to step out of their way to give her a kindly good-morrow; after a bit,
fish and meal used to be placed on her table by one neighbor or another,
when she was out, and so on. She was at first behindhand in responding
to all this, but by degrees she thawed to those who were thawing to her.
Next, Saunders called on her, and showed her a settlement, made for her
benefit, on certain lands in Lanarkshire. She was at ease for life.

The Almighty had seen her all these years.

But how came her neighbors to melt?

Because a nobleman had visited her.

Not exactly, dear novel-reader.

This was it.

That same night, by a bright fire lighting up snowy walls, burnished
copper, gleaming candlesticks, and a dinner-table floor, sat the
mistress of the house, Christie Johnstone, and her brother, Flucker.

She with a book, he with his reflections opposite her.

"Lassie, hae ye ony siller past ye?"

"Ay, lad; an' I mean to keep it!" The baddish boy had registered a vow
to the contrary, and proceeded to bleed his flint (for to do Christie
justice the process was not very dissimilar). Flucker had a versatile
genius for making money; he had made it in forty different ways, by land
and sea, tenpence at a time.

"I hae gotten the life o' Jess Rutherford till ye," said he.

"Giest then."

"I'm seeking half a crown for 't," said he.

Now, he knew he should never get half a crown, but he also knew that if
he asked a shilling, he should be beaten down to fourpence.

So half a crown was his first bode.

The enemy, with anger at her heart, called up a humorous smile, and
saying, "An' ye'll get saxpence," went about some household matter; in
reality, to let her proposal rankle in Flucker.

Flucker lighted his pipe slowly, as one who would not do a sister the
injustice to notice so trivial a proposition.

He waited fresh overtures.

They did not come.

Christie resumed her book.

Then the baddish boy fixed his eye on the fire, and said softly and
thoughtfully to the fire, "Hech, what a heap o' troubles yon woman has
come through."

This stroke of art was not lost. Christie looked up from her book;
pretended he had spoken to her, gave a fictitious yawn, and renewed the
negotiation with the air of one disposed to kill time.

She was dying for the story.

Commerce was twice broken off and renewed by each power in turn.

At last the bargain was struck at fourteen-pence.

Then Flucker came out, the honest merchant.

He had