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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers, by Ian
+Maclaren
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers
+
+
+Author: Ian Maclaren
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 19, 2007  [eBook #20399]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE
+MINISTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 20399-h.htm or 20399-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/3/9/20399/20399-h/20399-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/3/9/20399/20399-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS.
+
+by
+
+IAN MACLAREN.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Toronto:
+Fleming H. Revell Company,
+140-142 Yonge Street.
+1896.
+Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada,
+in the year 1896, by Hodder & Stoughton,
+at the Department of Agriculture.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+A CERTAIN BROTHERHOOD
+
+
+Faithful in Criticism
+
+Loyal in Affection
+
+Tender in Trouble
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I.  PANDEMONIUM
+    II.  PEACE
+   III.  A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS
+    IV.  A SECRET CHAMBER
+     V.  CONCERNING BESOMS
+    VI.  A PLEASAUNCE
+   VII.  A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION
+  VIII.  A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION
+    IX.  A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE
+     X.  A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN
+    XI.  IN THE GLOAMING
+   XII.  KILBOGIE MANSE
+  XIII.  PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT
+   XIV.  A MODERATE
+    XV.  JOINT POTENTATES
+   XVI.  DRIED ROSE LEAVES
+  XVII.  SMOULDERING FIRES
+ XVIII.  LOVE SICKNESS
+   XIX.  THE FEAR OF GOD
+    XX.  THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND
+   XXI.  LIGHT AT EVENTIDE
+  XXII.  WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH
+ XXIII.  MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL
+  XXIV.  LOVE IS LORD
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+   Carmichael had taken his Turn
+
+   "Many a Ploy we had together"
+
+   Peter was standing in his Favourite Attitude
+
+   "I am the General's Daughter"
+
+   Janet Macpherson was waiting in the Deep Doorway
+
+   "It's a Difficult Key to turn"
+
+   Kate in her Favourite Position
+
+   One Gardener who . . . works for Love's Sake
+
+   Among the Great Trees
+
+   "Mr. Carmichael, you have much Cause for Thankfulness"
+
+   Carmichael sang a Solo
+
+   "Here iss your Silver Piece"
+
+   "I should call it a Deliberate--"
+
+   "She had an Unfortunate Tendency to meddle with my Books"
+
+   Mother Church cast her Spell over his Imagination
+
+   "Ye'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there"
+
+   A Tall, Bony, Forbidding Woman
+
+   Gathering her Berry Harvest
+
+   He was a Mere Wisp of a Man
+
+   "Will you let me walk with you for a Little?"
+
+   "Private Capaucity"
+
+   Standing with a Half-Dried Dish in her Hand
+
+   The Old Man escorted her Ladyship
+
+   Would gossip with him by the Hour
+
+   The Driver stops to exchange Views
+
+   Two Tramps held Conference
+
+   Wrestling in Darkness of Soul
+
+   His Attitude for Exposition
+
+   "Ay, he's in, but ye canna see him"
+
+   "To put Flowers on his Grave"
+
+   "You have been awfully Good to me"
+
+   "He sat down by the River-side to meditate"
+
+
+
+
+KATE CARNEGIE.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PANDEMONIUM.
+
+It was the morning before the Twelfth, years ago, and nothing like unto
+Muirtown Station could have been found in all the travelling world.
+For Muirtown, as everybody knows, is the centre which receives the
+southern immigrants in autumn, and distributes them, with all their
+belongings of servants, horses, dogs, and luggage, over the north
+country from Athole to Sutherland.  All night, express trains, whose
+ordinary formation had been reinforced by horse boxes, carriage trucks,
+saloons and luggage vans, drawn by two engines, and pushed up inclines
+by a third, had been careering along the three iron trunk roads that
+run from London to the North.  Four hours ago they had forced the
+border, that used to be more jealously guarded, and had begun to
+converge on their terminus.  Passengers, awakened by the caller air and
+looking out still half asleep, miss the undisciplined hedgerows and
+many-shaped patches of pasture, the warm brick homesteads and shaded
+ponds of the south.  Square fields cultivated up to a foot of the stone
+dykes or wire-fencing, the strong grey-stone farm-houses, the
+swift-running burns, and the never-distant hills, brace the mind.
+Local passengers come in with deliberation, whose austere faces condemn
+the luxurious disorder of night travel, and challenge the defence of
+Arminian doctrine.  A voice shouts "Carstairs Junction," with a command
+of the letter _r_, which is the bequest of an unconquerable past, and
+inspires one with the hope of some day hearing a freeborn Scot say
+"Auchterarder."  The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat
+holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn,
+between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the
+foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile
+plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul
+counts the ten hours' dust and heat but a slight price for the sight of
+the Scottish Rhine flowing deep, clear, and swift by the foot of its
+wooded hills, and the "Fair City" in the heart of her meadows.
+
+"Do you see the last wreath of mist floating off the summit of the
+hill, and the silver sheen of the river against the green of the woods?
+Quick, dad," and the General, accustomed to obey, stood up beside Kate
+for the brief glimpse between the tunnel and a prison.  Yet they had
+seen the snows of the Himalayas, and the great river that runs through
+the plains of India.  But it is so with Scottish folk that they may
+have lived opposite the Jungfrau at Mürren, and walked among the big
+trees of the Yosemite Valley, and watched the blood-red afterglow on
+the Pyramids, and yet will value a sunset behind the Cuchullin hills,
+and the Pass of the Trossachs, and the mist shot through with light on
+the sides of Ben Nevis, and the Tay at Dunkeld--just above the
+bridge--better guerdon for their eyes.
+
+"Ay, lassie"--the other people had left at Stirling, and the General
+fell back upon the past--"there 's just one bonnier river, and that's
+the Tochty at a bend below the Lodge, as we shall see it, please God,
+this evening."
+
+"Tickets," broke in a voice with authority.  "This is no the station,
+an' ye 'll hae to wait till the first diveesion o' yir train is
+emptied.  Kildrummie?  Ye change, of coorse, but yir branch 'll hae a
+lang wait the day.  It 'll be an awfu' fecht wi' the Hielant train.
+Muirtown platform 'll be worth seein'; it 'll juist be michty," and the
+collector departed, smacking his lips in prospect of the fray.
+
+"Upon my word," said the General, taken aback for a moment by the easy
+manners of his countryman, but rejoicing in every new assurance of
+home, "our people are no blate."
+
+"Is n't it delicious to be where character has not been worn smooth by
+centuries of oppression, but where each man is himself?  Conversation
+has salt here, and tastes in the mouth.  We 've just heard two men
+speak this morning, and each face is bitten into my memory.  Now our
+turn has come," and the train wound itself in at last.
+
+Porters, averaging six feet and with stentorian voices, were driving
+back the mixed multitude in order to afford foothold for the new
+arrivals on that marvellous landing place, which in those days served
+for all the trains which came in and all that went out, both north and
+south.  One man tears open the door of a first with commanding gesture.
+"A' change and hurry up.  Na, na," rejecting the offer of a private
+engagement; "we hev nae time for that trade the day.  Ye maun cairry
+yir bags yersels; the dogs and boxes 'll tak us a' oor time."  He
+unlocks an under compartment and drags out a pair of pointers, who fawn
+upon him obsequiously in gratitude for their release.  "Doon wi' ye,"
+as one to whom duty denies the ordinary courtesies of life, and he
+fastens them to the base of an iron pillar.  Deserted immediately by
+their deliverer, the pointers made overtures to two elderly ladies,
+standing bewildered in the crush, to be repulsed with umbrellas, and
+then sit down upon their tails in despair.  Their forlorn condition,
+left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a
+slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their
+voices in melodious concert, to the scandal of the two females, who
+cannot escape the neighbourhood, and regard the pointers with horror.
+Distant friends, also in bonds and distress of mind, feel comforted and
+join cheerfully, while a large black retriever, who had foolishly
+attempted to obstruct a luggage barrow with his tail, breaks in with a
+high solo.  Two collies, their tempers irritated by obstacles as they
+follow their masters, who had been taking their morning in the
+second-class refreshment room, fall out by the way, and obtain as by
+magic a clear space in which to settle details; while a fox-terrier,
+escaping from his anxious mistress, has mounted a pile of boxes and
+gives a general challenge.
+
+Porters fling open packed luggage vans with a swing, setting free a
+cataract of portmanteaus, boxes, hampers, baskets, which pours across
+the platform for yards, led by a frolicsome black leather valise, whose
+anxious owner has fought her adventurous way to the van for the purpose
+of explaining to a phlegmatic Scot that he would know it by a broken
+strap, and must lift it out gently, for it contained breakables.
+
+"It can gang itsel, that ane," as the afflicted woman followed its
+reckless progress with a wail.  "Sall, if they were a' as clever on
+their feet as yon box there wud be less tribble," and with two
+assistants he falls upon the congested mass within.  They perform
+prodigies of strength, handling huge trunks that ought to have filled
+some woman with repentance as if they were Gladstone bags, and light
+weights as if they were paper parcels.  With unerring scent they detect
+the latest label among the remains of past history, and the air
+resounds with "Hielant train," "Aiberdeen fast," "Aiberdeen slow,"
+"Muirtown"--this with indifference--and at a time "Dunleith," and once
+"Kildrummie," with much contempt.  By this time stacks of baggage of
+varying size have been erected, the largest of which is a pyramid in
+shape, with a very uncertain apex.
+
+Male passengers--heads of families and new to Muirtown--hover anxiously
+round the outskirts, and goaded on by female commands, rush into the
+heart of the fray for the purpose of claiming a piece of luggage, which
+turns out to be some other person's, and retire hastily after a
+fair-sized portmanteau descends on their toes, and the sharp edge of a
+trunk takes them in the small of the back.  Footmen with gloves and
+superior airs make gentlemanly efforts to collect the family luggage,
+and are rewarded by having some hopelessly vulgar tin boxes, heavily
+roped, deposited among its initialled glory.  One elderly female who
+had been wise to choose some other day to revisit her native town,
+discovers her basket flung up against a pillar, like wreckage from a
+storm, and settles herself down upon it with a sigh of relief.  She
+remains unmoved amid the turmoil, save when a passing gun-case tips her
+bonnet to one side, giving her a very rakish air, and a good-natured
+retriever on a neighbouring box is so much taken with her appearance
+that he offers her a friendly caress.  Restless people--who remember
+that their train ought to have left half an hour ago, and cannot
+realise that all bonds are loosed on the eleventh--fasten on any man in
+a uniform, and suffer many rebuffs.
+
+"There 's nae use asking me," answers a guard, coming off duty and
+pushing his way through the crowd as one accustomed to such spectacles;
+"a 'm juist in frae Carlisle; get haud o' a porter."
+
+"Cupar Angus?"--this from the porter--"that's the Aiberdeen slow; it's
+no made up yet, and little chance o't till the express an' the Hielant
+be aff.  Whar 'll it start frae?" breaking away; "forrit, a' tell ye,
+forrit."
+
+Fathers of families, left on guard and misled by a sudden movement
+"forrit," rush to the waiting-room and bring out, for the third time,
+the whole expedition, to escort them back again with shame.  Barrows
+with towering piles of luggage are pushed through the human mass by two
+porters, who allow their engine to make its own way with much
+confidence, condescending only at a time to shout, "A' say, hey, oot o'
+there," and treating any testy complaint with the silent contempt of a
+drayman for a costermonger.  Old hands, who have fed at their leisure
+in callous indifference to all alarms, lounge about in great content,
+and a group of sheep farmers, having endeavoured in vain, after one
+tasting, to settle the merits of a new dip, take a glance in the
+"Hielant" quarter, and adjourn the conference once more to the
+refreshment-room.  Groups of sportsmen discuss the prospects of
+to-morrow in detail, and tell stories of ancient twelfths, while
+chieftains from London, in full Highland dress, are painfully conscious
+of the whiteness of their legs.  A handful of preposterous people who
+persist in going south when the world has its face northwards, threaten
+to complain to headquarters if they are not sent away, and an official
+with a loud voice and a subtle gift of humour intimates that a train is
+about to leave for Dundee.
+
+During this time wonderful manoeuvres have been executed on the lines
+of rail opposite the platform.  Trains have left with all the air of a
+departure and disappeared round the curve outside the station, only to
+return in fragments.  Half a dozen carriages pass without an engine, as
+if they had started on their own account, break vans that one saw
+presiding over expresses stand forsaken, a long procession of horse
+boxes rattle through, and a saloon carriage, with people, is so much in
+evidence that the name of an English Duke is freely mentioned, and
+every new passage relieves the tedium of the waiting.
+
+Out of all this confusion trains begin to grow and take shape, and one,
+with green carriages, looks so complete that a rumour spreads that the
+Hielant train has been made up and may appear any minute in its place.
+The sunshine beating through the glass roof, the heat of travel, the
+dust of the station, the moving carriages with their various colours,
+the shouts of railway officials, the recurring panics of fussy
+passengers, begin to affect the nerves.  Conversation becomes broken,
+porters are beset on every side with questions they cannot answer,
+rushes are made on any empty carriages within reach, a child is knocked
+down and cries.
+
+Over all this excitement and confusion one man is presiding, untiring,
+forceful, ubiquitous--a sturdy man, somewhere about five feet ten,
+whose lungs are brass and nerves fine steel wire.  He is dressed, as to
+his body, in brown corduroy trousers, a blue jacket and waistcoat with
+shining brass buttons, a grey flannel shirt, and a silver-braided cap,
+which, as time passes, he thrusts further back on his head till its
+peak stands at last almost erect, a crest seen high above the conflict.
+As to the soul of him, this man is clothed with resolution, courage,
+authority, and an infectious enthusiasm.  He is the brain and will of
+the whole organism, its driving power.  Drivers lean out of their
+engines, one hand on the steam throttle, their eyes fixed on this man;
+if he waves his hands, trains move; if he holds them up, trains halt.
+Strings of carriages out in the open are carrying out his plans, and
+the porters toil like maniacs to meet his commands.  Piles of luggage
+disappear as he directs the attack, and his scouts capture isolated
+boxes hidden among the people.  Every horse box has a place in his
+memory, and he has calculated how many carriages would clear the north
+traffic; he carries the destination of families in his head, and has
+made arrangements for their comfort.  "Soon ready now, sir," as he
+passed swiftly down to receive the last southerner, "and a second
+compartment reserved for you," till people watched for him, and the
+sound of his voice, "forrit wi' the Hielant luggage," inspired
+bewildered tourists with confidence, and became an argument for
+Providence.  There is a general movement towards the northern end of
+the station; five barrows, whose luggage swings dangerously and has to
+be held on, pass in procession; dogs are collected and trailed along in
+bundles; families pick up their bags and press after their luggage,
+cheered to recognise a familiar piece peeping out from strange goods; a
+bell is rung with insistence.  The Aberdeen express leaves--its
+passengers regarding the platform with pity--and the guard of the last
+van slamming his door in triumph.  The great man concentrates his force
+with a wave of his hand for the _tour de force_ of the year, the
+despatch of the Hielant train.
+
+The southern end of the platform is now deserted--the London express
+departed half an hour ago with thirteen passengers, very crestfallen
+and envious--and across the open centre porters hustle barrows at
+headlong speed, with neglected pieces of luggage.  Along the edge of
+the Highland platform there stretches a solid mass of life,
+close-packed, motionless, silent, composed of tourists, dogs, families,
+lords, dogs, sheep farmers, keepers, clericals, dogs, footmen,
+commercials, ladies' maids, grooms, dogs, waiting for the empty train
+that, after deploying hither and thither, picking up some trifle, a
+horse box or a duke's saloon, at every new raid, is now backing slowly
+in for its freight.  The expectant crowd has ceased from conversation,
+sporting or otherwise; respectable elderly gentlemen brace themselves
+for the scramble, and examine their nearest neighbours suspiciously;
+heads of families gather their belongings round them by signs and
+explain in a whisper how to act; one female tourist--of a certain age
+and severe aspect--refreshes her memory as to the best window for the
+view of Killiecrankie.  The luggage has been piled in huge masses at
+each end of the siding; the porters rest themselves against it, taking
+off their caps, and wiping their foreheads with handkerchiefs of many
+colours and uses.  It is the stillness before the last charge; beyond
+the outermost luggage an arm is seen waving, and the long coil of
+carriages begins to twist into the station.
+
+People who know their ancient Muirtown well, and have taken part in
+this day of days, will remember a harbour of refuge beside the
+book-stall, protected by the buffers of the Highland siding on one side
+and a breakwater of luggage on the other, and persons within this
+shelter could see the storming of the train to great advantage.
+Carmichael, the young Free Kirk minister of Drumtochty, who had been
+tasting the civilisation of Muirtown overnight and was waiting for the
+Dunleith train, leant against the back of the bookstall, watching the
+scene with frank, boyish interest.  Rather under six feet in height, he
+passed for more, because he stood so straight and looked so slim, for
+his limbs were as slender as a woman's, while women (in Muirtown) had
+envied his hands and feet.  But in chest measure he was only two inches
+behind Saunders Baxter, the grieve of Drumsheugh, who was the standard
+of manhood by whom all others were tried and (mostly) condemned in
+Drumtochty.  Chancing to come upon Saunders putting the stone one day
+with the bothy lads, Carmichael had taken his turn, with the result
+that his stone lay foremost in the final heat by an inch exactly.
