st and lifted her heavy head from the
pillow. There were shrill, boyish voices, laughing, shouting,
wrangling, without pause. There was racket on the stairs, and wrestling
in the passage, and half-stifled cries of expostulation or triumph
everywhere, till a door opened, and closed again, and shut it all out.

And so Allison's new life began. She had not come to seek an easy time.
And as for quiet, if she had but known it, the noise and bustle and
boyish clamour, the pleasant confusion of coming and going about the
homely little manse, and the many claims upon her attention and patience
and care, were just what she needed to help her. Whether she knew it or
not, she set herself to her work with a will, and grew as content with
it, after a while, as she could have been anywhere at this time of her
life.

Mr Hume belonged to the little band of remarkable men, to whom, on
their first coming North, was given the name of "Missioners." Some
people say the name was given because these men were among the first to
advocate the scheme of sending missionaries to the heathen. Others say
they were so named because they themselves came, or were sent, to preach
the Gospel of Christ to those who were becoming content to hear what the
new-comers believed and declared to be "another Gospel." In course of
time the name given to the leaders fell also to those who followed--an
honourable name surely, but in those days it was spoken contemptuously
enough sometimes, by both the wise and the foolish, and Mr Hume, during
the first years of his ministry in Nethermuir, had his share of
contumely to meet or to ignore as well as the rest.

But all that had been long past before Allison Bain came with her
spoiled life, and her heavy heart, to seek shelter under his roof. By
that time, to no minister--to no man in all the countryside--was a truer
respect, a fuller confidence given, by those whose good word was of any
value.

He had not been over-eager to win the good word of any one. The courage
and hopefulness of youth and an enthusiastic devotion to the work to
which he had been set apart, carried him happily through the first
troubled years, and when youthful courage and hopefulness had abated
somewhat, then natural patience, and strength daily renewed, stood him
in good stead. He loved his work not less, but more as time went on,
and it prospered in his hands. His flock was only "a little flock"
still; but the gathering in of these