"Ae night, when he was expected hame, his sister Janet, and mysel' sat lang up waiting upon him, and wondering what could be keeping him, when a stranger rode up to the door, and asked if 'one Mr William Wastle lived there?' I replied 'Yes!' And, oh! what think ye were his tidings, but that my name had been seen upon the carts, that the horses had stuck fast in the roads, and that my son David, who had fallen from the shafts, had either been killed, or drowned among the horses' feet!
"I thought his brothers and sisters, and especially Janet, would have gane oot o' their judgment. As for me, a' the trials I had had were but as a drap in a bucket when compared wi' this!
"But, after I had mourned for a night, the worst was to come. Hoo was I to tell his poor imprisoned mother!—imprisoned as she wis for opposing the very thing that would hae saved her son's life!
"Next day I went to Dumfries; but I declare that I never saw the light o' the sun hae sic a dismal appearance. The fields appeared to me as if I saw them through a mist. Even distance wasna as it used to be. I was admitted into the prison, but I winna—oh no! I canna repeat to ye the manner in which I communicated the tidings to his mother! It was too much for her then—it would be the same for me now! for naething in the whole coorse o' my life ever shook me so much as the death o' my poor David. But I remember o' saying to her, and I declare to you upon the word o' a man, unthinkingly—'O Kirsty, woman! had we had toll-bars, David might still hae been living!'
"'William, William!' she cried, and fell upon my neck, 'will ye kill me outright!' And, for the first time in my life, I saw the tears gushing down her cheeks. Those tears washed away the very remembrance o' the machine, and the burning o' the stacks. I pressed her to my heart, and my tears mingled wi' hers.
"I believe it was partly through our laird that baith Kirsty and James Patrick were liberated without being brought to a trial. Her imprisonment, and the death o' our son, had wrought a great change upon my wife; and I think it was hardly three months after her being set at liberty, that we were baith sent for to auld John Neilson the barnman's, whose wife Peggy lay upon her death-bed. When we approached her bedside, she raised herself upon her elbow, and said—'The burning o' yer barn and stackyard has always been a mystery—hear the real truth from the words o' a dying and guilty woman. Yer machine had thrown my husband out o' employment, and when yer wife there gied me back the pipe, a whuff o' which I said would do her good, I let the burning dottle drap among the straw—nane o' ye observed it—ye were a' leaving the barn. Now, ye ken the cause—on my death-bed I make the confession.'
"I declare I thought my heart would hae louped out o' my body. I pressed my wife, against whom I had harboured such vile suspicions, to my breast. She saw my meaning—she read my feelings.
"'William,' said she, kindly, 'if ye hae onything on yer mind that ye wish to forget, so hae I; let us baith forget and forgie!'
"I felt Kirsty's bosom heaving upon mine, and I was happy.
"Within six months after this, James Patrick and our dochter Janet were married; and an enviable couple they then were, and such they are unto this day. And, as for my Kirsty, auld though she is, and though the sang says—