were made.

The militant Doctor could not dismiss Duncan Rowallan openly. That, at
the time, would have been going too far; but he could, and did, cut down
his salary to starvation point, in the hope that he would resign. But
Duncan Rowallan had not come to Howpaslet for salary, and his expenses
were so few that he lived as comfortably on his pittance as ever he had
done. Porridge night and morning is not costly when you use little milk.

So he continued to wander much about the lanes with a book. In the
summer he could be met with at all hours of light and dusk. Howpaslet
was a land of honeysuckle and clematis. The tendrils clung to every
hedge, and the young man wandered forth to breathe the gracious airs.
One day in early June he was abroad. It was a Saturday, his day of days.
Somehow he could not read that morning, though he had a book in his
pocket, for the stillness of early summer (when the buds come out in
such numbers that the elements are stilled with the wonder of watching)
had broken up. It was a day of rushing wind and sudden onpelts of
volleying rain. The branches creaked, and the young green leaves were
shred untimeously from the beeches. All the orchards were dappled with
flying showers of rosy snow, as the blossoms of the apple and cherry
fled before the swirling gusts of cheerful tempest.

Duncan Rowallan was up on the windy braeface above the kirk of
Howpaslet, with one hand to his cloth cap, as he held down his head and
bored himself into the eye of the wind. Of a sudden he was amazed to see
a straw hat, with a flash of scarlet about it, whirl past him, spinning
upon its edge. To turn and pursue was the work of a moment. But he did
not catch the run-away till it brought up, blown flat against the
kirkyard dyke. He returned with it in his hand. A tall slip of a girl
stood on the slope, her hair wind-blown and unfilleted--wind-blown also
as to her skirts. Duncan knew her. It was the minister's daughter, the
only child of the house of his enemy.

They met--he beneath, she above on the whinny braeface. Her hair,
usually so smooth, blew out towards him in love-locks and witch-tangles.
For the first time in his life Duncan saw a faint colour in the cheeks
of the minister's daughter.

The teacher of the village school found himself apologising, he was not
quite sure for what. He held the hat out a little awkwardly.

"I found it," he said, not knowing what else to say.

This description of his undign