“Yea, even that, if it be His will; our times are in His hands,” said the pious husband, and turned him again to his Bible.  But the woman’s doubts were p. 41justified, and on the morning of the day before their son should perish, they yoked the horse and drove in the cart to the burgh town to see him for the first time in the cell he had shared with some doomed sheep-stealers.

Six miles lay between their home and the tolbooth gates, and yet it was in pitch-black night they came to the confines of the burgh, for they dreaded the pitying eyes of men and women.  And all the way the woman fondled something in her plaid.  They saw, afar, and few, and melancholy, wan lights in the burgh lands, blurred by the weeping rain; and at this spectacle—which told them the world went on its ordinary way and thought of breakfast, while their lad sat counting the hours, and they were engaged with m. . . Read More