The Little Minister

to Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was o

ave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being no

bidding good-bye to many readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live

om the beech, and children lay yellow corn on the dominie's desk to remind him that now they are needed in the fields. The day was so silent that carts could be heard rumbling a mile away. All Thrums was out in its wynds and closes- a few of the weavers still in knee-breeches-to look

lways shall love till I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old woman, and she was only forty-three: and I am the man who made her old. As Gavin put his eager boyish face out at the carriage window, many saw that he was holding her hand, but none coul

le incident Gavin's career in Thrums began. I remembered it suddenly the other day when wading across the wynd where it took place. Many scenes in the little minister's life come back to me in this way. The first time I ever thought of writing his love story as an old man's gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one night while I sat alone in the school-house; on my knees a fiddle that has been my only living companio

gs and goings of the ghost were highly diverting, yet the farmer of T'nowhead only laughed because he had paid his money at the hole in the door like the rest of us. T'nowhead sat at the end of a form where he saw round the glass and so saw no ghost. I fear my public may be in the same predicament. I see the little minister as he w

y man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed

s he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he wakens from h

etween him and his book comes the song of the thrushes, with whom, on the mad night you danced into Gavin's life, you had more in common

e; to think of you is still to be young. Even those who called you a little devil, of whom I have been one, admitted that in the end you had a soul, though not that you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, a

e bottom out of my vain hopes. I did not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor shall anyone who blames her ever be called friend by me; but it was bitter to look at the white manse among the trees and know that I must never enter it. For Margaret's sake I had to keep aloof, yet this new trial came upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought that in those eighteen years my passions had burned like a ship till they sank, but I suffered again as on that awful night when Adam Dishart came back, nearly killing Margaret and tearing up all my ambitions