ent would have made him swear to her with tears that
never should he have gone farther than Tilliedrum, and while he was
persuading her he would have persuaded himself. Then again, when he met
Grizel--well, to get him in doubt it would have been necessary to catch
him on the way between these two girls.

So Tommy and Grizel were friends, and finding that it hurt the doctor to
speak on a certain subject to him, Grizel gave her confidences to Tommy.
She had a fear, which he shared on its being explained to him, that she
might meet a man of the stamp of her father, and grow fond of him before
she knew the kind he was, and as even Tommy could not suggest an
infallible test which would lay them bare at the first glance, he
consented to consult Blinder once more. He found the blind man by his
fire-side, very difficult to coax into words on the important topic, but
Tommy's "You've said ower much no to tell a bit more," seemed to impress
him, and he answered the question,--

"You said a woman should fly frae the like o' Grizel's father though it
should be to the other end of the world, but how is she to ken that he's
that kind?"

"She'll ken," Blinder answered after thinking it over, "if she likes him
and fears him at one breath, and has a sort of secret dread that he's
getting a power ower her that she canna resist."

These words were a flash of light on a neglected corner to Tommy. "Now I
see, now I ken," he exclaimed, amazed; "now I ken what my mother meant!
Blinder, is that no the kind of man that's called masterful?"

"It's what poor women find them and call them to their cost," said
Blinder.

Tommy's excitement was prodigious. "Now I ken, now I see!" he cried,
slapping his leg and stamping up and down the room.

"Sit down!" roared his host.

"I canna," retorted the boy. "Oh, to think o't, to think I came to speir
that question at you, to think her and me has wondered what kind he was,
and I kent a' the time!" Without staying to tell Blinder what he was
blethering about, he hurried off to Grizel, who was waiting for him in
the Den, and to her he poured out his astonishing news.

"I ken all about them, I've kent since afore I came to Thrums, but
though I generally say the prayer, I've forgot to think o' what it
means." In a stampede of words he told her all he could remember of his
mother's story as related to him on a grim night in London so long ago,
and she listened eagerly. And when that was over, he repeated