+MacLure saw them kneeling together to measure, the Free Kirk minister
+and the ploughmen all in a bunch, and went on his way rejoicing to tell
+the Free Kirk folk that their new minister was a man of his hands.  His
+hair was fair, just touched with gold, and he wore it rather long, so
+that in the excitement of preaching a lock sometimes fell down on his
+forehead, which he would throw back with a toss of his head--a gesture
+Mrs. Macfadyen, our critic, thought very taking.  His dark blue eyes
+used to enlarge with passion in the Sacrament and grow so tender, the
+healthy tan disappeared and left his cheeks so white, that the mothers
+were terrified lest he should die early, and sent offerings of cream on
+Monday morning.  For though his name was Carmichael, he had Celtic
+blood in him, and was full of all kinds of emotion, but mostly those
+that were brave and pure and true.  He had done well at the University,
+and was inclined to be philosophical, for he knew little of himself and
+nothing of the world.  There were times when he allowed himself to be
+supercilious and sarcastic; but it was not for an occasional jingle of
+cleverness the people loved him, or, for that matter, any other man.
+It was his humanity that won their hearts, and this he had partly from
+his mother, partly from his training.  Through a kind providence and
+his mother's countryness, he had been brought up among animals--birds,
+mice, dormice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, cattle, horses, till he knew
+all their ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi,
+to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother
+Wolf.  So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and
+little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or
+bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a
+little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper,
+and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael.  The dumb
+animals had an instinct about this young fellow, and would make
+overtures to him that were a certificate for any situation requiring
+character.  Horses by the wayside neighed at his approach, and
+stretched out their velvet muzzles to be stroked.  Dogs insisted upon
+sitting on his knees, unless quite prevented by their size, and then
+they put their paws on his chest.  Hillocks was utterly scandalised by
+his collie's familiarity with the minister, and brought him to his
+senses by the application of a boot, but Carmichael waived all
+apologies.  "Rover and I made friends two days ago on the road, and my
+clothes will take no injury."  And indeed they could not, for
+Carmichael, except on Sundays and at funerals, wore a soft hat and suit
+of threadbare tweeds, on which a microscopist could have found traces
+of a peat bog, moss of dykes, the scale of a trout, and a tiny bit of
+heather.
+
+[Illustration: Carmichael had taken his turn.]
+
+His usual fortune befell him that day in Muirtown Station, for two
+retrievers, worming their way through the luggage, reached him, and
+made known their wants.
+
+"Thirsty?  I believe you.  All the way from England, and heat enough to
+roast you alive.  I 've got no dish, else I 'd soon get water.
+
+"Inverness?  Poor chaps, that's too far to go with your tongues like a
+lime-kiln.  Down, good dogs; I 'll be back in a minute."
+
+You can have no idea, unless you have tried it, how much water a soft
+clerical hat can hold--if you turn up the edges and bash down the
+inside with your fist, and fill the space to the brim.  But it is
+difficult to convey such a vessel with undiminished content through a
+crowd, and altogether impossible to lift one's eyes.  Carmichael was
+therefore quite unconscious that two new-comers to the shelter were
+watching him with keen delight as he came in bareheaded, flushed,
+triumphant--amid howls of welcome--and knelt down to hold the cup
+till--drinking time about in strict honour--the retrievers had reached
+the maker's name.
+
+"Do you think they would like a biscuit?" said a clear, sweet, low
+voice, with an accent of pride and just a flavour of amusement in its
+tone.  Carmichael rose in much embarrassment, and was quite confounded.
+
+They were standing together--father and daughter, evidently--and there
+was no manner of doubt about him.  A spare man, without an ounce of
+superfluous flesh, straight as a rod, and having an air of command,
+with keen grey eyes, close-cropped hair turning white, a clean-shaven
+face except where a heavy moustache covered a firm-set mouth--one
+recognised in him a retired army man of rank, a colonel at least, it
+might be a general; and the bronze on his face suggested long Indian
+service.  But he might have been dressed in Rob Roy tartan, or been a
+naval officer in full uniform, for all Carmichael knew.  A hundred
+thousand faces pass before your eyes and are forgotten, mere physical
+impressions; you see one, and it is in your heart for ever, as you saw
+it the first time.  Wavy black hair, a low, straight forehead, hazel
+eyes with long eyelashes, a perfectly-shaped Grecian nose, a strong
+mouth, whose upper lip had a curve of softness, a clear-cut chin with
+one dimple, small ears set high in the head, and a rich creamy
+complexion--that was what flashed upon Carmichael as he turned from the
+retrievers.  He was a man so unobservant of women that he could not
+have described a woman's dress to save his life or any other person's;
+and now that he is married--he is a middle-aged man now and threatened
+with stoutness--it is his wife's reproach that he does not know when
+she wears her new spring bonnet for the first time.  Yet he took in
+this young woman's dress, from the smart hat, with a white bird's wing
+on the side, and the close-fitting tailor made jacket, to the small,
+well-gloved hand in dogskin, the grey tweed skirt, and one shoe, with a
+tip on it, that peeped out below her frock.  Critics might have hinted
+that her shoulders were too square, and that her figure wanted somewhat
+in softness of outline; but it seemed to Carmichael that he had never
+seen so winsome or high-bred a woman; and so it has also seemed to many
+who have gone farther afield in the world than the young minister of
+Drumtochty.
+
+Carmichael was at that age when a man prides himself on dressing and
+thinking as he pleases, and had quite scandalised a Muirtown elder--a
+stout gentleman, who had come out in '43, and could with difficulty be
+weaned from Dr. Chalmers--by making his appearance on the preceding
+evening in amazing tweeds and a grey flannel shirt.  He explained
+casually that for a fifteen-mile walk flannels were absolutely
+necessary, and that he was rather pleased to find that he had come from
+door to door in four hours and two minutes exactly.  His host was at a
+loss for words, because he was comparing this unconventional youth with
+the fathers, who wore large white stocks and ambled along at about two
+and a half miles an hour, clearing their throats also in a very
+impressive way, and seasoning the principles of the Free Kirk with
+snuff of an excellent fragrance.  It was hard even for the most
+generous charity to identify the spirit of the Disruption in such a
+figure, and the good elder grew so proper and so didactic that
+Carmichael went from bad to worse.
+
+"Well, you would find the congregation in excellent order.  The
+Professor was a most painstaking man, though retiring in disposition,
+and his sermons were thoroughly solid and edifying.  They were possibly
+just a little above the heads of Drumtochty, but I always enjoyed Mr.
+Cunningham myself," nodding his head as one who understood all
+mysteries.
+
+"Did you ever happen to hear the advice Jamie Soutar gave the
+deputation from Muirtown when they came up to see whether Cunningham
+would be fit for the North Kirk, where two Bailies stand at the plate
+every day, and the Provost did not think himself good enough to be an
+elder?" for Carmichael was full of wickedness that day, and earning a
+judgment.
+
+His host indicated that the deputation had given in a very full and
+satisfactory report--he was, in fact, on the Session of the North
+himself--but that no reference had been made to Jamie.
+
+"Well, you must know," and Carmichael laid himself out for narration,
+"the people were harassed with raids from the Lowlands during
+Cunningham's time, and did their best in self-defence.  Spying makes
+men cunning, and it was wonderful how many subterfuges the deputations
+used to practise.  They would walk from Kildrummie as if they were
+staying in the district, and one retired tradesman talked about the
+crops as if he was a farmer, but it was a pity that he did n't know the
+difference between the cereals.
+
+"'Yon man that wes up aifter yir minister, Elspeth,' Hillocks said to
+Mrs. Macfadyen, 'hesna hed muckle money spent on his eddication.  "A
+graund field o' barley," he says, and as sure as a 'm stannin' here, it
+wes the haugh field o' aits.'
+
+"'He 's frae Glaisgie,' was all Elspeth answered, 'and by next Friday
+we 'll hae his name an' kirk.  He said he wes up for a walk an' juist
+dropped in, the wratch.'
+
+"Some drove from Muirtown, giving out that they were English tourists,
+speaking with a fine East Coast accent, and were rebuked by Lachlan
+Campbell for breaking the Sabbath.  Your men put up their trap at the
+last farm in Netheraird--which always has grudged Drumtochty its
+ministers and borne their removal with resignation--and came up in
+pairs, who pretended they did not know one another.
+
+"Jamie was hearing the Professor's last lecture on Justification, and
+our people asked him to take charge of the strangers.  He found out the
+town from their hats, and escorted them to the boundaries of the
+parish, assisting their confidences till one of your men--I think it
+was the Provost--admitted that it had taken them all their time to
+follow the sermon.
+
+"'A 'm astonished at ye,' said Jamie, for the Netheraird man let it
+out; 'yon wes a sermon for young fouk, juist milk, ye ken, tae the
+ordinar' discoorses.  Surely,' as if the thought had just struck him,
+'ye werena thinkin' o' callin' Maister Cunningham tae Muirtown.
+
+"'Edinboorgh, noo; that micht dae gin the feck o' the members be
+professors, but Muirtown wud be clean havers.  There's times when the
+Drumtochty fouk themsels canna understand the cratur, he 's that deep.
+As for Muirtown'--here Jamie allowed himself a brief rest of enjoyment;
+'but ye've hed a fine drive, tae say naethin' o' the traivel.'"
+
+Then, having begun, Carmichael retailed so many of Jamie's most wicked
+sayings, and so exalted the Glen as a place "where you can go up one
+side and down the other with your dogs, and every second man you meet
+will give you something to remember," that the city dignitary doubted
+afterwards to his wife "whether this young man was . . . quite what we
+have been accustomed to in a Free Church minister."  Carmichael ought
+to have had repentances for shocking a worthy man, but instead thereof
+laughed in his room and slept soundly, not knowing that he would be
+humbled in the dust by mid-day to-morrow.
+
+It seemed to him on the platform as if an hour passed while he, who had
+played with a city father, stood, clothed with shame, before this
+commanding young woman.  Had she ever looked upon a more abject wretch?
+and Carmichael photographed himself with merciless accuracy, from his
+hair that he had not thrown back to an impress of dust which one knee
+had taken from the platform, and he registered a resolution that he
+would never be again boastfully indifferent to the loss of a button on
+his coat.  She stooped and fed the dogs, who did her homage, and he
+marked that her profile was even finer--more delicate, more perfect,
+more bewitching--than her front face, but he still stood holding his
+shapeless hat in his hand, and for the first time in his life had no
+words to say.
+
+"They are very polite dogs," and Miss Carnegie gave Carmichael one more
+chance; "they make as much of a biscuit as if it were a feast; but I do
+think dogs have such excellent manners, they are always so
+un-self-conscious."
+
+"I wish I were a dog," said Carmichael, with much solemnity, and
+afterwards was filled with thankfulness that the baggage behind gave
+way at that moment, and that an exasperated porter was able to express
+his mind freely.
+
+"Dinna try tae lift that box for ony sake, man.  Sall, ye 're no'
+feared," as Carmichael, thirsting for action, swung it up unaided; and
+then, catching sight of the merest wisp of white, "A' didna see ye were
+a minister, an' the word cam oot sudden."
+
+"You would find it a help to say Northumberland, Cumberland,
+Westmoreland, and Durham," and with a smile to Carmichael, still
+bareheaded and now redder than ever, Miss Carnegie went along the
+platform to see the Hielant train depart.  It was worth waiting to
+watch the two minutes' scrimmage, and to hear the great man say, as he
+took off his cap with deliberation and wiped his brow, "That's anither
+year ower; some o' you lads see tae that Dunleith train."  There was a
+day when Carmichael would have enjoyed the scene to the full, but now
+he had eyes for nothing but that tall, slim figure and the white bird's
+wing.
+
+When they disappeared into the Dunleith train, Carmichael had a wild
+idea of entering the same compartment, and in the end had to be pushed
+into the last second by the guard, who knew most of his regular people
+and every one of the Drumtochty men.  He was so much engaged with his
+own thoughts that he gave two English tourists to understand that Lord
+Kilspindie's castle, standing amid its woods on the bank of the Tay,
+was a recently erected dye work, and that as the train turned off the
+North trunk line for Dunleith they might at any moment enter the pass
+of Killiecrankie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PEACE.
+
+"The last stage now, Kit; in less than two hours we'll see Tochty
+woods.  The very thought makes me a boy again, and it seems yesterday
+that I kissed your mother on the door-step of the old lodge and went
+off to the Crimean war.
+
+"That's Muirtown Castle over there in the wood--a grand place in its
+way, but nothing to our home, lassie.  Kilspindie--he was Viscount Hay
+then--joined me at Muirtown, and we fought through the weary winter.
+He left the army after the war, with lots of honour.  A good fellow was
+Hay, both in the trenches and the messroom.
+
+"I 've never seen him since, and I dare say he 's forgotten a battered
+old Indian.  Besides, he's the big swell in this district, and I 'm
+only a poor Hielant laird, with a wood and a tumble-down house and a
+couple of farms."
+
+"You are also a shameless hypocrite and deceiver, for you believe that
+the Carnegies are as old as the Hays, and you know that, though you
+have only two farms, you have twelve medals and seven wounds.  What
+does money matter? it simply makes people vulgar."
+
+"Nonsense, lassie; if a Carnegie runs down money, it's because he has
+got none and wishes he had.  If you and I had only a few hundreds a
+year over the half-pay to rattle in our pockets, we should have lots of
+little pleasures, and you might have lived in England, with all sorts
+of variety and comfort, instead of wandering about India with a gang of
+stupid old chaps who have been so busy fighting that they never had
+time to read a book."
+
+"You mean like yourself, dad, and V. C. and Colonel Kinloch?  Where
+could a girl have found finer company than with my Knights of King
+Arthur?  And do you dare to insinuate that I could have been content
+away from the regiment, that made me their daughter after mother died,
+and the army?
+
+"Pleasure!" and Kate's cheek flushed.  "I 've had it since I was a
+little tot and could remember anything--the bugles sounding reveille in
+the clear air, and the sergeants drilling the new drafts in the
+morning, and the regiment coming out with the band before and you at
+its head, and hearing 'God save the Queen' at a review, and seeing the
+companies passing like one man before the General.
+
+"Don't you think that's better than tea-drinking, and gossiping, and
+sewing meetings, and going for walks in some stupid little hole of a
+country town?  Oh, you wicked, aggravating dad.  Now, what more will
+money do?"
+
+"Well," said the General, with much gravity, "if you were even a
+moderate heiress there is no saying but that we might pick up a
+presentable husband for you among the lairds.  As it is, I fancy a
+country minister is all you could expect.
+
+"Don't . . . my ears will come off some day; one was loosened by a cut
+in the Mutiny.  No, I 'll never do the like again.  But some day you
+will marry, all the same," and Kate's father rubbed his ears.
+
+"No, I 'm not going to leave you, for nobody else could ever make a
+curry to please; and if I do, it will not be a Scotch minister--horrid,
+bigoted wretches, V. C. says.  Am I like a minister's wife, to address
+mothers' meetings and write out sermons?  By the way, is there a kirk
+at Drumtochty, or will you read prayers to Janet and Donald and me?"
+
+"When I was a lad there was just one minister in Drumtochty, Mr.
+Davidson, a splendid specimen of the old school, who, on great
+occasions, wore gaiters and a frill with a diamond in the centre; he
+carried a gold-headed stick, and took snuff out of a presentation box.
+
+"His son Sandie was my age to a year, and many a ploy we had together;
+there was the jackdaw's nest in the ivy on the old tower we harried
+together," and the General could only indicate the delightful risk of
+the exploit.  "My father and the minister were pacing the avenue at the
+time, and caught sight of us against the sky.  'It's your rascal and
+mine, Laird,' we heard the minister say, and they waited till we got
+down, and then each did his duty by his own for trying to break his
+neck; but they were secretly proud of the exploit, for I caught my
+father showing old Lord Kilspindie the spot, and next time Hay was up
+he tried to reach the place, and stuck where the wall hangs over.  I
+'ll point out the hole this evening; you can see it from the other side
+of the den quite plain."
+
+[Illustration: "Many a ploy we had together."]
+
+"Sandie went to the church--I wish every parson were as straight--and
+Kilspindie appointed him to succeed the old gentleman, and when I saw
+him in his study last month, it seemed as if his father stood before
+you, except the breeches and the frill; but Sandie has a  marvellous
+stock--what havers I 'm deivin' you with, lassie."
+
+"Tell me about Sandie this minute--did he remember the raiding of the
+jack-daws?"
+
+"He did," cried the General, in great spirits; "he just looked at me
+for an instant--no one knew of my visit--and then he gripped my hands,
+and do you know, Kit, he was . . . well, and there was a lump in my
+throat too; it would be about thirty years, for one reason and another,
+since we met."
+
+"What did he say? the very words, dad," and Kate held up her finger in
+command.
+
+"'Jack, old man, is this really you?'--he held me at arm's
+length--'man, div ye mind the jackdaw's nest?'"
