"I kenned ane o' the name lang syne 'at was lost sicht o'." "There's Gibbies here an' Gibbies there," remarked Janet, probing her.
"Weel I wat!" she answered peevishly, for she had had whisky enough only to make her cross, and turned away, muttering however in an undertone, but not too low for Janet to hear, "but there's nae mony wee Sir Gibbies, or the warl' wadna be sae dooms like hell." Janet was arrested in her turn: could the fierce, repellent, whisky-craving woman be the mother of her gracious Gibbie?
Could she be, and look so lost?
But the loss of him had lost her perhaps.
Anyhow God was his Father, whoever was the mother of him.
"Hoo cam ye to tyne yer bairn, wuman ?" she asked.
But Mistress Croale was careful also, and had her reasons.
"He ran frae the bluidy han'," she said enigmatically.
Janet recalled how Gibbie came to her, scored by the hand of cruelty.

Were there always innocents in the world, who in their own persons, by the will of God, unknown to themselves, carried on the work of Christ, filling up that which was left behind of the sufferings of their Master--women, children, infants, idiots--creatures of sufferance, with souls open to the world to receive wrong, that it might pass and cease?
little furnaces they, of the consuming fire, to swallow up and destroy by uncomplaining endurance--the divine destruction! "Hoo cam he by the bonnie nickname ?" she asked at length.
"Nickname!" retorted Mistress Croale fiercely; "I think I hear ye! His ain name an' teetle by law an' richt, as sure's ever there was a King Jeames 'at first pat his han' to the makin' o' baronets!--as it's aften I hae h'ard Sir George, the father o' 'im, tell the same." She ceased abruptly, annoyed with herself, as it seemed, for having said so much.
"Ye wadna be my lady yersel', wad ye, mem ?" suggested Janet in her gentlest voice.
Mistress Croale made her no answer.

Perhaps she thought of the days when she alone of women did the simplest of woman's offices for Sir George.

Anyhow, it was one thing to rush of herself to the verge of her secret, and quite another to be fooled over it.
"Is't lang sin' ye lost him ?" asked Janet, after a bootless pause.
"Ay," she answered, gruffly and discourteously, in a tone intended to quench interrogation.
But Janet persisted.
"Wad ye ken 'im again gien ye saw 'im ?" "Ken 'im?
I wad ken 'im gien he had grown a gran'father.

Ken 'im, quo' she! Wha ever kenned 'im as I did, bairn 'at he was, an' wadna ken 'im gien he war deid an' an angel made o' 'im!--But weel I wat, it's little differ that wad mak!" She rose in her excitement, and going to the other window, stood gazing vacantly out upon the rushing sea.