There was a long pause here, and the clock struck with a long preparatory g-r-r-r, as if it were clearing its throat in order to apologise for the coming interruption.
"And that," said Robert Fraser, "was the reason why Jessie Loudon would not come up to the Dullarg this nicht—no, not even for her bairns' sake!"
THE STICKIT MINISTER WINS THROUGH
Yet Jessie Loudon did come to the Dullarg that night—and that for her children's sake.
Strangely enough, in writing of an evening so fruitful in incident, I cannot for the life of me remember what happened during the next two hours. The lads and lasses came in for the "Taking of the Book." So much I do recall. But that was an exercise never omitted on any pretext in the house of the ex-divinity student. I remember this also, because after the brief prelude of the psalm-singing (it was the 103rd), the Stickit Minister pushed the Bible across to me, open at the thirty-eighth chapter of Job. The envelope was still there. Though it was turned sideways I could see the faintly written address:
MR. ROBERT FRASER,
Student in Divinity,
50, St. Leonard's Street,
Edinburgh.
Even as I looked I seemed to hear again the woman's voice in the dark loaning—"I canna gang in there!" And in a lightning flash of illumination it came to me what the answer to that letter had meant to Jessie Loudon, and the knowledge somehow made me older and sadder.