gue concerning details, but extremely
serious. Some tale 'Liza Cotton had heard, he explained. It was quite
true, he feared, something or other about his playing a fiddle and
dancing, far worse than Sandy Neil had ever been guilty of, for this
was in a theatre. Wee Andra knew the word theatre was to his father a
synonym for the bottomless pit. "Mebbe the minister had been an actor
once." Wee Andra hoped, for the sake of the Church, that it wasn't
true.

"Ah, ye tale-bearer!" cried his father with a withering contempt, which
could not quite hide his perturbation. "It's a fine pack ye meet every
night in the Glen! Their only thought is to hear or tell some new
thing, let it be false or true! Ye canna' even keep yer ill tongues
aff a meenister o' the Gospel!"

"But this is true, father," declared the young man seriously. "'Liza
Cotton saw him herself; you can ask her, if you don't believe me.
Man!" he continued, growing frivolous again, "it'll be fine here next
winter if he plays the fiddle! Sandy Neil's goin' to ask him to learn
him some new dance tunes!"

"Ah, ye irreverent fool!" shouted his father, rising up from the dinner
table where this conversation had been held. "Man, ye an' yon Neil
pack neither fear God nor regard man! Get oot o' ma' sight!"

Wee Andra, having wisely deferred his last shot until his dinner was
finished, obeyed his father's injunction with alacrity, and went off to
the fields, consumed with unfilial mirth.

Meantime the subject of all this discussion was not oblivious to the
fact that some strange undercurrent of feeling was working against him.
Coonie was the instrument used to make a reality out of the intangible
thing.

The mail-carrier was coming slowly down the hill one September morning
with hanging head and sullen mien. Eliza Cotton had been sewing down
on the Flats for over a week and he had not had any fun for a long
time. He was just sweeping the valley with his green eyes like a huge
spider in search of prey, when he caught sight of a tempting fly. The
young minister was coming up the leaf-strewn path by the roadside. He
was just turning in at the McNabbs' gateway, when Coonie pulled up. He
had brought a bundle from Lakeview for the blacksmith's wife with his
accustomed grumblings, and had intended to fling it over the gate, as
he passed, in the hope that it contained something breakable. But now
he recognised in it an instrument in the hand of Providence to g