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While the minister sat pondering over his book, Meysie went to the back door, and stood there a moment vaguely gazing out on the snow. As she did so, a figure came slouching round the corner of the byre. Meysie quickly shut the door behind her, and turned the key. Any visitor was a strange surprise in winter at the Clints of Drumore. But this figure she knew at the first glance. It was the Prodigal Son come home–the boy whom she had reared from the time that she took his sister from his dying mother’s arms. Some deadly fear constrained her to lock the door behind her. For the lad’s looks were terribly altered. There was a sullen, callous dourness where bright self-will had once had its dwelling. His clothing had once been fashionable, but it was now torn at the buttonholes and frayed at the cuffs.

“Clement Symington, what brings ye to the Clints o’ Drumore?” asked the old woman, going forward and taking hold of the skirts of his surtout, her face blanched like the blue shadows on the winter snow.

“Why, Mother Hubbard–” he broke out.

But Meysie stopped him, holding up her hand and pointing to her slate, which hung by a “tang” round her neck.

“Ha!” he murmured, “this is awkward–old woman gone deaf.”

So he took the pencil and wrote–

” Very hard up. Want some cash from the old man,” just as if he had been writing a telegram.

With her spectacles poised on the end of her nose, Meysie read the message. Her face took a hue greyer and duller than ever.

She looked at the lad she had once loved so well, and his shifty eye could not meet hers. He looked away over the moor, put his hands into his pockets, and whistled a music-hall catch, which sounded strangely in that white solitude.

“Weel do you ken that your faither has no sillar!” said Meysie. “You had a’ the sillar, and what ye hae done with it only you an’ your Maker ken. But ye shallna come into this hoose to annoy yer faither. Gang to the barn, and wait till I bring you what I can get.”

The young man grumblingly assented, and within that chilly enclosure he stood swearing under his breath and kicking his heels.

“A pretty poor sort of prodigal’s return this,” he said, remembering the parable he used to learn to say to his father on Sunday afternoons; “not so much as a blessed fatted calf–only a half-starved cow and a deaf old woman. I wonder what she’ll bring a fellow.”

In a little while Meysie came cautiously out of the back door with a bowl of broth under her apron. The minister had not stirred, deep in his folio Owen. The young man ate the thick soup with a horn spoon from Meysie’s pocket. Then he stood looking at her a moment before he took the dangling pencil again and wrote on the slate–

” Soup’s good, but it’s money I must have !”

Meysie bent her head towards him.

“Ye shallna gang in to break yer faither’s heart, Clement; but I hae brocht ye a’ I hae, gin ye’ll promise to gang awa’ where ye cam’ frae. Your faither kens nocht aboot your last ploy, or that a son o’ his has been in London gaol.”

“And who told you?” broke in the youth furiously.

The old woman could not, of course, hear him, but she understood perfectly for all that.

“Your ain sister Elspeth telled me!” she answered.

“Curse her!” said the young man, succinctly and unfraternally. But he took the pencil and wrote–” I promise to go away and not to disturb my father.”

Meysie took a lean green silk purse from her pocket and emptied out of it a five-pound note, three dirty one-pound notes, and seven silver shillings. Clement Symington took them and counted them over without a blush.