horities. (He was an unmarried man.)

Elizabeth Milligan, better known as "the minister's Betsy," came and
rapped on the door in an undecided way. It was a very interesting
authority the minister was consulting, so he only said "Thank you,
Elizabeth!" in an absent-minded way and went on reading, rubbing his
moustache the while with the unoccupied hand in a way which, had he
known it, kept it perpetually thin.

But Betty continued to knock, and finally put her head within the study
door.

"It's no' yer parritch yet," she said. "It's but an hour since ye took
yer tea. But, if ye please, minister, wad ye be so kind as open the
door? There's somebody ringing the front-door bell, an' it's jammed wi'
the rain forbye, an' nae wise body gangs and comes that gait ony way,
binna yersel'."

"Certainly, certainly, Elizabeth; I will open the door immediately!"
said the minister, laying down his book and marking the place with last
week's list of psalms and intimations.

Mr. Buchanan went to the seldom-used front door, turned the key, and
threw open the portal to see who the visitor might be who rang the manse
bell at eight o'clock on such a night. Betsy hung about the outskirts
of the hall in a fever of anticipation and alarm. It might be a
highwayman--or even a wild U.P. There was no saying.

But when the minister pulled the door wide open, he looked out and saw
nothing. Only blackness and tossing leaves were in front of him.

"Who's there?" he cried, peremptorily, in his pulpit voice--which he
used when "my people" stood convicted of some exhibition of extreme
callousness to impression.

But only the darkness fronted him and the swirl of wind slapped the wet
ivy-leaves against the porch.

Then apparently from among his feet a little piping voice replied--

"If ye please, minister, I want to learn Greek and Laitin, an' to gang
to the college."

The minister staggered back aghast. He could see no one at all, and this
peeping, elfish-like voice, rising amid the storm to his ear out of the
darkness, reminded him of the days when he believed in the other
world--that is, of course, the world of spirits and churchyard ghosts.

But gradually there grew upon him a general impression of a little
figure, broad and squat, standing bareheaded and with cap in hand on his
threshold. The minister came to himself, and his habits of hospitality
asserted themselves.

"You want to learn Greek and Latin," he said, accustomed to
extrao