not a day passed in
which Thomas did not pray for him in secret, naming him by his name,
and lingering over it mournfully--"Alexander Forbes--the young man that
I thocht wad hae been pluckit frae the burnin' afore noo. But thy
time's the best, O Lord. It's a' thy wark; an' there's no good thing in
us. And thou canst turn the hert o' man as the rivers o' water. And
maybe thou hast gi'en him grace to repent already, though I ken
naething aboot it."

CHAPTER XLV.

This had been a sore winter for Thomas, and he had had plenty of
leisure for prayer. For, having gone up on a scaffold one day to see
that the wall he was building was properly protected from the rain, he
slipped his foot on a wet pole, and fell to the ground, whence, being a
heavy man, he was lifted terribly shaken, besides having one of his
legs broken. Not a moan escaped him--a murmur was out of the question.
They carried him home, and the surgeon did his best for him. Nor,
although few people liked him much, was he left unvisited in his
sickness. The members of his own religious community recognized their
obligation to minister to him; and they would have done more, had they
guessed how poor he was. Nobody knew how much he gave away in other
directions; but they judged of his means by the amount he was in the
habit of putting into the plate at the chapel-door every Sunday. There
was never much of the silvery shine to be seen in the heap of copper,
but one of the gleaming sixpences was almost sure to have dropped from
the hand of Thomas Crann. Not that this generosity sprung altogether
from disinterested motives; for the fact was, that he had a morbid fear
of avarice; a fear I believe not altogether groundless; for he was
independent in his feelings almost to fierceness--certainly to
ungraciousness; and this strengthened a natural tendency to saving and
hoarding. The consciousness of this tendency drove him to the other
extreme. Jean, having overheard him once cry out in an agony, "Lord,
hae mercy upo' me, and deliver me frae this love o' money, which is the
root of all evil," watched him in the lobby of the chapel the next
Sunday--"and as sure's deith," said Jean--an expression which it was
weel for her that Thomas did not hear--"he pat a siller shillin' into
the plate that day, mornin' _an'_ nicht."

"Tak' care hoo ye affront him, whan ye tak' it," said Andrew Constable
to his wife, who was setting out to carry him some dish of her own
cooki