shines in our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most
pathetic thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil
altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of him.

Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got his call, a
great event took place in the little room at Glasgow. The student
appeared for the first time before his mother in his ministerial
clothes. He wore the black silk hat, that was destined to become a
terror to evil-doers in Thrums, and I dare say he was rather
puffed up about himself that day. You would probably have smiled
at him.

"It's a pity I'm so little, mother," he said with a sigh.

"You're no what I would call a particularly long man," Margaret
said, "but you're just the height I like."

Then Gavin went out in his grandeur, and Margaret cried for an
hour. She was thinking of me as well as of Gavin, and as it
happens, I know that I was thinking at the same time of her. Gavin
kept a diary in those days, which I have seen, and by comparing it
with mine, I discovered that while he was showing himself to his
mother in his black clothes, I was on my way back from Tilliedrum,
where I had gone to buy a sand-glass for the school. The one I
bought was so like another Margaret had used at Harvie that it set
me thinking of her again all the way home. This is a matter hardly
worth mentioning, and yet it interests me.

Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin had difficulty in
forcing himself to his sermons when there was always something