+
+"Did he?  And he 's to be our padre.  I know I 'll love him at once.
+Go on, everything, for you 've never told me anything about Drumtochty."
+
+"We had a glorious time going over old times.  We fished up every trout
+again, and we shot our first day on the moor again with Peter Stewart,
+Kilspindie's head keeper, as fine an old Highlander as ever lived.
+Stewart said in the evening, 'You 're a pair of prave boys, as becometh
+your fathers' sons,' and Sandie gave him two and fourpence he had
+scraped for a tip, but I had only one and elevenpence--we were both
+kept bare.  But he knew better than to refuse our offerings, though he
+never saw less than gold or notes from the men that shot at the lodge,
+and Sandie remembered how he touched his Highland bonnet and said, 'I
+will be much obliged to you both; and you will be coming to the moor
+another day, for I hef his lordship's orders.'
+
+"Boys are queer animals, lassie; we were prouder that Peter accepted
+our poor little tip than about the muirfowl we shot, though I had three
+brace and Sandie four.  Highlanders are all gentlemen by birth, and be
+sure of this, Kit, it's only that breed which can manage boys and
+soldiers.  But where am I now?"
+
+"With Sandie--I beg his reverence's pardon--with the Rev. the padre of
+Drumtochty," and Kate went over and sat down beside the General to
+anticipate any rebellion, for it was a joy to see the warrior turning
+into a boy before her eyes.  "Well?"
+
+"We had a royal dinner, as it seemed to me.  Sandie has a couple of
+servants, man and wife, who rule him with a rod of iron, but I would
+forgive that for the cooking and the loyalty.  After dinner he
+disappeared with a look of mystery, and came back with a cobwebbed
+bottle of the old shape, short and bunchy, which he carried as if it
+were a baby.
+
+"'Just two bottles of my father's port left; we 'll have one to-day to
+welcome you back, and we 'll keep the other to celebrate your
+daughter's marriage.' He had one sister, younger by ten years, and her
+death in girlhood nearly broke his heart.  It struck me from something
+he said that his love is with her; at any rate, he has never married.
+Sandie has just one fault--he would not touch a cheroot; but he snuffs
+handsomely out of his father's box.
+
+"Of course, I can't say anything about his preaching, but it's bound to
+be sensible stuff."
+
+"Bother the sermons; he 's an old dear himself, and I know we shall be
+great friends.  We 'll flirt together, and you will not have one word
+to say, so make up your mind to submit."
+
+"We shall have good days in the old place, lassie; but you know we are
+poor, and must live quietly.  What I have planned is a couple of handy
+women or so in the house with Donald.  Janet is going to live at the
+gate where she was brought up, but she will look after you well, and we
+'ll always have a bed and a glass of wine for a friend.  Then you can
+have a run up to London and get your things, Kit," and the General
+looked wistfully at his daughter, as one who would have given her a
+kingdom.
+
+"Do you think your girl cares so much about luxuries and dresses?  Of
+course I like to look well--every woman does, and if she pretends
+otherwise she 's a hypocrite; but money just seems to make some women
+hideous.  It is enough for me to have you all to myself up in your old
+home, and to see you enjoying the rest you have earned.  We'll be as
+happy as two lovers, dad," and Kate threw an arm round her father's
+neck and kissed him.
+
+"We have to change here," as the train began to slow; "prepare to see
+the most remarkable railway in the empire, and a guard to correspond."
+And then it came upon them, the first sight that made a Drumtochty
+man's heart warm, and assured him that he was nearing home.
+
+An engine on a reduced scale, that had once served in the local goods
+department of a big station, and then, having grown old and asthmatic,
+was transferred on half-pay, as it were, to the Kildrummie branch,
+where it puffed between the junction and the terminus half a dozen
+times a day, with two carriages and an occasional coal truck.  Times
+there were when wood was exported from Kildrummie, and then the train
+was taken down in detachments, and it was a pleasant legend that, one
+market day, when Drumtochty was down in force, the engine stuck, and
+Drumsheugh invited the Glen to get out and push.  The two carriages
+were quite distinguished in construction, and had seen better days.
+One consisted of a single first-class compartment in the centre, with a
+bulge of an imposing appearance, supported on either side by two
+seconds.  As no native ever travelled second, one compartment had been
+employed as a reserve to the luggage van, so that Drumtochty might have
+a convenient place of deposit for calves, but the other was jealously
+reserved by Peter Bruce for strangers with second-class tickets, that
+his branch might not be put to confusion.  The other carriage was
+three-fourths third class and one-fourth luggage, and did the real
+work; on its steps Peter stood and dispensed wisdom, between the
+junction and Kildrummie.
+
+But neither the carriages nor the engine could have made history
+without the guard, beside whom the guards of the main line--even of the
+expresses that ran to London--were as nothing--fribbles and weaklings.
+For the guard of the Kildrummie branch was absolute ruler, lording it
+over man and beast without appeal, and treating the Kildrummie
+stationmaster as a federated power.  Peter was a short man of great
+breadth, like unto the cutting of an oak-tree, with a penetrating grey
+eye, an immovable countenance, and bushy whiskers.  It was understood
+that when the line was opened, and the directors were about to fill up
+the post of guard from a number of candidates qualified by long
+experience on various lines, Peter, who had been simply wasting his
+time driving a carrier's cart, came in, and sitting down opposite the
+board--two lairds and a farmer--looked straight before him without
+making any application.  It was felt by all in an instant that only one
+course was open, in the eternal fitness of things.  Experience was well
+enough, but special creation was better, and Peter was immediately
+appointed, his name being asked by the chairman afterwards as a
+formality.  From the beginning he took up a masterful position,
+receiving his human cargo at the junction and discharging it at the
+station with a power that even Drumtochty did not resist, and a
+knowledge of individuals that was almost comprehensive.  It is true
+that, boasting one Friday evening concerning the "crooded" state of the
+train, he admitted with reluctance that "there 's a stranger in the
+second I canna mak oot," but it is understood that he solved the
+problem before the man got his luggage at Kildrummie.
+
+Perhaps Peter's most famous achievement was his demolition of a south
+country bagman, who had made himself unpleasant, and the story was much
+tasted by our guard's admirers.  This self-important and vivacious
+gentleman, seated in the first, was watching Peter's leisurely
+movements on the Kildrummie platform with much impatience, and lost all
+self-control on Peter going outside to examine the road for any distant
+passenger.
+
+"Look here, guard, this train ought to have left five minutes ago, and
+I give you notice that if we miss our connection I 'll hold your
+company responsible."
+
+At the sound of this foreign voice with its indecent clamour, Peter
+returned and took up his position opposite the speaker, while the staff
+and the whole body of passengers--four Kildrummie and three Drumtochty,
+quite sufficient for the situation--waited the issue.  Not one word did
+Peter deign to reply, but he fixed the irate traveller with a gaze so
+searching, so awful, so irresistible, that the poor man fell back into
+his seat and pretended to look out at the opposite window.  After a
+pause of thirty seconds, Peter turned to the engine-driver.
+
+"They 're a' here noo, an' there 's nae use waitin' langer; ca' awa',
+but ye needna distress the engine."
+
+It was noticed that the foolhardy traveller kept the full length of the
+junction between himself and Peter till the Dunleith train came in,
+while his very back was eloquent of humiliation, and Hillocks offered
+his snuff-box ostentatiously to Peter, which that worthy accepted as a
+public tribute of admiration.
+
+"Look, Kate, there he is;" and there Peter was, standing in his
+favourite attitude, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in his armholes,
+superior, abstracted, motionless till the train stopped, when he came
+forward.
+
+[Illustration: Peter was standing in his favourite attitude.]
+
+"Prood tae see ye, General, coming back at laist, an' the Miss wi' ye;
+it 'll no be the blame o' the fouk up by gin ye bena happy.  Drumtochty
+hes an idea o' itsel', and peety the man 'at tries tae drive them, but
+they 're couthy.
+
+"This wy, an' a'll see tae yir luggage," and before Peter made for the
+Dunleith van it is said that he took off his cap to Kate; but if so,
+this was the only time he had ever shown such gallantry to a lady.
+
+Certainly he must have been flustered by something, for he did not
+notice that Carmichael, overcome by shyness at the sight of the
+Carnegies in the first, had hid himself in the second, till he closed
+the doors; then the Carnegies heard it all.
+
+"It's I, Peter," very quietly; "your first has passengers to-day,
+and . . . I 'll just sit here."
+
+"Come oot o' that," after a moment, during which Peter had simply
+looked; then the hat and the tweeds came stumbling into the first,
+making some sort of a bow and muttering an apology.
+
+"A'll tak' yir ticket, Maister Carmichael," with severity.  "General,"
+suddenly relaxing, "this is the Free Kirk minister of yir pairish, an'
+a 'm jidgin' he 'll no try the second again."
+
+Carmichael lifted his head and caught Kate's eye, and at the meeting of
+humour they laughed aloud.  Whereupon the General said, "My daughter,
+Miss Carnegie," and they became so friendly before they reached
+Kildrummie that Carmichael forgot his disgraceful appearance and when
+the General offered him a lift up, simply clutched at the opportunity.
+
+The trap was a four-wheeled dog-cart.  Kate drove, with her father by
+her side and Carmichael behind, but he found it necessary to turn round
+to give information of names and places, and he so managed that he
+could catch Kate's profile half the time.
+
+When he got down at the foot of the hill by Hillocks' farm, to go up
+the near road, instead thereof he scrambled along the ridge, and looked
+through the trees as the carriage passed below; but he did not escape.
+
+"What's he glowerin' at doon there?" Hillocks inquired of Jamie Soutar,
+to whom he was giving some directions about a dyke, and Hillocks made a
+reconnaissance.  "A 'll warrant that's the General and his dochter.
+She 's a weel-faured lassie an' speerity-lookin'."
+
+"It cowes a'," said Jamie to himself; "the first day he ever saw her;
+but it's aye the way, aince an' ever, or . . . never."
+
+"What's the Free Kirk, dad?" when Carmichael had gone.  "Is it the same
+as the Methodists?"
+
+"No, no, quite different.  I 'm not up in those things, but I 've heard
+it was a lot of fellows who would not obey the laws, and so they left
+and made a kirk for themselves, where they do whatever they like.  By
+the way, that was the young fellow we saw giving the dogs water at
+Muirtown.  I rather like him; but why did he look such a fool, and try
+to escape us at the junction?"
+
+"How should I know?  I suppose because he is a . . . foolish boy.  And
+now, dad, for the Lodge and Tochty woods."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS.
+
+It was the custom of the former time to construct roads on a straight
+line, with a preference for uphill and down, and engineers refused to
+make a circuit of twenty yards to secure level ground.  There were two
+advantages in this uncompromising principle of construction, and it may
+be doubtful which commended itself most to the mind of our fathers.
+Roads were drained after the simplest fashion, because a standing pool
+in the hollow had more than a compensation in the dryness of the ascent
+and descent, while the necessity of sliddering down one side and
+scrambling up the other reduced driving to the safe average of four
+miles an hour--horse-doctors forming a class by themselves, and being
+preserved in their headlong career by the particular Providence which
+has a genial regard for persons who have too little sense or have taken
+too much liquor.  Degenerate descendants, anxious to obtain the maximum
+of speed with the minimum of exertion, have shown a quite wonderful
+ingenuity in circumventing hills, so the road between Drumtochty Manse
+and Tochty Lodge gate was duplicated, and the track that plunged into
+the hollow was now forsaken of wheeled traffic and overgrown with grass.
+
+"This way, Kate; it's the old road, and the way I came to kirk with my
+mother.  Yes, it's narrow, but we'll get through and down below--it is
+worth the seeing."
+
+So they forced a passage where the overgrown hedges resisted the
+wheels, and the trees, wet with a morning shower, dashed Kate's jacket
+with a pleasant spray, and the rail of the dog-cart was festooned with
+tendrils of honeysuckle and wild geranium.
+
+"There is the parish kirk of Drumtochty," as they came out and halted
+on the crest of the hill, "and though it be not much to look at after
+the Norman churches of the south, it's a brave old kirk in our fashion,
+and well set in the Glen."
+
+For it stood on a knoll, whence the ground sloped down to the Tochty,
+and it lay with God's acre round it in the shining of the sun.  Half a
+dozen old beeches made a shadow in the summer-time, and beat off the
+winter's storms.  One standing at the west corner of the kirkyard had a
+fuller and sweeter view of the Glen than could be got anywhere save
+from the beeches at the Lodge; but then nothing like unto that can be
+seen far or near, and I have marvelled why painting men have never had
+it on their canvas.
+
+"Our vault is at the east end, where the altar was in the old days, and
+there our dead of many generations lie.  A Carnegie always prayed to be
+buried with his people in Drumtochty, but as it happened, two out of
+three of our house have fallen on the field, and so most of us have not
+had our wish.
+
+"Black John, my great-grandfather, was out in '45, and escaped to
+France.  He married a Highland lassie orphaned there, and entered the
+French service, as many a Scot did before him since the days of the
+Scots Guards.  But when he felt himself a-dying, he asked leave of the
+English government to come home, and he would not die till he laid
+himself down in his room in the tower.  Then he gave directions for his
+funeral, how none were to be asked of the county folk but Drummonds and
+Hays and Stewarts from Blair Athole and such like that had been out
+with the Prince.  And he made his wife promise that she would have him
+dressed for his coffin as he fought on Culloden field, for he had kept
+the clothes.
+
+"Then he asked that the window should be opened that he might hear the
+lilting of the burn below; and he called for my grandfather, who was
+only a young lad, and commanded him to enter one of the Scottish
+regiments and be a loyal kingsman, since all was over with the Stewarts.
+
+"He said a prayer and kissed his wife's hand, being a courtly
+gentleman, and died listening to the sound of the water running over
+the stones in the den below."
+
+"It was as good as dying on the field," said Kate, her face flushing
+with pride; "that is an ancestor worth remembering; and did he get a
+worthy funeral?"
+
+"More than he asked for; his old comrades gathered from far and near,
+and some of the chiefs that were out of hiding came down, and they
+brought him up this very road, with the pipers playing before the
+coffin.  Fifty gentlemen buried John Carnegie, and every man of them
+had been out with the Prince.
+
+"When they gathered in the stone hall you 'll see soon, his
+friend-in-arms, Patrick Murray, gave three toasts.  The first was 'the
+king,' and every man bared his head; the second was 'to him that is
+gone;' the third was 'to the friends that are far awa';' and then one
+of the chiefs proposed another, 'to the men of Culloden;' and after
+that every gentleman dashed his glass on the floor.  Though he was only
+a little lad at the time, my grandfather never forgot the sight.
+
+"He also told me that his mother never shed a tear, but looked prouder
+than he ever saw her, and before they left the hall she bade each
+gentleman good-bye, and to the chief she spoke in Gaelic, being of
+Cluny's blood and a gallant lady.
+
+"Another thing she did also which the lad could not forget, for she
+brought down her husband's sword from the room in the turret, and
+Patrick Murray, of the House of Athole, fastened it above the big
+fireplace, where it hangs unto this day, crossed now with my father's,
+as you will see, Kate, unless we stand here all day going over old
+stories."
+
+"They 're glorious stories, dad; why did n't you tell them to me
+before?  I want to get into the spirit of the past and feel the
+Carnegie blood swinging in my veins before we come to the Lodge.  What
+did they do afterwards, or was that all?"
+
+"They mounted their horses in the courtyard, and as each man passed out
+of the gate he took off his hat and bowed low to the widow, who stood
+in a window I will show you, and watched till the last disappeared into
+the avenue; but my grandfather ran out and saw them ride down the road
+in order of threes, a goodly company of gentlemen.  But this sight is
+better than horsemen and swords."
+
+They were now in the hollow between the kirk and the Lodge, a cup of
+greenery surrounded by wood.  Behind, they still saw the belfry through
+the beeches; before, away to the right, the grey stone of a turret
+showed among the trees.  The burn that sang to Black John ran beneath
+them with a pleasant sound, and fifty yards of turf climbed up to the
+cottage where the old road joined the new and the avenue of the Lodge
+began.  Over this ascent the branches met, through which the sunshine
+glimmered and flickered, and down the centre came a white and brown cow
+in charge of an old woman.
+
+"It's Bell Robb, that lives in the cottage there among the bushes.  I
+was at the parish school with her, Kate--she 's just my age--for we
+were all John Tamson's bairns in those days, and got our learning and
+our licks together, laird's son and cottar's daughter.
+
+"People would count it a queer mixture nowadays, but there were some
+advantages in the former parish school idea; there were lots of
+cleverer subalterns in the old regiment, but none knew his men so well
+as I did.  I had played and fought with their kind.  Would you mind
+saying a word to Bell . . . just her name or something?" for this was a
+new life to the pride of the regiment, as they called Kate, and
+Carnegie was not sure how she might take it.  Kate was a lovable lass,
+but like every complete woman, she had a temper and a stock of
+prejudices.  She was good comrade with all true men, although her heart
+was whole, and with a few women that did not mince their words or carry
+two faces, but Kate had claws inside the velvet, and once she so
+handled with her tongue a young fellow who offended her that he sent in
+his papers.  What she said was not much, but it was memorable, and
+every word drew blood.  Her father was never quite certain what she
+would do, although he was always sure of her love.
