His wife's tone betrayed to him that something was
troubling her, or he would have ventured a word in his new friend's
defence. Not that he was inclined to plead Mr Green's cause with
Graeme, but he could not help feeling a little compassion for him, and
he said:

"Well, I suppose I feel inclined to take his part, because he makes me
think of what I was myself once, and that not so long ago."

The look that Mrs Snow turned upon her husband was one of indignant
astonishment.

"Like you! You dry stick!"

"Well, ain't he? You used to think me a pretty hard case. Now, didn't
you?"

"I'm no' going to tell you to-night what I used to think of you," said
his wife, more mildly. "I never saw you on the day when you didna think
more of other folks' comfort than you thought of your own, and that
couldna be said of him, this many a year and day. He is not a fit mate
for my bairn."

"Well--no, he ain't. He ain't a Christian, and that is the first thing
she would consider. But he ain't satisfied with himself, and if anybody
in the world could bring him to be what he ought to be, she is the one."
And he repeated the conversation that had taken place when they were
left alone in the summer-house.

"But being dissatisfied with himself, is very far from being a changed
man, and that work must be done by a greater than Graeme. And besides,
i