for more than him-self when he said, "Dagone that manse! I never
gie a swear but there it is glowering at me."

The manse looks down on the town from the northeast, and is
reached from the road that leaves Thrums behind it in another
moment by a wide, straight path, so rough that to carry a fraught
of water to the manse without spilling was to be superlatively
good at one thing. Packages in a cart it set leaping like trout in
a fishing-creel. Opposite the opening of the garden wall in the
manse, where for many years there had been an intention of putting
up a gate, were two big stones a yard apart, standing ready for
the winter, when the path was often a rush of yellow water, and
this the only bridge to the glebe dyke, down which the minister
walked to church.

When Margaret entered the manse on Gavin's arm, it was a
whitewashed house of five rooms, with a garret in which the
minister could sleep if he had guests, as during the Fast week. It
stood with its garden within high walls, and the roof awing
southward was carpeted with moss that shone in the sun in a dozen
shades of green and yellow. Three firs guarded the house from west
winds, but blasts from the north often tore down the steep fields
and skirled through the manse, banging all its doors at once. A
beech, growing on the east side, leant over the roof as if to
gossip with the well in the courtyard. The garden was to the
south, and was over full of gooseberry and currant bushes. It
contained a summer seat, where strange things were soon to happen.

Margaret would not even take off her bonnet until she had seen
through the manse and opened all the presses. The parlour and