CHAPTER II.

THE MOTHER OF KING LEMUEL.


It was not till Ralph Peden had returned to the study of the manse
of the Marrow kirk of Dullarg, and the colour induced by exercise
had had time to die out of his naturally pale cheeks, that he
remembered that he had left his Hebrew Bible and Lexicon, as well
as a half-written exegesis on an important subject, underneath the
fatal whin bush above the bridge over the Grannoch water. He would
have been glad to rise and seek it immediately--a task which,
indeed, no longer presented itself in such terrible colours to
him. He found himself even anxious to go. It would be a serious
thing were he to lose his father's Lexicon and Mr. Welsh's Hebrew
Bible. Moreover, he could not bear the thought of leaving the
sheets of his exposition of the last chapter of Proverbs to be the
sport of the gamesome Galloway winds--or, worse thought, the
laughing-stock of gamesome young women who whistled with two
fingers in their mouths.

Yet the picture of the maid of the loch which rose before him
struck him as no unpleasant one. He remembered for one thing how
the sun shone through the tangle of her hair. But he had quite
forgotten, on the other hand, at what part of his exegesis he had
left off. It was, however, a manifest impossibility for him to
slip out again. Besides, he was in mortal terror lest Mr. Welsh
should ask for his Hebrew Bible, or offer to revise his chapter of
the day with him. All the afternoon he was uneasy, finding no