of Jean Myles
see you tranquil once again."

He patted Aaron affectionately; he seemed to be the older of the two.

"Tak' your hand off my shuther," Aaron cried fiercely.

Tommy removed his hand, but he continued to look yearningly at the
warper. Another beautiful thought came to him.

"What are you looking so holy about?" asked Aaron, with misgivings.

"Aaron," cried Tommy, suddenly inspired, "you are not always the
gloomy man you pass for being. You have glorious moments still. You
wake in the morning, and for a second of time you are in the heyday of
your youth, and you and Jean Myles are to walk out to-night. As you
sit by this fire you think you hear her hand on the latch of the door;
as you pass down the street you seem to see her coming towards you. It
is for a moment only, and then you are a gray-haired man again, and
she has been in her grave for many a year; but you have that moment."

Aaron rose, amazed and wrathful. "The de'il tak' you," he cried, "how
did you find out that?"

Perhaps Tommy's nose turned up rapturously in reply, for the best of
us cannot command ourselves altogether at great moments, but when he
spoke he was modest again.

"It was sympathy that told me," he explained; "and, Aaron, if you will
only believe me, it tells me also that a little of the man you were
still clings to you. Come out of the moroseness in which you have
enveloped yourself so long. Think what a joy it would be to Elspeth."

"It's little she would care."

"If you want to hurt her, tell her so."

"I'm no denying but what she's fell fond o' me."

"Then for her sake," Tommy pleaded.

But the warper turned on him with baleful eyes. "She likes me," he
said in a grating voice, "and yet I'm as nothing to her; we are all as
nothing to her beside you. If there hadna been you I should hae become
the father to her I craved to be; but you had mesmerized her; she had
eyes for none but you. I sent you to the herding, meaning to break
your power over her, and all she could think o' was my cruelty in
sindering you. Syne you ran aff wi' her to London, stealing her frae
me. I was without her while she was growing frae lassie to woman, the
years when maybe she could hae made o' me what she willed. Magerful
Tam took the mother frae me, and he lived again in you to tak' the
dochter."

"You really think me masterful--me!" Tommy said, smiling.

"I suppose you never were!" Aaron replied ironically.

"Yes," Tommy admitted fran