+
+"Do you suppose, dad, that I 'm to take up with all your friends of the
+jackdaw days?  You seem to have kept fine company."  Kate was already
+out of the dogcart, and now took Bell by the hand.
+
+"I am the General's daughter, and he was telling me that you and he
+were playmates long ago.  You 'll let me come to see you, and you 'll
+tell me all his exploits when he was John Carnegie?"
+
+[Illustration: "I am the General's daughter."]
+
+"To think he minded me, an' him sae lang awa' at the weary wars."  Bell
+was between the laughing and the crying.  "We 're lifted to know oor
+laird 's a General, and that he's gotten sic honour.  There's nae bluid
+like the auld bluid, an' the Carnegies cud aye afford to be hamely.
+
+"Ye're like him," and Bell examined Kate carefully; "but a' can tell
+yir mither's dochter, a weel-faured mettlesome lady as wes ever seen;
+wae 's me, wae 's me for the wars," at the sight of Carnegie's face;
+"but ye 'll come in to see Marjorie.  A 'll mak her ready," and Bell
+hurried into the cottage.
+
+"Marjorie has been blind from her birth.  She was the pet of the
+school, and now Bell takes care of her.  Davidson was telling me that
+she wanted to support Marjorie off the wages she earns as a field hand
+on the farms, and the parish had to force half-a-crown a week on them;
+but hear this."
+
+"Never mind hoo ye look," Bell was speaking.  "A' canna keep them
+waitin' till ye be snoddit."
+
+"Gie me ma kep, at ony rate, that the minister brocht frae Muirtown,
+and Drumsheugh's shawl; it wudna be respectfu' to oor Laird, an' it his
+first veesit;" and there was a note of refinement in the voice, as of
+one living apart.
+
+"Yes, I'm here, Marjorie," and the General stooped over the low bed
+where the old woman was lying, "and this is my daughter, the only child
+left me; you would hear that all my boys were killed."
+
+"We did that, and we were a' wae for ye; a' thocht o' ye and a' saw ye
+in yir sorrow, for them 'at canna see ootside see the better inside.
+But it 'll be some comfort to be in the hame o' yir people aince mair,
+and to ken ye 've dune yir wark weel.  It's pleasant for us to think
+the licht 'll be burnin' in the windows o' the Lodge again, and that ye
+'re come back aifter the wars.
+
+"Miss Kate, wull ye lat me pass ma hand ower yir face, an' then a 'll
+ken what like ye are better nor some 'at hes the joy o' seein' ye wi'
+their een. . . .  The Glen 'll be the happier for the sicht o' ye; a'
+thank ye for yir kindness to a puir woman."
+
+"If you begin to pay compliments, Marjorie, I 'll tell you what I think
+of that cap; for the pink is just the very shade for your complexion,
+and it's a perfect shape."
+
+"Ma young minister, Maister Carmichael, seleckit it in Muirtown, an' a'
+heard that he went ower sax shops to find one to his fancy; he never
+forgets me, an' he wrote me a letter on his holiday.  A'body likes him
+for his bonnie face an' honest ways."
+
+"Oh, I know him already, Marjorie, for he drove up with us, and I
+thought him very nice; but we must go, for you know I 've not yet seen
+our home, and I 'm just tingling with curiosity."
+
+"You 'll not leave without breakin' bread; it's little we hae, but we
+can offer ye oat-cake an' milk in token o' oor loyalty," and then Bell
+brought the elements of Scottish food; and when Marjorie's lips moved
+in prayer as they ate, it seemed to Carnegie and his daughter like a
+sacrament.  So the two went from the fellowship of the poor to their
+ancient house.
+
+They drove along the avenue between the stately beeches that stood on
+either side and reached out their branches, almost but not quite unto
+meeting, so that the sun, now in the south, made a train of light down
+which the General and Kate came home.  At the end of the beeches the
+road wheeled to the right, and Kate saw for the first time the
+dwelling-place of her people.  Tochty Lodge was of the fourth period of
+Scottish castellated architecture, and till it fell into disrepair was
+a very perfect example of the sixteenth century mansion-house, where
+strength of defence could not yet be dispensed with, for the Carnegies
+were too near the Highland border to do without thick walls or to risk
+habitation on the ground floor.  The buildings had first been erected
+on the L plan, and then had been made into a quadrangle, so that on the
+left was the main part, with a tower at the south-west corner over the
+den, and a wing at the south-east coming out to meet the gate.  On the
+north-east and north were a tower and rooms now in ruins, and along the
+west ran a wall some six feet high with a stone walk three feet from
+the top, whence you could look down on the burn.  A big gateway, whose
+doors were of oak studded with nails, with a grated lattice for
+observation, gave entrance to the courtyard.  In the centre of the yard
+there was an ancient oak and a draw well whose water never failed.  The
+eastern face was bare of ivy, except at the north corner, where stood
+the jackdaws' tower; but the rough grey stone was relieved by the
+tendrils and red blossoms of the hardy tropaeolum which despises the
+rich soil of the south and the softer air, and grows luxuriantly on our
+homely northern houses.  As they came to the gateway, the General bade
+Kate pull up and read the scroll above, which ran in clear-cut letters--
+
+  TRY AND THEN
+  TRVST BETTER GVDE
+  ASSVRANCE
+  BOT TRUST NOT
+  OR YE TRY FOR FEAR
+  OF REPENTANCE.
+
+
+"We 've been a slow dour race, Kit, who never gave our heart lightly,
+but having given it, never played the traitor.  Fortune has not
+favoured us, for acre after acre has gone from our hands, but, thank
+God, we 've never had dishonour."
+
+"And never will, dad, for we are the last of the race."
+
+Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway of the tower, and gave
+Kate welcome as one whose ancestors had for four generations served the
+Carnegies, since the day Black John had married a Macpherson.
+
+[Illustration: Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway.]
+
+"Calf of my heart," she cried, and took Kate in her arms.  "It is your
+foster-mother that will be glad to see you in the home of your people,
+and will be praying that God will give you peace and good days."
+
+Then they went up the winding stone stair, with deep, narrow windows,
+and came into the dining-hall where the fifty Jacobites toasted the
+king and many a gathering had taken place in the olden time.  It was
+thirty-five feet long by fifteen broad, and twenty-two feet high.  The
+floor was of flags over arches below, and the bare stone walls showed
+at the windows and above the black oak panelling which reached ten feet
+from the ground.  The fireplace was six feet high, and so wide that two
+could sit on either side within.  Upon the mantelpiece the Carnegie
+arms stood out in bold relief under the two crossed swords.  One or two
+portraits of dead Carnegies and some curious weapons broke the monotony
+of the walls, and from the roof hung a finely wrought iron candelabra.
+The western portion of the hall was separated by a screen of open
+woodwork, and made a pleasant dining-room.  A door in the corner led
+into the tower, which had a library, with Carnegie's bedroom above, and
+higher still Kate's room, each with a tiny dressing closet.  For the
+Carnegies always lived together in this tower, and their guests at the
+other end of the hall.  The library had two windows.  From one you
+could look down and see nothing but the foliage of the den, with a
+gleam of water where the burn made a pool, and from the other you
+looked over a meadow with big trees to the Tochty sweeping round a
+bend, and across to the high opposite banks covered with brush-wood.
+First they visited Carnegie's room.
+
+"Here have we been born, and died if we did not fall in battle, and
+it's not a bad billet after all for an old soldier.  Yes, that is your
+mother when we were married, but I like this one better," and the
+General touched his breast, for he carried his love next his heart in a
+silver locket of Indian workmanship.
+
+Three fine deerskins lay on the floor, and one side of the room was
+hung with tapestry; but the most striking piece of furnishing in the
+room was an oak cupboard, sunk a foot into the wall.
+
+"I 'll show you something in that cabinet after luncheon, Kate; but now
+let's see your room."
+
+"How beautiful, and how cunning you have been," and then she took an
+inventory of the furniture, all new, but all in keeping with the age of
+the room.  "You have spent far too much on a very self-willed and
+bad-tempered girl, and all I can do is to make you promise that you
+will come up here sometimes and let me give you tea in this
+window-seat, where we can see the woods and the Tochty."
+
+"Well, Donald," said the General at table to his faithful servant, "how
+do you think Drumtochty will suit you?"
+
+"Any place where you and Miss Kate will be living iss a good place for
+me, and there are six or maybe four men I hef been meeting that hef the
+language, but not good Gaelic--just poor Perthshire talk," for Donald
+was a West Highlander, and prided himself on his better speech.
+
+"And what about a kirk, Donald?  Aren't you Free like Janet?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am Free; but it iss not to that kirk I will be going most
+here, and I am telling Janet that she will be caring more about a man
+that hass a pleasant way with him than about the truth."
+
+"What's wrong with things, Donald, since we lay in Edinburgh twenty
+years ago, and you used to give me bits of the Free Kirk sermons?"
+
+"It iss all wrong that they hef been going these last years, for they
+stand to sing and they sit to pray, and they will be using human himes.
+And it iss great pieces of the Bible they hef cut out, and I am told
+that they are not done yet, but are going from bad to worse," and
+Donald invited questioning.
+
+"What more are they after, man?"
+
+"It will be myself that has found it out, and it iss only what might be
+expected, but I am not saying that you will be believing me."
+
+"Out with it, Donald; let's hear what kind of people we 've come
+amongst."
+
+"They 've been just fairly left to themselves, and the godless bodies
+hef taken to watering the whisky."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A SECRET CHAMBER.
+
+"The cabinet now, dad, and at once," when they went up the stairs and
+were standing in the room.  "Just give me three guesses about the
+mystery; but first let me examine."
+
+It was pretty to see Kate opening the doors, curiously carved with
+hunting scenes, and searching the interior, tapping with her knuckles
+and listening for a hollow sound.
+
+"Is it a treasure we are to find?  Then that's one point.  Not in the
+cabinet?  I have it; there is a door into some other place; am n't I
+right?"
+
+"Where could it be?  We're in a tower cut off from the body of the
+Lodge, with a room above and a room below;" and the General sat down to
+allow full investigation.
+
+After many journeys up and down the stair, and many questions that
+brought no light, Kate played a woman's trick up in her room.
+
+"The General wishes to show me the concealed room in this tower, Janet,
+or whatever you call it.  Would you kindly tell us how to get entrance?
+You need n't come down; just explain to me;" and Kate was very pleasant
+indeed.
+
+"Yes, I am hearing there iss a room in the tower, Miss Kate, that
+strangers will not be able to find; and it would be very curious if the
+Carnegies did not have a safe place for an honest gentleman when he
+wass in a little trouble.  All the good houses will have their secret
+places, and it will not be easy to find some of them.  Oh no; now I
+will remember one at Glamis Castle. . . ."
+
+"Never mind Glamis, nurse, for the General is waiting.  Where is the
+spring? is it in the oak cabinet?"
+
+"It will be good for the General to be resting himself after his
+luncheon, and he will be thinking many things in his room.  Oh yes,"
+continued Janet, settling herself down to narrative, and giving no heed
+to Kate's beguiling ways, "old Mary that died near a hundred would be
+often telling me stories of the old days when I wass a little girl, and
+the one I liked best wass about the hiding of the Duke of Perth."
+
+"You will tell me that to-morrow, when I come down to see your house,
+Janet, and to-day you 'll tell me how to open the spring."
+
+"But it would be a pity not to finish the story about the Duke of
+Perth, for it goes well, and it will be good for a Carnegie to hear
+it."  And Kate flung herself into the window-seat, but was hugely
+interested all the same.
+
+"Mary wass sitting at her door in the evening, and that would be three
+days after Culloden, for the news had been sent by a sure hand from the
+Laird, when a man came riding along the road, and as soon as Mary saw
+him she knew he wass somebody; but perhaps it will be too long a
+story," and Janet began to arrange dresses in a wardrobe.
+
+"No, no; as you have begun it, I want to hear the end, but quick, for
+there 's the room to see and the rest of the Lodge before it grows
+dark.  What like was he?"
+
+"He wass a man that looked as if he would be commanding, but his
+clothes were common grey, and stained with the road.  He wass very
+tired, and could hardly hold himself up in the saddle, and his horse
+wass covered with foam.  'Is this Tochty Lodge?' he asked, softening
+his voice as one trying to speak humbly.  'I am passing this way, and
+have a message for Mistress Carnegie; think you that I can have speech
+of her quietly?'
+
+"So Mary will go up and tell the lady that one wass waiting to see her,
+and that he seemed a noble gentleman.  When they came down to the
+courtyard he had drawn water for his horse from the well, and wass
+giving him to drink, thinking more of the beast that had borne him than
+of his own need, as became a man of birth.
+
+"At the sight of the lady he took off his bonnet and bowed low, and
+asked if he might hef a private audience, to which Mistress Carnegie
+replied, 'We are private here,' and asked, 'Have you been with my son?'
+
+"'We fought together for the Prince three days since--my name is Perth.
+I am escaping for my life, and desire a brief rest, if it please you,
+and bring no danger to your house.'
+
+"'Ye had been welcome, my Lord Duke,' and Mary used to show how her
+mistress straightened herself, though you were the poorest soldier that
+had drawn his sword for the good cause, and ye will stay here till it
+be safe for you to escape to France.'
+
+"He wass four weeks hidden in the room, and although the soldiers
+searched all the house, they could never find the place, and Mrs.
+Carnegie put scorn upon them, asking why they did her so much honour
+and whom they sought.  Oh yes, it wass a cunning place for the bad
+times, and you will be pleased to see it."
+
+"And the secret, Janet," cried Kate, her hand upon the door; "you know
+it quite well."
+
+"So does the General, Catherine of my heart," said Janet, "and he will
+be liking to show it himself."
+
+So Kate departed in a rage, and gave orders that there be no more
+delay, for she would not spend an afternoon seeking for rat-holes.
+
+"No rat-hole, Kit, but a very fair chamber for a hunted man; it is
+twenty years and more since this door opened last, for none knows the
+trick of it save Janet and myself.  There it goes."
+
+A panel in the back of the cabinet slid aside behind its neighbour and
+left a passage through which one could squeeze himself with an effort.
+
+"We go up a stair now, and must have light; a candle will do; the air
+is perfectly pure, for there 's plenty of ventilation;" and then they
+crept up by steps in the thickness of the walls, till they stood in a
+chamber under six feet high, but otherwise as large as the bedroom
+below.  The walls were lined with wood, and there were two tiny slits
+that gave air, but hardly any light.  The only furniture in the room
+was an oaken chest, clasped with iron and curiously locked.
+
+"Our plate chest, Kit; but there 'a not much silver and gold in it,
+worse luck for you, lassie; in fact, we're a pack of fools to set store
+by it.  There 's nothing in the kist but some old clothes, and perhaps
+some buckles and such like.  I dare say there is a lock of hair also.
+Some day we will have a look inside."
+
+"To-day, instantly," and Kate shook her father.  "You are a dreadful
+hypocrite, for I can see that you would rather Tochty were burned down
+than this box be lost.  Are there any relics of Prince Charlie in it?
+Quick."
+
+"Be patient; it's a difficult key to turn; there now;" but there was
+not much to see--only pieces of woollen cloth tightly folded down.
+
+[Illustration: "It's a difficult key to turn."]
+
+"Call Janet, Kate, for she ought to see this opening, and we 'll carry
+everything down to my room, for no one could tell what like things are
+in this gloom.  Yes, Perth lived here for weeks, and used to go up to
+the gallery where Black John's mother sat with her maid; but the son
+was hiding in the North, and never reached his house till he came to
+die."
+
+First of all they came upon a ball dress of the former time, of white
+silk, with a sash of Macpherson tartan, besides much fine lace.
+
+"That is the dress your great-grandmother wore as a bride at the Court
+of Versailles in the fifties.  She was only a lassie, and seemed like
+her husband's daughter.  The Prince danced with her, and they counted
+the dress something to be kept, and that night Locheil and Cluny also
+had a reel with Sheena Carnegie, while Black John looked like a young
+man, for he had been too sorely wounded to be able to dance with her
+himself."  And then the General carried down with his own hands a
+Highland gentleman's evening dress, trews of the Royal tartan, and a
+velvet coat with silver buttons, and a light plaid of fine cloth.
+
+"And this was her husband's dress that night; but why the Stewart
+tartan?"
+
+"No, lassie, that is the suit the Prince wore at Holyrood, where he
+gave a great ball after Prestonpans, and danced with the Edinburgh
+ladies.  It was smuggled across to France at last with other things of
+the Prince's, and he gave it to Carnegie.  'It will remind you of our
+great days,' he said, 'when the Stewarts saw their friends in Mary's
+Palace.'"
+
+Last of all, the General lifted out a casket and laid it on his table.
+Within it was a brooch, such as might once have been worn either by a
+man or a woman; diamonds set in gold, and in the midst a lock of fair
+hair.
+
+"Is it really, father? . . ."  And Kate took the jewel in her hand.
+
+"Yes, the Prince's hair--his wedding present to Sheena Macpherson."
