"Yes, it's a great thing for the child that his cousin is coming to
look after you all. Jeemsie will be made a man of. I once knew a
postman who was afflicted like Jeemsie, and he did his work better than
any of the other men in the same office. The postmaster was quite
proud of him. He couldn't talk, poor man, so there was no danger of
his wasting time in gossip."

I took my leave after chatting a while, and rejoiced as I pictured to
myself on the way home the lightening of so many burdens which had
pressed heavily on the shoulders of that brave little woman.

A week later and we heard through Willy that Mr. Gowan had arrived at
Larrigie Inn.

"An' a freer mon wi' his money, Mistress Dobie says, ye'd niver wish to
see," was his estimate of the newcomer. "He was treatin' the fellows
wi' drams a' roond, the nicht he cam'; he wes sae glad to be bock i'
the auld place. He wes a loon o' fafteen when him an' his farther went
an' to mak' their fortune in Ameriky, ye ken."

"I don't like to hear about that dramming business," was Val's comment
to me later. "There's too much of that kind of thing already about
here. However, we must make allowance for the man's natural joy at
seeing his old haunts once more."

"Including the inn, I suppose! But he was too young when they left to
have cultivated a very intimate acquaintance with that one!"

Gowan proved to be but one of our own rough crofters who had acquired
so thin a veneer of civilization that it scarcely concealed the reality