The Stickit Minister's Wooing, and Other Galloway Stories

THE
STICKIT MINISTER'S WOOING
AND OTHER GALLOWAY STORIES
S. R. CROCKETT
LONDON HODDER AND STOUGHTON PATERNOSTER ROW MCM
Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
To The Well-Beloved Memory of
R. L. S.
to whom, eight years ago, I dedicated the first series of the Stickit Minister stories
Eight years ago The Stickit Minister stood friendless without the door of letters. He knew no one within, and feared greatly lest no hand of welcome should be held out to him from those already within, so that, being encouraged, he too might pluck up heart of grace to enter.
Yet when the time came, the Stickit One found not one, but two right hands outstretched to greet him, which, after all, is as many as any man may grasp at once. One was reached out to me from far-away Samoa. The other belonged to a man whom, at that time, I knew only as one of the most thoughtful, sympathetic, and brilliant of London journalists, but who has since become my friend, and at whose instance, indeed, this Second Series of The Stickit Minister stories has been written. To these two men, the London man of letters and the Samoan exile, I owe the first and greatest of an author's literary debts—that of a first encouragement.
They were both men I had never seen; and neither was under any obligation to help me. Concerning the former, still strenuously and gallantly at work among us, I will in this place say nothing further. But, after having kept silence for eight years lest I should appear as one that vaunted himself, I may be permitted a word of that other who sleeps under the green tangle of Vaea Mountain.