+
+Kate kissed it fervently, and passed it to Janet, who placed it
+carefully in the box, while the General made believe to laugh.
+
+"Your mother wore the brooch on great occasions, and you will do the
+same, Kit, for auld lang syne.  There are two or three families left in
+Perthshire that will like to see it on your breast."
+
+"Yes, and there will maybe be more than two or three that will like to
+see the lady that wears it."  This from Janet.
+
+"Your compliments are a little late, and you may keep them to yourself,
+Janet; it would have been kinder to tell me. . . ."
+
+"Tell you what?"  And the General looked very provoking.
+
+"I hate to be beaten."  Kate first looked angry, and then laughed.
+"What else is there to see?"
+
+"There is the gallery, which is the one feature in our poor house, and
+we will try to reach it from the Duke's hiding-place, for it was a
+cleverly designed hole, and had its stair up as well as down."  And
+then they all came out into one of the strangest rooms you could find
+in Scotland, and one that left a pleasant picture in their minds who
+had seen it lit of a winter night, and the wood burning on the hearth,
+and Kate dancing a reel with Lord Hay or some other brisk young man,
+while the General looked on from one of the deep window recesses.
+
+The gallery extended over the hall and Kate's drawing-room, and
+measured fifty feet long from end to end.  The upper part of the walls
+was divided into compartments by an arcading, made of painted pilasters
+and flat arches.  Each compartment had a motto, and this was on one
+side of the fireplace:
+
+  A nice wyfe and
+    A back doore
+  Oft maketh a rich
+    Man poore.
+
+
+And on the other:--
+
+  Give liberalye
+  To neidfvl folke
+  Denye nane of
+  Them al for litle
+  Thow knawest heir
+  In this lyfe of what
+  Chaunce may the
+  Befall.
+
+
+The glory of the gallery, however, was its ceiling, which was of the
+seventeenth century work, and so wonderful that many learned persons
+used to come and study it.  After the great disaster when the Lodge was
+sold and allowed to fall to pieces, this fine work went first, and now
+no one examining its remains could have imagined how wonderful it was,
+and in its own way how beautiful.  This ceiling was of wood, painted,
+and semi-elliptical in form, and one wet day, when we knew not what
+else to do, Kate and I counted more than three hundred panels.  It was
+an arduous labour for the neck, and the General refused to help us; but
+I am sure that we did not make too many, for we worked time about,
+while the General took note of the figures, and our plan was that each
+finished his tale of work at some amazing beast, so that we could make
+no mistake.  Some of the panels were circles, and they were filled in
+with coats-of-arms; some were squares and they contained a bestiary of
+that day.  It was hard indeed to decide whether the circles or the
+squares were more interesting.  The former had the arms of every family
+in Scotland that had the remotest connection with the Carnegies, and
+besides swept in a wider field, comprising David, King of Israel, who
+was placed near Hector of Troy, and Arthur of Brittany not far from
+Moses--all of whom had appropriate crests and mottoes.  In the centre
+were the arms of our Lord Christ as Emperor of Judea, and the chief
+part of them was the Cross.  But it came upon one with a curious shock,
+to see this coat among the shields of Scottish nobles.  There were
+beasts that could be recognised at once, and these were sparingly
+named; but others were astounding, and above them were inscribed titles
+such as these: Shoe-lyon, Musket, Ostray; and one fearsome animal in
+the centre was designated the Ram of Arabia.  This display of heraldry
+and natural history was reinforced by the cardinal virtues in
+seventeenth century dress: Charitas as an elderly female of extremely
+forbidding aspect, receiving two very imperfectly clad children; and
+Temperantia as a furious-looking person--male on the whole rather than
+female--pouring some liquor--surely water--from a jug into a cup, with
+averted face, and leaving little to be desired.  The afternoon sun
+shining in through a western window and lingering among the black and
+white tracery, so that the marking of a shield came into relief or a
+beast suddenly glared down on one, had a weird, old-world effect.
+
+"It's half an armoury and half a menagerie," said Kate, "and I think we
+'ll have tea in the library with the windows open to the Glen."  And so
+they sat together in quietness, with books of heraldry and sport and
+ancient Scottish classics and such like round them, while Janet went
+out and in.
+
+"So Donald has been obliged to leave his kirk;" for Kate had not yet
+forgiven Janet.  "He says it's very bad here; I hope you won't go to
+such a place."
+
+"What would Donald Macdonald be saying against it?" inquired Janet,
+severely.
+
+"Oh, I don't remember--lots of things.  He thought you were making too
+much of the minister."
+
+"The minister iss a good man, and hass some Highland blood in him,
+though he hass lost his Gaelic, and he will be very pleasant in the
+house.  If I wass seeing a sheep, and it will be putting on this side
+and that, and quarrelling with everybody, do you know what I will be
+thinking?"
+
+"That's Donald, I suppose; well?"
+
+"I will say to myself, that sheep iss a goat."  And Janet left the room
+with the laurels of victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONCERNING BESOMS.
+
+It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less
+than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never
+known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house.  When the
+sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from
+the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart,
+and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are
+covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes.  This
+erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their
+sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie.  No man compelled
+to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or
+other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life,
+and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his
+talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged
+for him at the Great Assize.  Small wonder that he comes to regard the
+world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted
+at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit
+dwelling-place all his years.  When a prophet cometh from the Eternal
+to speak unto modern times as Dante did unto the Middle Ages, and
+constructs the other world before our eyes, he will have one circle in
+his hell for the builders of rotten houses, and doubtless it will be a
+collection of their own works, so that their sin will be its
+punishment, as is most fitting and the way of things.
+
+Surely there will also be some corner of heaven kept for the man who,
+having received a charge to build the shell wherein two people were to
+make a home, laid its foundations deep and raised strong walls that
+nothing but gunpowder could rend in pieces, and roofed it over with
+oaken timber and lined it with the same, so that many generations might
+live therein in peace and honour.  Such a house was the Lodge in those
+days, although at last beginning to show signs of decay, and it somehow
+stirred up the heroic spirit of the former time within a man to sit
+before the big fire in the hall, with grim Carnegies looking down from
+the walls and daring you to do any meanness, while the light blazing
+out from a log was flung back from a sword that had been drawn in the
+'15.  One was unconsciously reinforced in the secret place of his
+manhood, and inwardly convinced that what concerneth every man is not
+whether he fail or succeed, but that he do his duty according to the
+light which may have been given him until he die.  It was also a
+regeneration of the soul to awake in a room of the eastern tower, where
+the Carnegies' guests slept, and fling up the window, with its small
+square panes, to fill one's lungs with the snell northern air, and look
+down on the woods glistening in every leaf, and the silver Tochty just
+touched by the full risen sun.  Miracles have been wrought in that
+tower, for it happened once that an Edinburgh advocate came to stay at
+the Lodge, who spake after a quite marvellous fashion, known neither in
+England nor Scotland; and being himself of pure bourgeois blood, the
+fifth son of a factor, felt it necessary to despise his land, from its
+kirk downwards, and had a collection of japes at Scottish ways, which
+in his provincial simplicity he offered to the Carnegies.  It seemed to
+him certain that people of Jacobite blood and many travels would have
+relished his clever talk, for it is not given to a national decadent to
+understand either the people he has deserted or the ancient houses at
+whose door he stands.  Carnegie was the dullest man living in the
+matter of sneering, and Kate took an instant dislike to the mincing
+little man, whom she ever afterwards called the Popinjay, and so
+handled him with her tongue that his superiority was mightily shaken.
+But there was good stuff in the advocate, besides some brains, and
+after a week's living in the Lodge, he forgot to wear his eye-glass,
+and let his r's out of captivity, and attempted to make love to Kate,
+which foolishness that masterful damsel brought to speedy confusion.
+It was also said that when he went back to the Parliament House, every
+one could understand what he said, and that he got two briefs in one
+week, which shows how good it is to live in an ancient house with
+honest people.
+
+"Is there a ghost, dad?"  They were sitting before the fire in the hall
+after dinner--Kate in her favourite posture, leaning forward and
+nursing her knee.  The veterans and I thought that she always looked at
+her best so, with her fine eyes fixed on the fire, and the light
+bringing her face into relief against the shadow.  We saw her feet
+then--one lifted a little from the ground--and V. C. declared they were
+the smallest you could find for a woman of her size.
+
+[Illustration: Kate in her favourite position.]
+
+"She knows it, too," he used to say, "for when a woman has big feet she
+always keeps them tucked in below her gown.  A woman with an eight-size
+glove and feet to correspond is usually a paragon of modesty, and
+strong on women's rights."
+
+"Kate's glove is number six, and I think it's a size too big," broke in
+the Colonel--we were all lying in the sun on a bank below the beeches
+at the time, and the Colonel was understood to be preparing a sermon
+for some meeting--"but it's a strong little hand, and a steady; she
+used to be able to strike a shilling in the air at revolver practice."
+
+"Ghost, lassie.  Oh, in the Lodge, a Carnegie ghost--not one I've ever
+heard of; so you may sleep in peace, and I 'm below if you feel lonely
+the first night."
+
+"You are most insulting; one would think I were a milksop.  I was
+hoping for a ghost--a white lady by choice.  Did no Carnegie murder his
+wife, for instance, through jealousy or quarrelling?"
+
+"The Carnegies have never quarrelled," said the General, with much
+simplicity; "you see the men have generally been away fighting, and the
+women had never time to weary of them."
+
+"No woman ever wearies of a man unless he be a fool and gives in to
+her--then she grows sick of him.  Life might be wholesome, but it would
+have no smack; it would be like meat without mustard.  If a man cannot
+rule, he ought not to marry, for his wife will play the fool in some
+fashion or other like a runaway horse, and he has half the blame.  Why
+did he take the box-seat?" and Kate nodded to the fire.  "What are you
+laughing at?"
+
+"Perhaps I ought to be shocked, but the thought of any one trying to
+rule you, Kit, tickles me immensely.  I have had the reins since you
+were a bairn, and you have been a handful.  You were a 'smatchit' at
+six years old, and a 'trimmie' at twelve, and you are qualifying for
+the highest rank in your class."
+
+"What may that be, pray? it seems to me that the Scottish tongue is a
+perfect treasure-house for impertinent people.  How Scots must
+congratulate themselves that they need never be at a loss when they are
+angry or even simply frank."
+
+"If it comes to downright swearing, you must go to Gaelic," said the
+General, branching off.  "Donald used to be quite contemptuous of any
+slight efforts at profanity in the barrack yard, although they sickened
+me.  'Toots, Colonel; ye do not need to be troubling yourself with such
+poor little words, for they are just nothing at all, and yet the bodies
+will be saying them over and over again like parrots.  Now a Lochaber
+man could hef been saying what he wass wanting for fifteen minutes, and
+nefer hef used the same word twice, unless he had been forgetting his
+Gaelic.  It's a peautiful language, the Gaelic, when you will not be
+fery well pleased with a man.'"
+
+"That is very good, dad, but I think we were speaking in Scotch, and
+you have not told me that nice complimentary title I am living to
+deserve.  Is 'cutty' the disreputable word? for I think I 've passed
+that rank already; it sounds quite familiar."
+
+"No, it's a far more fetching word than 'cutty,' or even than 'randy'
+(scold), which you may have heard."
+
+"I have," replied Kate instantly, "more than once, and especially after
+I had a difference in opinion with Lieutenant Strange.  You called me
+one or two names then, dad---in fact you were quite eloquent; but you
+know that he was a bad fellow, and that the regiment was well rid of
+him; but I 'm older now, and I have not heard my promotion."
+
+"It's the most vigorous word that Scots have for a particular kind of
+woman."
+
+"Describe her," demanded Kate.
+
+"One who has a mind of her own," began the General, carefully, "and a
+way, too, who is not easily cowed or managed, who is not . . ."
+
+"A fool," suggested Kate.
+
+"Who is not conspicuously soft in manner," pursued the General, with
+discretion, "who might even have a temper."
+
+"Not a tame rabbit, in fact.  I understand what you are driving at, and
+I know what a model must feel when she is being painted.  And now
+kindly pluck up courage and name the picture."  And Kate leant back,
+with her hand behind her head, challenging the General--if he dared.
+"Well?"
+
+"Besom."  And he was not at all ashamed, for a Scot never uses this
+word without a ring of fondness and admiration in his voice, as of one
+who gives the world to understand that he quite disapproves of this
+audacious woman, wife or daughter of his, but is proud of her all the
+time.  It is indeed a necessity of his nature for a Scot to have husks
+of reproach containing kernels of compliment, so that he may let out
+his heart and yet preserve his character as an austere person,
+destitute of vanity and sentiment.
+
+"Accept your servant's thanks, my General.  I am highly honoured."  And
+Kate made a sweeping courtesy, whereupon they both laughed merrily; and
+a log blazing up suddenly made an old Carnegie smile who had taken the
+field for Queen Mary, and was the very man to have delighted in a besom.
+
+"When I was here in June"--and the General stretched himself in a deep
+red leather chair--"I stood a while one evening watching a fair-haired,
+blue-eyed little maid who was making a daisy chain and singing to
+herself in a garden.  Her mother came out from the cottage, and, since
+she did not see me, devoured the child with eyes of love.  Then
+something came into her mind--perhaps that the good man would soon be
+home for supper; she rushed forward and seized the child, as if it had
+been caught in some act of mischief.  'Come into the hoose, this
+meenut, ye little beesom, an' say yir carritches.  What's the chief end
+o' man?'"
+
+"Could she have been so accomplished at that age?" Kate inquired, with
+interest.  "Are you sure about the term of endearment?  Was the child
+visibly flattered?"
+
+"She caught my eye as they passed in, and flung me a smile like one
+excusing her mother's fondness.  But Davidson hears better things, for
+as soon as he appears the younger members of a family are taken from
+their porridge and set to their devotions.
+
+"'What are ye glowerin' at there, ye little cutty?  Toom (empty) yir
+mooth this meenut and say the twenty-third Psalm to the minister.'"
+
+"Life seems full of incident, and the women make the play.  What about
+the men?  Are they merely a chorus?"
+
+"A stranger spending a week in one of our farm-houses would be ready to
+give evidence in a court of justice that he had never seen women so
+domineering or men so submissive as in Drumtochty.
+
+"And why?  Because the housewife who sits in church as if butter would
+n't melt in her mouth speaks with much fluency and vigour at home, and
+the man says nothing.  His normal state is doing wrong and being
+scolded from morning till night--for going out without his breakfast,
+for not cleaning his boots when he comes in, for spoiling chairs by
+sitting on them with wet clothes, for spilling his tea on the
+tablecloth, for going away to market with a dusty coat, for visiting
+the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors,
+for saying things he ought n't when he does speak--till the
+long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in
+desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation,
+'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's
+little better than a threshing-mill.'  His confusion, however, is
+neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a
+round of the farm in good heart, once or twice saying 'Sall' in a way
+that shows a lively recollection of his wife's gifts."
+
+"Then the men love to be ruled," began Kate, with some contempt; "it
+does not give me a higher idea of the district."
+
+"Wait a moment, young woman, for all that goes for nothing except to
+show that the men allow the women to be supreme in one sphere."
+
+"In the dairy, I suppose?"
+
+"Perhaps; and a very pleasant kingdom, too, as I remember it, when a
+hot, thirsty, tired laddie, who had been fishing or ferreting, was
+taken into the cool, moist, darkened place, and saw a dish of milk
+creamed for his benefit by some sonsy housewife.  Sandie and I used to
+think her omnipotent, and heard her put the gude man through his
+facings with awe, but by-and-by we noticed that her power had limits.
+When the matter had to do with anything serious, sowing or reaping or
+kirk or market, his word was law.
+
+"He said little, but it was final, and she never contradicted; it was
+rare to hear a man call his wife by name; it was usually 'gude wife,'
+and she always referred to him as the 'maister.'  And without any
+exception, these silent, reserved men were 'maister;' they had a look
+of authority."
+
+"They gave way in trifles, to rule in a crisis, which is just my idea
+of masculine government," expatiated Kate.  "A woman likes to say what
+she pleases and have her will in little things; she has her way, and if
+a man corrects her because she is inaccurate, and nags at her when she
+does anything he does not approve, then he is very foolish and very
+trying, and if she is not quite a saint, she will make him suffer.
+
+"Do you remember Dr. Pettigrew, that prim little effigy of a man, and
+his delightful Irish wife, and how conversation used to run when he was
+within hearing?"
+
+"Glad to have a tasting, Kit," and the General lay back in expectation.
+
+"'Oi remember him, as foine an upstanding young officer as ye would
+wish to see, six feet in his boots.'
+
+"'About five feet ten, I believe, was his exact height, my dear.'
+
+"'Maybe he was n't full grown then, but he was a good-looking man, and
+as pretty a rider as ever sat on a horse.  Well, he was a Warwickshire
+man . . .'
+
+"'Bucks, he said himself.'
+
+"'He was maybe born in both counties for all you know.'
+
+"'Alethea,' with a cough and reproving look.
+
+"'At any rate Oi saw him riding in a steeplechase in the spring of '67,
+at Aldershot.'
+
+"'It must, I think, have been '66.  We were at Gibraltar in '67.
