"Thank you, Henry," said Robert Fraser, "I will not forget this kindness to me!"
With a brusque nod Dr. Henry Fraser strode out through the kitchen, among whose merry groups his comings and goings always created a certain hush of awe. In a few minutes more we could hear the clear clatter of the horse's shod feet on the hard "macadam" as he turned out of the soft sandy loaning into the main road.
The Stickit Minister sank back into his chair.
"Thank God!" he said, with a quick intake of breath almost like a sob.
I looked down at him in surprise.
"Robert, why are you so troubled about this woman's bairns?" I asked.
He did not answer for a while, lying fallen in upon himself in his great armchair of worn horse-hair, as if the strain had been too great for his weak body. When he did reply it was in a curiously far-away voice like a man speaking in a dream.
"They are Jessie Loudon's bairns," he said, "and a' the comfort she has in life!"
I sat down on the hearthrug beside him—a habit I had when we were alone together. It was thus that I used to read Homer and Horace to him in the long winter forenights, and wrangle for happy hours over a construction or the turning of a phrase in the translation. So now I simply sat and was silent, touching his knee lightly with my shoulder. I knew that in time he would tell me all he wished me to hear. The old eight-day clock in the corner (with "John Grey, Kilmaurs, 1791" in italics across the brass face of it), ticked on interminably through ten minutes, and I heard the feet of the men come in from suppering the horse, before Robert said another word. Then he spoke: "Alec," he said, very quietly—he could hardly say or do anything otherwise (or rather I thought so before that night). "I have this on my spirit—it is heavy like a load. When I broke it to Jessie Loudon that I could never marry her, as I told you, I did not tell you that she took it hard and high, speaking bitter words that are best forgotten. And then in a week or two she married Gib Barbour, a good-for-nothing, good-looking young ploughman, a great don at parish dances—no meet mate for her. And that I count the heaviest part of my punishment.
"And since that day I have not passed word or salutation with Jessie Loudon—that is, with Jessie Barbour. But on a Sabbath day, just before I was laid down last year—a bonnie day in June—I met her as I passed though a bourock fresh with the gowden broom, and the 'shilfies' and Jennie Wrens singing on every brier. I had been lookin' for a sheep that had broken bounds. And there she sat wi' a youngling on ilka knee. There passed but ae blink o' the e'en between us—ane and nae mair. But oh, Alec, as I am a sinful man—married wife though she was, I kenned that she loved me, and she kenned that I loved her wi' the love that has nae ending!"