Oor ain folk times

230 ANSWERS TO PRAYER
scious of no peculiarity in her matter-of-fact way of
expressing herself when she got on to this, one of her
favourite themes. Indeed she was one who could treat
ridicule with contempt, and her sharp-wittedness proved
often quite a match, and more than a match, for the
good-humoured sceptical way in which some of her
friends would sometimes affect to treat her experiences.
As for the open scoffer, she had a power of rebuke and
withering scorn which made her a very dangerous
opponent in an argument ; and, sooth to say, as a
debater and controversialist she was able to hold her
own with most even of the learned divines who loomed
large in the public eye at that time. On more than
one occasion her logic and force, and extensive reading,
brought her off triumphantly in an encounter with some
of the keenest pulpit wits of the day who happened for
the time to be visiting at our manse.
She was hot tempered to a degree ; but it was just
a blaze for an instant, and then her native humorous
temper and punctilious honesty of disposition would
lead her to see the absurdity of the situation. Her
ebullitions of indignant wrath, or her fulminations
against something that had excited her temper, would
generally end in a hearty laugh, and the confession that
perhaps she was too hasty, and ' so and so ' was not so
bad, perhaps, after all.
One of her favourite illustrations of her belief that
God directly answered prayer was the following. It
happened not long after the Disruption. I think they
had taken possession of the stone cottage that had been
built for them by the gifts of friends and the not less
loyal services of the attached congregation, the members