+Please be accurate.'
+
+"'Bother your accuracy, for ye are driving the pigs through my story.
+Well, Oi was telling ye about the steeplechase Jimmy Brook rode.  It
+was a mile, and he had led for half, and so he was just four hundred
+yards from the post.'
+
+"'A half would be eight hundred and eighty yards.'
+
+"'Oi wish from my heart that geography, arithmetic, memory, and
+accuracy, and every other work of Satan were drowned with Moses in the
+Red Sea.  Go, for any sake, and bring me a glass of irritated water.'"
+
+"Capital," cried the General.  "I heard that myself, or something like
+it.  Pettigrew was a tiresome wretch, but he was devoted to his wife in
+his own way."
+
+"Which was enough to make a woman throw things at him, as very likely
+Alethea did when they were alone.  What a fool he was to bother about
+facts; the charm of Lithy was that she had none--dates and such like
+would have made her quite uninteresting.  The only dates I can quote
+myself are the Rebellion and the Mutiny, and I 'll add the year we came
+home.  I don't like datey women; but then it's rather cheap for one to
+say that who does n't know anything," and Kate sighed very becomingly
+at the contemplation of her ignorance.
+
+"Except French, which she speaks like a Parisian," murmured the General.
+
+"That's a fluke, because I was educated at the Scotch convent with
+these dear old absurd nuns who were Gordons, and Camerons, and
+Macdonalds, and did n't know a word of English."
+
+"Who can manage her horse like a rough-rider," continued the General,
+counting on his finger, "and dance like a Frenchwoman, and play whist
+like a half-pay officer, and--"
+
+"That's not education; those are simply the accomplishments of a besom.
+You know, dad, I 've never read a word of Darwin, and I got tired of
+George Eliot and went back to Scott."
+
+"I 've no education myself," said the General, ruefully, "except the
+Latin the old dominie thrashed into me; and some French which all our
+set in Scotland used to have, and . . . I can hold my own with the
+broadsword.  When I think of all those young officers know, I wonder we
+old chaps were fit for anything."
+
+"Well, you see, dad," and Kate began to count also, "you were made of
+steel wire, and were never ill; you could march for a day and rather
+enjoy a fight in the evening; you would go anywhere, and the men
+followed just eighteen inches behind; you always knew what the enemy
+was going to do before he did it, and you always did what he did n't
+expect you to do.  That's not half the list of your accomplishments,
+but they make a good beginning for a fighting man."
+
+"It will be all mathematics in the future, Kit, and there will be no
+fighting at close quarters.  The officers will wear gloves and
+spectacles--but where are we now, grumbling as if we were sitting in a
+club window?  Besides, these young fellows can fight as well as pass
+exams.  You were saying that it was a shame of a man to complain of his
+wife flirting," and the General studied the ceiling.
+
+"You know that I never said anything of the kind; some women are flirty
+in a nice way, just as some are booky, and some are dressy, and some
+are witty, and some are horsey; and I think a woman should be herself.
+I should say the right kind of man would be proud of his wife's strong
+point, and give her liberty."
+
+"He is to have none, I suppose, but just be a foil to throw her into
+relief.  Is he to be allowed any opinions of his own? . . .  It looks
+hard, that cushion, Kit, and I 'm an old broken-down man."
+
+"You deserve leather, for you know what I think about a man's position
+quite well.  If he allow himself to be governed by his wife in serious
+matters, he is not worth calling a man."
+
+"Like poor Major Macintosh."
+
+"Exactly.  What an abject he was before that woman, who was simply--"
+
+"Not a besom, Kate," interrupted the General, anxiously--afraid that a
+classical word was to be misused.
+
+"Certainly not, for a besom must be nice, and at bottom a lady--in
+fact, a woman of decided character."
+
+"Quite so.  You 've hit the bull's-eye, Kit, and paid a neat compliment
+to yourself.  Have you a word for Mrs. Macintosh?"
+
+"A vulgar termagant"--the General indicated that would do--"who would
+call her husband an idiot aloud before a dinner-table, and quarrel like
+a fishwife with people in his presence.
+
+"Why, he daren't call his soul his own; he belonged to the kirk, you
+know, and there was a Scotch padre, but she marched him off to our
+service, and if you had seen him trying to find the places in the
+Prayer-book.  If a man has n't courage enough to stand by his faith, he
+might as well go and hang himself.  Don't you think the first thing is
+to stick by your religion, and the next by your country, though it cost
+one his life?"
+
+"That's it, lassie; every gentleman does."
+
+"She was a disgusting woman," continued Kate, "and jingling with money:
+I never saw so many precious stones wasted on one woman; they always
+reminded me of a jewel in a swine's snout."
+
+"Kate!" remonstrated her father, "that's . . ."
+
+"Rather coarse, but it's her blame; and to hear Mrs. Macintosh
+calculating what each officer had--I told her we would live in a Lodge
+at home and raise our own food.  My opinion is that her father was a
+publican, and I 'm sure she had once been a Methodist."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she was so Churchy, always talking about celebrations and
+vigils, and explaining that it was a sin to listen to a Dissenting
+chaplain."
+
+"Then, Kate, if your man--as they say here--tried to make you hold his
+views?"
+
+"I wouldn't, and I'd hate him."
+
+"And if he accepted yours?"
+
+"I 'd despise him," replied Kate, promptly.
+
+"You are a perfect contradiction."
+
+"You mean I 'm a woman, and a besom, and therefore I don't pretend to
+be consistent or logical, or even fair, but I am right."
+
+Then they went up the west tower to the General's room, and looked out
+on the woods and the river, and on a field of ripe corn upon the height
+across the river, flooded with the moonlight.
+
+"Home at last, lassie, you and I, and another not far off, maybe."
+
+Kate kissed her father, and said, "One in love, dad . . . and faith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A PLEASAUNCE.
+
+The General read Morning Prayers in brief, omitting the Psalms and
+lessons, and then after breakfast, with much gossip and ancient stories
+from Donald, the father and daughter went out to survey their domain,
+and though there be many larger, yet there can be few more romantic in
+the north.  That Carnegie had a fine eye and a sense of things who, out
+of all the Glen--for the Hays had little in Drumtochty in those
+days--fastened on the site of the Lodge and planted three miles of
+wood, birch and oak, and beech and ash, with the rowan tree, along the
+river that goes out and in seven times in that distance, so that his
+descendants might have a fastness for their habitation and their
+children might grow up in kindly woods on which the south sun beats
+from early spring till late autumn, and within the sight and sound of
+clean, running water.  No wonder they loved their lonely home with
+tenacious hearts, and left it only because it was in their blood to be
+fighting.  They had been out at Langside and Philiphaugh, in the '15
+and the '45, and always on the losing side.  The Lodge had never been
+long without a young widow and a fatherless lad, but family history had
+no warning for him--in fact, seemed rather to be an inspiration in the
+old way--for no sooner had the young laird loved and married than he
+would hear of another rebellion, and ride off some morning to fight for
+that ill-fated dynasty whose love was ever another name for death.
+There was always a Carnegie ready as soon as the white cockade appeared
+anywhere in Scotland, and each of the house fought like the men before
+him, save that he brought fewer at his back and had less in his pocket.
+Little was left to the General and our Kate, and then came the great
+catastrophe that lost them the Lodge, and so the race has now neither
+name nor house in Scotland, save in the vault in Drumtochty Kirk.  It
+is a question whether one is wise to revisit any place where he has
+often been in happier times and see it desolate.  For me, at least, it
+was a mistake, and the melancholy is still upon me.  The deserted house
+falling at last to pieces, the over-grown garden, the crumbling paths,
+the gaping bridges over the little burns, and the loneliness, chilled
+one's soul.  There was no money to spare in the General's time, but it
+is wonderful what one gardener, who has no hours, and works for love's
+sake, can do, even in a place that needed half a dozen.  Then he was
+assisted unofficially by Donald, who declared that working in the woods
+was "fery healthy and good for one or two small cuts I happened to get
+in India," and Kate gave herself to the garden.  The path by the river
+was kept in repair, and one never knew when Kate might appear round the
+corner.  Once I had come down from the cottage on a fine February day
+to see the snowdrops in the sheltered nooks, for there were little
+dells white as snow at that season in Tochty woods, and Kate, hearing
+that I had passed, came of her kindness to take me back to luncheon.
+She had on a jacket of sealskin that we greatly admired, and a felt hat
+with three grouse feathers on the side, and round her throat a red
+satin scarf.  The sun was shining on the bend of the path, and she came
+into the light singing "Jack o' Hazeldean," walking, as Kate ever did
+in song, with a swinging step like soldiers on a march.  It seemed to
+me that day that she was born to be the wife either of a noble or a
+soldier, and I still wish at times within my heart she were Countess of
+Kilspindie, for then the Lodge had been a fair sight to-day, and her
+father had died in his own room.  And other times I have imagined
+myself Kilspindie, who was then Lord Hay, and questioned whether I
+should have ordered Tochty to be dismantled and left a waste as it is
+this day, and would have gone away to the wars, or would not have loved
+to keep it in order for her sake, and visited it in the springtime when
+the primroses are out, and the autumn when the leaves are blood-red.
+Then I declare that Hay, being of a brave stock, and having acted as a
+man of honour--for that is known to all now--ought to have put a good
+face on his disappointment; but all the time I know one man who would
+have followed Lord Hay's suit, and who regrets that he ever again saw
+Tochty Lodge.
+
+[Illustration: One gardener who . . . works for love's sake.]
+
+"First of all," said the General as they sallied forth, "we shall go to
+the Beeches, and see a view for which one might travel many days, and
+pay a ransom."
+
+So they went out into the court with its draw-well, from which they
+must needs have a draught.  Suddenly the General laid down the cup like
+a man in sudden pain, for he was thinking of Cawnpore, and they passed
+quickly through the gateway and turned into a path that wound among
+great trees that had been planted, it was said, by the Carnegie who
+rode with Montrose.  They were walking on a plateau stretching out
+beyond the line of the Lodge, and therefore commanding the Glen, if one
+had eyes to see and the trees were not in the way.  Kate laid her hand
+on the General's arm beneath an ancient beech, and they stood in
+silence to receive the blessing of the place, for surely never is the
+soul so open to the voice of nature as by the side of running water and
+in the heart of a wood.  The fretted sunlight made shifting figures of
+brightness on the ground; above the innumerable leaves rustled and
+whispered; a squirrel darted along a branch and watched the intruders
+with bright, curious eyes; the rooks cawed from the distance; the
+pigeons cooed in sweet, sad cadence close at hand.  They sat down on
+the bare roots at their feet and yielded themselves to the genius of
+the forest--the god who will receive the heart torn and distracted by
+the fierce haste and unfinished labours and vain ambitions of life, and
+will lay its fever to rest and encompass it with the quietness of
+eternity.
+
+"Father," whispered Kate, after a while, as one wishing to share
+confidences, for there must be something to tell, "where are you?"
+
+"You wish to know?  Well, all day I 've been fishing down the stream,
+and am coming home, very tired, very dirty, very happy, and I meet my
+mother just outside those trees.  I am boasting of the fish that I have
+caught, none of which, I 'm sure, can be less than half a pound.  She
+is rating me for my appearance and beseeching me to keep at a distance.
+Then I go home and down into the vaulted kitchen, where Janet's mother
+gives me joyous welcome, and produces dainties saved from dinner for my
+eating.  The trouts are now at biggest only a quarter of a pound, for
+they have to be cooked as a final course, but those that were hooked
+and escaped are each a pound, except one in the hole below Lynedoch
+Bridge, which was two pounds to an ounce.  Afterwards I make a brave
+attempt to rehearse the day in the gunroom to Sandie, who first taught
+me to cast a line, and fall fast asleep, and, being shaken up, sneak
+off to bed, creeping slowly up the stair, where the light is falling,
+to the little room above yours, where, as I am falling over, I seem to
+hear my mother's voice as in this sighing of the wind.  Ah me, what a
+day it was!  And you, Kit?"
+
+"Oh, I was back in the convent with my nuns, and Sister Flora was
+trying to teach me English grammar in good French, and I was correcting
+her in bad French, and she begins to laugh because it is all so droll.
+'I am Scotch, and I teach you English all wrong, and you tell me what I
+ought to say in French which is all wrong; let us go into the garden,'
+for she was a perfect love, and always covered my faults.  I am sitting
+in the arbour, and the Sister brings a pear that has fallen.  'I do not
+think it is wicked,' she says, and I say it is simply a duty to eat up
+fallen pears, and we laugh again.  As we sit, they are singing in the
+chapel, and I hear 'Ave Maria, ora pro nobis.'  Then I think of you,
+and the tears will come to my eyes, and I try to hide my face, but the
+Sister understands and comforts me.  'Your father is a gallant
+gentleman, and the good God pities you, and will keep him in danger,'
+and I fondle the Sister, and wonder whether any more pears have fallen.
+How peaceful it is within that high wall, which is rough and forbidding
+outside, but inside it is hung with greenery, and among the leaves I
+see pears and peaches.  But I missed you, dad," and Kate touched her
+father, for they had a habit of just touching each other gently when
+together.
+
+"Do you really think we have been in India, and that you have a dozen
+medals, and I am . . . an old maid?"
+
+"Certainly not, Kit, a mere invention--we are boy and girl, and . . .
+we 'll go on to the view."
+
+Suddenly they came out from the shade into a narrow lane of light,
+where some one of the former time, with an eye and a soul, had cleared
+a passage among the trees, so that one standing at the inner end and
+looking outwards could see the whole Glen, while the outstretched
+branches of the beeches shaded his eyes.  Morning in the summer-time
+about five o'clock was a favourable hour, because one might see the
+last mists lift, and the sun light up the face of Ben Urtach, and
+evening-tide was better, because the Glen showed wonderfully tender in
+the soft light, and the Grampians were covered with glory.  But it was
+best to take your first view towards noon, for then you could trace the
+Tochty upwards as it appeared and reappeared, till it was lost in woods
+at the foot of Glen Urtach, with every spot of interest on either side.
+Below the kirk it ran broad and shallow, with a bank of brushwood on
+one side and a meadow on the other, fringed with low bushes from behind
+which it was possible to drop a fly with some prospects of success,
+while in quite unprotected situations the Drumtochty fish laughed at
+the tempter, and departed with contemptuous whisks of the tail.  Above
+the haughs was a little mill, where flax was once spun and its lade
+still remained, running between the Tochty and the steep banks down
+which the glen descended to the river.  Opposite this mill the Tochty
+ran with strength, escaping from the narrows of the bridge, and there
+it was that Weelum MacLure drove across Sir George in safety, because
+the bridge was not for use that day.  Whether that bridge was really
+built by Marshall Wade in his great work of pacifying the Highlands is
+very far from certain, but Drumtochty did not relish any trifling with
+its traditions, and had a wonderful pride in its solitary bridge, as
+well it might, since from the Beeches nothing could well be more
+picturesque.  Its plan came nearly to an inverted V, and the apex was
+just long enough to allow the horses to rest after the ascent, before
+they precipitated themselves down the other side.  During that time the
+driver leant on the ledge, and let his eye run down the river, taking
+in the Parish Kirk above and settling on the Lodge, just able to be
+seen among the trees where the Tochty below turned round the bend.
+What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you
+might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis.  The bridge
+stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising,
+unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch
+and abrupt descents.  One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see
+the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up,
+before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up
+the stream.  Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the
+Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the
+veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a
+little child.  And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver,
+and at last is seen no more from the beeches.  From the Tochty the eye
+makes its raids on north and south.  The dark, massy pine-woods on the
+left side of the glen are broken at intervals by fields as they
+threaten to come down upon the river, and their shelter lends an air of
+comfort and warmth to the glen.  On the right the sloping land is
+tilled from the bank above the river up to the edge of the moor that
+swells in green and purple to the foot of the northern rampart of
+mountains, but on this side also the glen here and there breaks into
+belts of fir, which fling their kindly arms round the scattered
+farm-houses, and break up the monotony of green and gold with squares
+of dark green foliage and the brown of the tall, bare trunks.  Between
+the meandering stream and the cultivated land and the woods and the
+heather and the distant hills, there was such a variety as cannot be
+often gathered into the compass of one landscape.
+
+[Illustration: Among the great trees.]
+
+"And all our own," cried Kate in exultation; "let us congratulate
+ourselves."
+
+"I only wish it were, lassie.  Why, did n't you understand we have only
+these woods and a few acres of ploughed land now?"
+
+"You stupid old dad; I begin to believe that you have had no education.
+Of course the Hays have got the land, but we have the view and the joy
+of it.  This is the only place where one can say to a stranger, 'Behold
+Drumtochty,' and he will see it at a flash and at its best."
+
+"You 're brighter than your father, Kit, and a contented lassie to
+boot, and for that word I'll take you straight to the Pleasaunce."
+
+"What a charming name; it suggests a fairy world, with all sorts of
+beautiful things and people."
+
+"Quite right, Kit"--leading the way down to a hollow, surrounded by
+wood and facing the sun, the General opened a door in an ivy-covered
+wall--"for there is just one Pleasaunce on the earth, and that is a
+garden."
