s
weel gang hame, lads. I ken the Dominie. His tongue wad wile the bird
aff the tree. We hae come the day after the fair, boys."

But as for me, I never turned a hair; only keeped my nose in the
straight of my face, and went by them down the street as though I had
been the strength of a regiment marching with pipers, whistling all the
time at my refrain--

"The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!"

VII

THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER

_Hard is it, O my friends, to gather up
A whole life's goodness into narrow space--
A life made Heaven-meet by patient grace,
And handling oft the sacramental cup_

_Of sorrow, drinking all the bitter drains.
Her life she kept most sacred from the world;
Though, Martha-wise, much cumber'd and imperill'd
With service, Mary-like she brought her pains_,

_And laid them and herself low at the feet,
The travel-weary, deep-scarr'd feet, of Him
The incarnate Good, who oft in Galilee_

_Had borne Himself the burden and the heat--
Ah! couldst thou bear, thy tender eyes were dim
With humble tears to think this meant for thee!_

A certain man had two daughters. The man was a minister in Galloway--a
Cameronian minister in a hill parish in the latest years of last
century; consequently he had no living to divide to them. Of the two
daughters, one was wise and the other was foolish. So he loved the
foolish with all his heart. Also he loved the wise daughter; but her
heart was hard because that her sister was preferred before her. The
man's name was Eli M'Diarmid, and his daughters' names were Sophia and
Elsie. He had been long in the little kirk of Cauldshields. To the manse
he had brought his young wife, and from its cheerless four walls he had
walked behind her hearse one day nigh twenty years ago. The daughters
had been reared here; but, even as enmity had arisen on the tilled slips
of garden outside Eden, so there had always been strife between the
daughters of the lonely manse--on the one side rebellion and the
resentment of restraint, on the other tale-bearing and ferret-eyed
spying.

This continued till Elsie M'Diarmid was a well-grown and a comely lass,
while her sister Sophia was already sharpening and souring towards the
thirties. One day there was a terrible talk in the parish. Elsie, the
minister's younger daughter, had run off to Glasgow, and there got
married t