1. [THE STICKIT MINISTER'S WOOING]
  2. [THE STICKIT MINISTER WINS THROUGH]
  3. [GIBBY THE EEL, STUDENT IN DIVINITY]
  4. [DR. GIRNIGO'S ASSISTANT]
  5. [THE GATE OF THE UPPER GARDEN]
  6. [THE TROUBLER OF ISRAEL]
  7. [CARNATION'S MORNING JOY]
  8. [JAIMSIE]
  9. [BEADLE AND MARTYR]
  10. [THE BLUE EYES OF AILIE]
  11. [LOWE'S SEAT]
  12. [THE SUIT OF BOTTLE GREEN]
  13. [A SCIENTIFIC SYMPOSIUM]
  14. [THE HEMPIE'S LOVE STORY]
  15. [THE LITTLE FAIR MAN]—

I.—[SEED SOWN BY THE WAYSIDE]
II.—[THE HUMBLING OF STRENGTH-O'-AIRM]
III.—[THE CURATE OF KIRKCHRIST]

  1. [MY FATHER'S LOVE STORY]
  2. [THE MAN OF WRATH]
  3. [THE LASS IN THE SHOP]
  4. [THE RESPECT OF DROWDLE]
  5. [TADMOR IN THE WILDERNESS]
  6. [PETERSON'S PATIENT]
  7. [TWO HUMOURISTS]

THE STICKIT MINISTER'S WOOING[#]

[#] These stories have been edited chiefly from manuscripts supplied to me by my friend Mr. Alexander McQuhirr, M.D., of Cairn Edward in Galloway, of whose personal adventures I treated in the volume called "Lad's Love," I have let my friend tell his tale in his own way in almost every case.

It was in the second year of my college life thai I came home to find Robert Fraser, whom a whole country-side called the "Stickit Minister," distinctly worse, and indeed, set down upon his great chair in the corner as on a place from which he would never rise.

A dour, grippy back-end it was, the soil stubborn and untoward with early frost. And a strange sound it was to hear as I (Alexander McQuhirr) came down the Lang Brae, the channel stones droning and dinnelling on the ice by the third of November; a thing which had not happened in our parts since that fell year of the Sixteen Drifty Days, which has been so greatly talked about.

I walked over to the Dullarg the very night I arrived from Edinburgh. I had a new volume of Tennyson with me, which I had bought with the thought that he would be pleased with it. For I loved Robert Fraser, and I will not deny that my heart beat with expectation as I went up the little loaning with the rough stone dyke upon either side—aye, as if it had been the way to Nether Neuk, and I going to see my sweetheart.

"Come your ways in, Alec, man," his voice came from the inner room, as he heard me pause to exchange banter of a rural sort with the servant lasses in the kitchen; "I have been waitin' for ye. I kenned ye wad come the nicht!"

I went in. And there by the little peat fire, drowsing red and looking strangely out of place behind the ribs of the black-leaded "register" grate, I saw the Stickit Minister with a black-and-white check plaid about his knees. He smiled a strange sweet smile, at once wistful and distant, as I entered—like one who waves farewell through a mist of tears as the pier slides back and the sundering water seethes and widens about the ship.