+
+It had been a risk to raise certain people's expectations and then
+bring them into Tochty garden, for they can be satisfied with no place
+that has not a clean-shaven lawn and beds of unvarying circles,
+pyrethrum, calceolaria, and geranium, and brakes of rare roses, and
+glass-houses with orchids worth fifty pound each, which is a garden in
+high life, full of luxury, extravagance, weariness.  As Kate entered, a
+moss rose which wandered at its will caught her skirt, and the General
+cut a blossom which she fastened in her breast, and surely there is no
+flower so winsome and fragrant as this homely rose.
+
+"Like yourself, Miss Carnegie," and the General rallied his simple wit
+for the occasion, "very sweet and true, with a thorn, too, if one
+gripped it the wrong way."
+
+Whereat he made believe to run, and had the better speed because there
+were no gravel walks with boxwood borders here, but alleys of old turf
+that were pleasant both to the touch and the eye.  In the centre where
+all the ways met he capitulated with honours of war, and explained that
+he had intended to compare Kate to a violet, which was her natural
+emblem, but had succumbed to the temptation of her eyes, "which make
+men wicked, Kit, with the gleam that is in them."
+
+"Is n't it a tangle?"  Which it was, and no one could look upon it
+without keen delight, unless he were a horticultural pedant in whom the
+appreciation of nature had been killed by parterres.  There was some
+principle of order, and even now, when the Pleasaunce is a wilderness,
+the traces can be found.  A dwarf fruit tree stood at every corner, and
+between the trees a three-foot border of flowers kept the peas and
+potatoes in their places.  But the borders were one sustained,
+elaborate, glorified disorder.  There were roses of all kinds that have
+ever gladdened poor gardens and simple hearts--yellow tea roses, moss
+roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all
+the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country
+people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple
+blossom.  Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one
+another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in
+the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and
+primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white,
+forget-me-nots and pansies, pinks and carnations, marigolds and phloxes
+of many varieties.  The confusion of colours was preposterous, and
+showed an utter want of aesthetic sense.  In fact, one may confess that
+the Lodge garden was only one degree removed from the vulgarity and
+prodigality of nature.  There was no taste, no reserve, no harmony
+about that garden.  Nature simply ran riot and played according to her
+will like a child of the former days, bursting into apple blossom and
+laburnum gold and the bloom of peas and the white strawberry flower in
+early summer, and then, later in the year, weaving garlands of blazing
+red, yellow, white, purple, round beds of stolid roots and brakes of
+currant bushes.  There was a copper beech, where the birds sang, and
+from which they raided the fruit with the skill of Highland caterans.
+The Lodge bees lived all day in this garden, save when they went to
+reinforce their sweetness from the heather bloom.  The big trees stood
+round the place and covered it from every wind except the south, and
+the sun was ever blessing it.  There was one summer-house, a mass of
+honeysuckle, and there they sat down as those that had come back to
+Eden from a wander year.
+
+"Well, Kit?"
+
+"Thank God for our Pleasaunce."  And they would have stayed for hours,
+but there was one other spot that had a fascination for the General
+neither years nor wars had dulled, and he, who was the most
+matter-of-fact and romantic of men, must see and show it to his
+daughter before they ceased.
+
+"A mile and more, Kit, but through the woods and by the water all the
+way."
+
+Sometimes they went down a little ravine made by a small burn fighting
+and wearing its way for ages to the Tochty, and stood on a bridge of
+two planks and a handrail thrown over a tiny pool, where the water was
+resting on a bed of small pebbles.  The oak copse covered the sides of
+the tiny glen and met across the streamlet, and one below could see
+nothing but greenery and the glint of the waterfall where the burn
+broke into the bosky den from the bare heights above.  Other times the
+path, that allowed two to walk abreast if they wished very much and
+kept close together, would skirt the face of the high river bank, and
+if you peeped down through the foliage of the clinging trees you could
+see the Tochty running swiftly, and the overhanging branches dipping in
+their leaves.  Then the river would make a sweep and forsake its bank,
+leaving a peninsula of alluvial land between, where the geranium and
+the hyacinth and the iris grew in deep, moist soil.  One of these was
+almost clear of wood and carpeted with thick, soft turf, and the river
+beside it was broad and shining.
+
+"We shall go down here," said the General, "and I will show you
+something that I count the finest monument in Perthshire, or maybe in
+broad Scotland."
+
+In the centre of the sward, with trees just touching it with the tips
+of their branches, was a little square, with a simple weather-beaten
+railing.  And the General led Kate to the spot, and stood for a while
+in silence.
+
+"Two young Scottish lassies, Kate, who died two hundred years ago, and
+were buried here, and this is the ballad--
+
+  "'Bessie Bell and Mary Grey
+  They were twa bonnie lassies,
+  They biggit a hoose on yonder brae
+  And theikit it ower wi' rashes.'"
+
+
+Then the General and Kate sat down by the river edge, and he told her
+the deathless story,--how in the plague of 1666 they fled to this
+district to escape infection; how a lover came to visit one of them and
+brought death in his kiss; how they sickened and died; how they were
+laid to rest beside the Tochty water; and generations have made their
+pilgrimage to the place, so wonderful and beautiful is love.  They
+loved, and their memory is immortal.
+
+Kate rested her chin on her hand and gazed at the running water, which
+continued while men and women live and love and die.
+
+"He ought not to have come; it was a cowardly, selfish act, but I
+suppose," added the General, "he could not keep away."
+
+"Be sure she thought none the less of him for his coming, and I think a
+woman will count life itself a small sacrifice for love," and Kate went
+over to the grave.
+
+A thrush was singing as they turned to go, and nothing was said on the
+way home till they came near the Lodge.
+
+"Who can that be going in, Kate?  He seems a padre."
+
+"I do not know, unless it be our fellow traveller from Muirtown; but he
+has been redressing himself, and is not improved.
+
+"Father," and Kate stayed the General, as they crossed the threshold of
+their home, "we have seen many beautiful things to-day, for which I
+thank you; but the greatest was love."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION.
+
+Carmichael's aunt, who equipped his house, was determined on one point,
+and would not hear of a clerical housekeeper for her laddie.  Margaret
+Meiklewham--a woman of a severe countenance, and filled with the spirit
+of the Disruption--who had governed the minister of Pitscowrie till his
+decease, and had been the terror of callow young probationers, offered
+herself, and gave instances of her capability.
+
+"Gin ye leave yir nephew in my hands, ye needna hae ony mair concern.
+A 'll manage him fine, an' hand him on the richt road.  Ye may lippen
+tae 't, a' wesna five and thirty year wi' Maister MacWheep for naethin'.
+
+"He wes a wee fractious and self-willed at the off-go, an' wud be
+wantin' this an' that for his denner, but he sune learned tae tak' what
+wes pit afore him; an' as for gaein' oot withoot tellin' me, he wud as
+sune hae thocht o' fleein'; when he cam' in he keepit naethin' back at
+his tea.
+
+"Preachin' wes kittle wark in Pitscoorie, for the fouk were awfu'
+creetics, though they didna maybe think sae muckle o' themselves as
+Drumtochty.  A' aye githered their jidgment through the week, an' gin
+he hed made a slip meddling wi' warks or sic-like in his sermon, it wes
+pit richt next Sabbath, and sovereignty whuppit in at the feenish.
+
+"Ye ken the Auld Kirk hes tae be watchit like a cat wi' a moose, an'
+though a' say it as sudna, Maister MacWheep wud hae made a puir job o'
+the business himsel'.  The pairish meenister wes terrible plausible,
+an' askit oor man tae denner afore he wes settled in his poopit, an' he
+wes that simple, he wud hae gaen," and Margaret indicated by an
+uplifting of her eyebrows the pitiable innocence of MacWheep.
+
+"Ye guidit him, nae doot?" inquired Carmichael's aunt, with interest.
+
+"'Maister MacWheep,' says I," and Miss Meiklewham's lips were very
+firm, "'a 'll no deny that the Auld Kirk is Christian, an' a've never
+said that a Moderate cudna be savit, but the less trokin' (trafficking)
+ye hae wi' them the better.  There 's maybe naethin' wrang wi' a
+denner, but the next thing 'll be an exchange o' poopits, and the day
+ye dae that ye may close the Free Kirk.'
+
+"And the weemen"--here the housekeeper paused as one still lost in
+amazement at the audacity with which they had waylaid the helpless
+MacWheep--"there wes ae madam in Muirtown that hed the face tae invite
+hersel' oot tae tea wi' three dochters, an' the way they wud flatter
+him on his sermons wes shamefu'.
+
+"If they didna begin askin' him tae stay wi' them on Presbytery days,
+and Mrs. MacOmish hed the face tae peety him wi' naebody but a
+hoosekeeper.  He lat oot tae me though that the potatoes were as hard
+as a stone at denner, an' that he hed juist ae blanket on his bed,
+which wesna great management for four weemen."
+
+As Carmichael's aunt seemed to be more and more impressed, Margaret
+moistened her lips and rose higher.
+
+"So the next time ma lady comes oot tae see the spring flowers," she
+said, "a' explained that the minister wes sae delicate that a' didna
+coont it richt for him tae change his bed, and a' thocht it wud be mair
+comfortable for him tae come hame on the Presbytery nichts, an' safer.
+
+"What said she?  No a word," and Miss Meiklewham recalled the ancient
+victory with relish.  "She lookit at me, and a' lookit at her, an'
+naething passed; but that wes the laist time a' saw her at the manse.
+A 've hed experience, and a 'm no feared tae tak' chairge o' yir
+nephew."
+
+Carmichael's aunt was very deferential, complimenting the eminent woman
+on her gifts and achievements, and indicating that it would be hard for
+a young Free Kirk minister to obtain a better guardian; but she had
+already made arrangements with a woman from the south, and could not
+change.
+
+Drumtochty was amazed at her self-will, and declared by the mouth of
+Kirsty Stewart that Carmichael's aunt had flown in the face of
+Providence.  Below her gentle simplicity she was however a shrewd
+woman, and was quite determined that her nephew should not be handed
+over to the tender mercies of a clerical housekeeper, who is said to be
+a heavier yoke than the Confession of Faith, for there be clever ways
+of escape from confessions, but none from Margaret Meiklewham; and
+while all the churches are busy every year in explaining that their
+Articles do not mean what they say, Miss Meiklewham had a snort which
+was beyond all she said, and that was not by any means restricted.
+
+"John," said Carmichael's aunt, one day after they had been buying
+carpets, "I 've got a housekeeper for you that will keep you
+comfortable and can hold her tongue," but neither then nor afterwards,
+neither to her nephew nor to Drumtochty, did Carmichael's aunt tell
+where she secured Sarah.
+
+"That's my secret, John," she used to say, with much roguishness, "an'
+ye maun confess that there 's ae thing ye dinna ken.  Ye 'll hae the
+best-kept manse in the Presbytery, an' ye 'll hae nae concern, sae be
+content."
+
+Which he was, and asked no questions, so that he knew no more of Sarah
+the day she left than the night she arrived; and now he sometimes
+speculates about her history, but he has no clue.
+
+She was an event in the life of the parish, and there are those who
+speak of her unto this day with exasperation.  The new housekeeper was
+a subject of legitimate though ostentatiously veiled curiosity, and it
+was expected that a full biography by Elspeth Macfadyen would be at the
+disposal of the kirkyard, as well as the Free Kirk gate, within ten
+days of her arrival; it might even be on the following Sabbath,
+although it was felt that this was asking too much of Elspeth.
+
+It was on the Friday evening Mrs. Macfadyen called, with gifts of
+butter and cream for the minister, and was received with grave, silent
+courtesy.  While they played with the weather, the visitor made a swift
+examination, and she gave the results on Sabbath for what they were
+worth.
+
+"A tall, black wumman, spare an' erect, no ill-faured nor ill-made; na,
+na, a 'll alloo that; a trig, handy cummer, wi' an eye like a hawk an'
+a voice like pussy; nane o' yir gossipin', haverin', stravaigin' kind.
+He 'll be clever 'at gets onything out o' her or maks much o' a bargain
+wi' her.
+
+"Sall, she 's a madam an' nae mistak'.  If that waefu', cunnin',
+tramping wratch Clockie didna come tae the door, where I was sittin',
+an' askit for the new minister.  Ye ken he used tae come an' hear
+Maister Cunningham on the principles o' the Disruption for an 'oor,
+givin' oot that he wes comin' roond tae the Free Kirk view; then he got
+his denner an' a suit o' claithes."
+
+"A' mind o' Clockie gettin' five shillin's ae day," remarked Jamie
+Soutar, who was at the Free Kirk that morning; "he hed started Dr.
+Chalmers wi' the minister; Dr. Guthrie he coontit to be worth aboot
+half-a-croon; but he aince hed three shillin's oot o' the Cardross
+case.  He wes graund on the doctrine o' speeritual independence, and
+terrible drouthy; but a 'm interruptin' ye, Elspeth."
+
+"'The minister is at dinner,' says she, 'and can't be disturbed; he
+sees no one at the door.'
+
+"'It's reeligion a 'm come aboot,' says Clockie, stickin' in his foot
+tae keep the door open, 'an' a'll juist wait at the fire.'
+
+"'It's more likely to be whisky from your breath, and you will find a
+public-house in the village; we give nothing to vagrants here.'  Then
+she closed the door on his foot, and the language he used in the yard
+wesna connectit wi' reeligion."
+
+Drumtochty admitted that this showed a woman of vigour--although our
+conventions did not allow us to treat Clockie or any known wastrel so
+masterfully--and there was an evident anxiety to hear more.
+
+"Her dress wes black an' fittit like a glove, an' wes set aff wi' a
+collar an' cuffs, an' a' saw she hedna come frae the country, so that
+wes ae thing settled; yon 's either a toon dress or maybe her ain
+makin' frae patterns.
+
+"It micht be Edinburgh or Glesgie, but a' began tae jalouse England
+aifter hearin' her hannel Clockie, sae a' watchit fur a word tae try
+her tongue."
+
+"Wurk is a gude handy test," suggested Jamie; "the English hae barely
+ae r, and the Scotch hae aboot sax in 't."
+
+"She wudna say 't, Jamie, though a' gied her a chance, speakin' aboot
+ae wumman daein' a'thing in the manse, sae a' fell back on church, an'
+that brocht oot the truth.  She didna say 'chich,' so she 's no English
+born, and she didna say 'churrrch,' so she 's been oot o' Scotland.  It
+wes half and between, and so a' said it wud be pleasant for her tae be
+in her ain country again, aifter livin' in the sooth."
+
+Her hearers indicated that Elspeth had not fallen beneath herself, and
+began to wonder how a woman who had lived in London would fit into
+Drumtochty.
+
+"What div ye think she said tae me?"  Then Drumtochty understood that
+there had been an incident, and that Elspeth as a conversationalist, if
+not as a raconteur, had found her equal.
+
+"'You are very kind to think of my movements, but'"--and here Mrs.
+Macfadyen spoke very slowly--"'I'm afraid they don't teach home
+geography at your school.  Paisley is not out of Scotland.'"
+
+"Ye've met yir match, Elspeth," said Jamie, with a hoarse chuckle, and
+the situation was apparent to all.  It was evident that the new
+housekeeper was minded to hide her past, and the choice of her last
+residence was a stroke of diabolical genius.  Paisley is an ancient
+town inhabited by a virtuous and industrious people, who used to make
+shawls and now spin thread, and the atmosphere is so literary that it
+is believed every tenth man is a poet.  Yet people do not boast of
+having been born there, and natives will pretend they came from
+Greenock.  No one can mention Paisley without a smile, and yet no one
+can say what amused him.  Certain names are the source of perennial
+laughter, in which their inhabitants join doubtfully, as persons not
+sure whether to be proud or angry.  They generally end in an apology,
+while the public, grasping vaguely at the purpose of such a place,
+settle on it every good tale that is going about the world unprovided
+for and fatherless.  So a name comes to be bathed in the ridiculous,
+and a mere reference to it passes for a stroke of supreme felicity.
+
+"Paisley"--Jamie again tasted the idea--"she 'll be an acqueesition tae
+the Glen."
+
+It was Sarah's first stroke of character to arrive without
+notice--having utterly baffled Peter at the Junction--and to be in
+complete possession of the manse on the return of Carmichael and his
+aunt from pastoral visits.
+
+"Sarah," cried the old lady in amazement at the sight of the
+housekeeper in full uniform, calm and self-possessed, as one having
+been years in this place, "when did ye come?"
+
+"Two hours ago, m'am, and I think I understand the house.  Shall I
+bring tea into the dining-room, or would you rather have it in the
+study?"  But she did not once glance past his aunt to Carmichael, who
+was gazing in silence at this composed young woman in the doorway.
+
+"This is Sarah, John, who hes come to keep yir house," and his aunt
+stepped back.  "Sarah, this is my dear laddie, the minister."
+
+Perhaps because her eyes were of a flashing black that pierced one like
+a steel blade, Sarah usually looked down in speaking to you, but now
+she gave Carmichael one swift, comprehensive look that judged him soul
+and body, then her eyes fell, and her face, always too hard and keen,
+softened.
