The lawyer made a show of explanation, then assumed an air of authority, but finally encountered the parson's white face, and turned away.
In another moment Greta was hanging on Parson Christian's neck, sobbing and moaning, while the good old Christian, with all the mellowness back in his wrinkled face, smoothed her hair as tenderly as a woman.
"My poor Paul, my dear husband!" cried Greta.
"Ah! thanks be to God, things are at their worst now, and they can't move but they must mend," said the parson.
He took her indoors and bathed her hot forehead, and dried with his hard old hand the tears that fell from eyes that a moment before had flashed like a basilisk's.
Toward five o'clock that evening a knock came to the door of the vicarage, and old Laird Fisher entered. His manner was more than usually solemn and constrained.
"I's coom't to say as ma lass's wee thing is taken badly," he said, "and rayder sudden't."
Greta rose from her seat and put on her hat and cloak. She was hastening down the road while the charcoal-burner was still standing in the middle of the floor.