ndly attempts to make
friends, till something else had moved her.

The tact and patience of her mistress in dealing with her were helped by
the belief which gradually came to her, that this silent withdrawal of
herself from all approaches of kindliness or sympathy was hardly
voluntary on Allison's part. It was not so much that she refused help
as that she had ceased to expect it. Under some terrible strain of
circumstances her courage had been broken, and her hope. She was like
one who believed that for her, help was impossible.

Of course she was wrong in this, her mistress thought. She was young
and time brings healing. If her trouble had come through death, healing
would come soon. If it were a living sorrow, there might still be more
to suffer; but her strong spirit would rise above it at last--of that
she was sure.

All this she had said to the minister one night. He listened in silence
a while, then he said:

"And what if sin, or the love of it, makes her trouble? There are some
things which cannot be outlived."

"Tell me what trouble touches any of us with which sin--our own, or that
of other folk--has not to do. Yes, there has been sin where there is
suffering such as hers, but I cannot think that she has been the sinner.
Allison is an honest woman, pure and true, or my judgment is at fault.
It is the sin of some one else which has brought such gloom and
solitariness upon her. Whether she is a real Christian, getting all the
good of it, is another matter. I have my doubts."

All this time the minister's "new lass" had not been overlooked by those
who worshipped in the little kirk, nor by some who did not. The usual
advances had been made toward acquaintance--friendly, curious, or
condescending, as the case might be, but no one had made much progress
with the stranger. Her response to each and all alike was always
perfectly civil, but always also of the briefest, and on a second
meeting the advances had to be made all over again.

When business or pleasure brought any of the cottage wives to the manse
kitchen, as happened frequently, their "gude-day t'ye" was always
promptly and quietly answered, but it never got much beyond that with
any of them. Allison went about her work in the house or out of it, and
"heeded them as little as the stools they sat on," some of them said,
and their husbands and brothers could say no more.

When she was discussed, as of course she was at all suitable times