+
+"I will try, sir, to make you comfortable, and you will tell me
+anything that is wrong."
+
+"You took us by surprise, Sarah," and Carmichael, after his hearty
+fashion, seized his housekeeper's hand; "let me bid you welcome to the
+manse.  I hope you will be happy here, and not feel lonely."
+
+But the housekeeper only bowed, and turned to his aunt.
+
+"Dinner at six?  As you were not in, and it did not seem any use
+consulting the woman that was here, I am preparing for that hour."
+
+"Well, ye see, Sarah, we have just been taking tea, with something to
+it, but if--"
+
+"Gentlemen prefer evening dinner, ma'am."
+
+"Quite right, Sarah," burst in Carmichael in great glee; "tea-dinner is
+the most loathsome meal ever invented, and we 'll never have it in the
+Free Manse.
+
+"That is an admirable woman, auntie," as Sarah disappeared, "with sound
+views on important subjects.  I 'll never ask again where she came
+from; she is her own testimonial."
+
+"You mauna be extravagant, John; Sarah hes never seen a manse before,
+and I must tell her not to--"
+
+"Ruin me, do you mean, by ten courses every evening, like the dinners
+West-end philanthropists used to give our men to show them how to
+behave at table?  We 'll be very economical, only having meat twice a
+week--salt fish the other days--but it will always be dinner."
+
+"What ails you at tea-dinner, John? it's very tasty and homely."
+
+"It's wicked, auntie, and has done more injury to religion than
+drinking.  No, I'm not joking--that is a childish habit--but giving
+utterance to profound truth, which ought to be proclaimed on the
+house-tops, or perhaps in the kitchens.
+
+"Let me explain, and I 'll make it as plain as day--all heresy is just
+bad thinking, and that comes from bad health, and the foundation of
+health is food.  A certain number of tea-dinners would make a man into
+a Plymouth brother.  It's a mere question of time.
+
+"You see if a man's digestion is good he takes a cheerful view of
+things; but if he is full of bile, then he is sure that everybody is
+going to be lost except himself and his little set, and that's heresy.
+Apologetics is just dietetics; now there 's an epigram made for you on
+the spot, and you don't know what it means, so we 'll have a walk
+instead."
+
+His aunt knew what was coming, but was too late to resist, so she was
+twice taken round the room for exercise, till she cried out for mercy,
+and was left to rest while Carmichael went out to get an appetite for
+that dinner.
+
+Nothing was said during its progress, but when Sarah had finally
+departed after her first triumph, won under every adverse circumstance
+of strangeness and limited resources, Carmichael took his aunt's hand
+and kissed it.
+
+"It is an illuminated address you deserve, auntie, for such a paragon;
+as it is, I shall be the benefactor of a Presbytery, asking the men up
+by turns on fast-days, and sending them home speechless with
+satisfaction."
+
+"Sarah was always a clever woman; if she had only--"  But Carmichael
+heard not, in his boyish excitement of householding.
+
+"Clever is a cold word for such genius.  Mark my words, there is not a
+manse in Perthshire that shall not sound with the praise of Sarah.  I
+vow perpetual celibacy on the spot.  No man would dream of marrying
+that had the privilege of such a housekeeper."
+
+"Ye 're a silly laddie, John; but some day a fair face will change a'
+yer life, an' if she be a good wumman like your mother, I 'll thank
+God."
+
+"No woman can be compared with her," and the minister sobered.  "You
+and she have spoiled me for other women, and now you have placed me
+beyond temptation with such a cook."
+
+So it came to pass that Carmichael, who knew nothing about fine cooking
+till Sarah formed his palate with her cunning sauces, and, after all,
+cared as little what he ate as any other healthy young man, boasted of
+his housekeeper continually by skilful allusions, till the honest wives
+of his fathers and brethren were outraged and grew feline, as any
+natural woman will if a servant is flung in her face in this
+aggravating fashion.
+
+"I 'm glad to hear you 're so well pleased, Mr. Carmichael," Mrs.
+MacGuffie would say, who was full of advice, and fed visitors on the
+produce of her garden, "but no man knows comfort till he marries.  It's
+a chop one day and a steak the next all the year round--nothing tasty
+or appetising; and as for his shirts, most bachelors have to sew on
+their own buttons.  Ah, you all pretend to be comfortable, but I know
+better, for Mr. MacGuffie has often told me what he suffered."
+
+Whereat Carmichael would rage furiously, and then, catching sight of
+MacGuffie, would bethink him of a Christian revenge.  MacGuffie was
+invited up to a day of humiliation--Sarah receiving for once _carte
+blanche_--and after he had powerfully exhorted the people from the
+words, "I am become like a bottle in the smoke," he was conducted to
+the manse in an appropriately mournful condition, and set down at the
+table.  He was inclined to dwell on the decadence of Disruption
+principles during soup, but as the dinner advanced grew wonderfully
+cheerful, and being installed in an arm-chair with a cup of decent
+coffee beside him, sighed peacefully, and said, "Mr. Carmichael, you
+have much cause for thankfulness."  Mr. MacGuffie had not come to the
+age of sixty, however, without learning something, and he only gave his
+curious spouse to understand that Carmichael had done all in his power
+to make his guest comfortable, and was not responsible for his
+servant's defects.
+
+[Illustration: "Mr. Carmichael, you have much cause for thankfulness."]
+
+Ladies coming with their husbands to visit the manse, conceived a
+prejudice against Sarah on the general ground of dislike to all
+housekeepers as a class of servants outside of any mistress's control,
+and therefore apt to give themselves airs, and especially because this
+one had a subtle suggestion of independent personality that was all the
+more irritating because it could not be made plain to the dull male
+intelligence, which was sadly deceived.
+
+"What a lucky man Carmichael is on his first venture!"  Even Dr.
+Dowbiggin, of St. Columba's, Muirtown, grew enthusiastic to his wife in
+the privacy of their bedchamber on a sacramental visit, and every one
+knows that the Doctor was a responsible man, ministering to four
+bailies and making "overtures" to the Assembly, beginning with
+"Whereas" and ending with "Venerable House."  "I am extremely pleased
+to see . . . everything so nice."
+
+"You mean, James, that you have had a good dinner, far too ambitious
+for a young minister's table.  Did you ever see an entrée on a
+Disruption table, or dessert with finger glasses?  I call it
+sinful--for the minister of Drumtochty, at least; and I don't believe
+he was ever accustomed to such ways.  If she attended to his clothes,
+it would set her better than cooking French dishes.  Did you notice the
+coat he was wearing at the station?--just like a gamekeeper.  But it is
+easy for a woman to satisfy a man; give him something nice to eat, and
+he 'll ask no more."
+
+"So far as my recollection serves me, Maria"--the Doctor was ruffled,
+and fell into his public style--"I made no reference to food, cooked or
+uncooked, and perhaps I may be allowed to say that it is not a subject
+one thinks of . . . at such seasons.  What gave me much satisfaction
+was to see one of our manses so presentable; as regards the
+housekeeper, so far as I had an opportunity of observing, she seemed a
+very capable woman indeed," and the Doctor gave one of his coughs,
+which were found most conclusive in debate.
+
+"It's easy to be a man's servant," retorted Mrs. Dowbiggin, removing a
+vase of flowers from the dressing-table with contempt, "for they never
+look below the surface.  Did you notice her hands, as white and smooth
+as a lady's?  You may be sure there 's little scrubbing and brushing
+goes on in this manse."
+
+"How do you know, Maria?"--the Doctor was weakening.  "You have never
+been in the house before."
+
+"We 'll soon see that, James, though I dare say it would never occur to
+a man to do such a thing.  Did you ever look below the bed?"
+
+"Never," replied the Doctor, promptly, who was not constructed to
+stoop, "and I am not going to begin after that . . . ah . . . this
+evening, with work before me to-morrow.  But I would be glad to see
+you."
+
+"I have done so every night of my life for fear of robbers, and the
+dust I 've seen in strange houses--it's there you can tell a good
+servant," and Mrs. Dowbiggin nodded with an air of great sagacity.
+
+"Well," demanded the Doctor, anxiously watching the operation, "guilty
+or not guilty?"
+
+"She knew what I would do.  I hate those sharp women," and then the
+Doctor grew so eloquent over uncharitable judgments and unreasonable
+prejudices that his wife denounced Sarah bitterly as a "cunning woman
+who got on the blind side of gentlemen."
+
+Her popularity with Carmichael's friends was beyond question, for
+though she was a reserved woman, with no voluntary conversation, they
+all sent messages to her, inquired for her well-being at Fast-days, and
+brought her gifts of handkerchiefs, gloves, and such like.  When they
+met at Theologicals and Synods they used to talk of Sarah with
+unction--till married men were green with envy--being simple fellows
+and helpless in the hands of elderly females of the Meiklewham genus.
+For there are various arts by which a woman, in Sarah's place, wins a
+man's gratitude, and it may be admitted that one is skilful cooking.
+Sensible and book-reading men do not hunger for six courses, but they
+are critical about their toast and . . . nothing more, for that is the
+pulse.  Then a man also hates to have any fixed hour for
+breakfast--never thinking of houses where they have prayers at 7.50
+without a shudder--but a man refuses to be kept waiting five minutes
+for dinner.  If a woman will find his belongings, which he has
+scattered over three rooms and the hall, he invests her with many
+virtues, and if she packs his portmanteau, he will associate her with
+St. Theresa.  But if his hostess be inclined to discuss problems with
+him, he will receive her name with marked coldness; and if she follow
+up this trial with evil food, he will conceive a rooted dislike for
+her, and will flee her house.  So simple is a man.
+
+When Sarah proposed to Carmichael that she should prepare breakfast
+after he rung for his hot water, and when he never caught a hint of
+reproach on her face though he sat up till three and came down at
+eleven, he was lifted, hardly believing that such humanity could be
+found among women, who always seem to have a time table they are
+carrying out the livelong day.
+
+"The millennium is near at hand," said MacQueen, when the morning
+arrangements of the Free Kirk manse of Drumtochty were made known to
+him--MacQueen, who used to arrive without so much as a nightshirt,
+having left a trail of luggage behind him at various junctions, and has
+written books so learned that no one dares to say that he has not read
+them.  Then he placed an ounce of shag handy, and Carmichael stoked the
+fire, and they sat down, with Beaton, who could refer to the Summa of
+St. Thomas Aquinas from beginning to end, and they discussed the
+Doctrine of Scripture in the Fathers, and the formation of the Canon,
+and the authorship of the Pentateuch till two in the study.  Afterwards
+they went to MacQueen's room to hear him on the Talmud, and next
+adjourned to Beaton's room, who offered a series of twelve preliminary
+observations on the Theology of Rupert of Deutz, whereupon his host
+promptly put out his candle, leaving that man of supernatural memory to
+go to bed in the dark; and as Carmichael pulled up the blind in his own
+room, the day was breaking and a blackbird had begun to sing.  Next
+afternoon Beaton had resumed his observations on Rupert, but now they
+were lying among the heather on the side of Glen Urtach, and Carmichael
+was asleep, while MacQueen was thinking that they would have a good
+appetite for dinner that evening.
+
+Sarah had only one fault to find with her master, and that was his
+Bohemian dress; but since it pleased him to go one button less through
+studied carelessness, she let him have his way; and as for everything
+else, she kept her word to his aunt, and saw that he wanted for
+nothing, serving him with perpetual thoughtfulness and swift capacity.
+
+Little passed between them except a good-natured word or two from him
+and her courteous answer, but she could read him as a book, and when he
+came home that day from Muirtown she saw he was changed.  He was
+slightly flushed, and he could not sit still, wandering in and out his
+study till dinner-time.  He allowed the soup to cool, and when she came
+in with sweets he had barely touched his cutlet.
+
+"It is the sauce you like, sir," with some reproach in her voice.
+
+"So it is, Sarah--and first rate."  Then he added suddenly, "Can you
+put a button on this coat to-night, and give it a good brush?"
+
+In the evening Sarah went down to post a letter, and heard the talk,
+how Miss Carnegie had come home with the General, and was worthy of her
+house; how the minister also had driven up with her from Muirtown; and
+on her return she did her best by the coat, handling it very kindly,
+and singing softly to herself "Robin Adair."
+
+Next morning he came down in his blacks--the worst-made suit ever seen
+on a man, ordered to help a village tailor at his home--and announced
+his intention of starting after lunch for Saunderson's manse, beyond
+Tochty woods, where he would stay all night.
+
+"He will call on the way down, and, if he can, coming back," Sarah said
+to herself, as she watched him go, "but it's a pity he should go in
+such a coat; it might have been put together with a pitchfork.  It only
+makes the difference greater, and 't is wider than he knows already.
+And yet a woman can marry beneath her without loss; but for a man it is
+ruin."
+
+She went up to his room and made it neat, which was ever in disorder on
+his leaving, and then she went to a western window and looked into the
+far distance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION.
+
+Every Sabbath at eleven o'clock, or as soon thereafter as the people
+were seated--consideration was always shown to distant figures coming
+down from the high glen--Carmichael held what might be called High Mass
+in the Free Kirk.  Nothing was used in praise but the Psalms of David,
+with an occasional Paraphrase sanctioned by usage and sound teaching.
+The prayers were expected to be elaborate in expression and careful in
+statement, and it was then that they prayed for the Queen and Houses of
+Parliament.  And the sermon was the event to which the efforts of the
+minister and the thoughts of the people had been moving for the whole
+week.  No person was absent except through sore sickness or urgent farm
+duty; nor did rain or snow reduce the congregation by more than ten
+people, very old or very young.  Carmichael is now minister of a West
+End kirk, and, it is freely rumoured in Drumtochty, has preached before
+Lords of Session; but he has never been more nervous than facing that
+handful of quiet, impenetrable, critical faces in his first kirk.  When
+the service was over, the people broke into little bands that
+disappeared along the west road, and over the moor, and across the
+Tochty.  Carmichael knew each one was reviewing his sermon head by
+head, and, pacing his garden, he remembered the missing points with
+dismay.
+
+It was the custom of the Free Kirk minister to go far afield of a
+summer evening, and to hold informal services in distant parts of the
+parish.  This was the joy of the day to him, who was really very young
+and hated all conventionalities even unto affectation.  He was never
+weary of complaining that he had to wear a gown, which was continually
+falling back and being hitched over with impatient motions, and the
+bands, which he could never tie, and were, he explained to a horrified
+beadle in Muirtown, an invention of Satan to disturb the preacher's
+soul before his work.  Once, indeed, he dared to appear without his
+trappings, on the plea of heat, but the visible dismay and sorrow of
+the people was so great--some failing to find the Psalm till the first
+verse had been sung--that he perspired freely and forgot the middle
+head of his discourse.
+
+"It's a mercy," remarked Mrs. Macfadyen to Burnbrae afterward, "that he
+didna play that trick when there wes a bairn tae be baptised.  It wudna
+hae been lichtsome for its fouk; a'body wants a properly ordained
+minister.  Ye 'll gie him a hint, Burnbrae, for he's young and
+fordersome (rash), but gude stuff for a' his pliskies (frolics)."
+
+No one would have liked to see the sacred robes in the places of
+evening worship, and Carmichael threw all forms to the winds--only
+drawing the line, with great regret and some searchings of heart, at
+his tweed jacket.  His address for these summer evening gatherings he
+studied as he went through the fragrant pine woods or over the moor by
+springy paths that twisted through the heather, or along near cuts that
+meant leaping little burns and climbing dykes whose top stones were apt
+to follow your heels with embarrassing attachment.  Here and there the
+minister would stop as a trout leapt in a pool, or a flock of wild duck
+crossed the sky to Loch Sheuchie, or the cattle thrust inquisitive
+noses through some hedge, as a student snatches a mouthful from some
+book in passing.  For these walks were his best study; when thinking of
+his people in their goodness and simplicity, and touched by nature at
+her gentlest, he was freed from many vain ideas of the schools and from
+artificial learning, and heard the Galilean speak as He used to do
+among the fields of corn.  He came on people going in the same
+direction, but they only saluted, refraining even from the weather,
+since the minister's thoughts must not be disturbed, and they were
+amazed to notice, that he stooped to pluck a violet in the wood.  His
+host would come a little way to meet him and explain the arrangements
+that had been made for a kirk.  Sometimes the meeting-place was the
+granary of the farm, with floor swept clean and the wooden shutters
+opened for light, where the minister preached against a mixed
+background of fanners, corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare
+implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a
+ladder cautiously like hens going to roost--being severally warned
+about the second highest step--sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards
+resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated
+with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor.  It was
+pleasanter in the barn, a cool, lofty, not unimpressive place of
+worship, with its mass of golden straw and its open door through which
+various kindly sounds of farm life came in and strange visitors
+entered.  The collies, most sociable of animals, would saunter in and
+make friendly advances to Carmichael reading a chapter; then, catching
+their master's eye and detecting no encouragement, would suddenly
+realise that they were at kirk, and compose themselves to sleep--"juist
+like ony Christian," as Hillocks once remarked with envy, his own plank
+allowing no liberties--and never taking any part except in a hymn like
+
+  "See the mighty host advancing,
+    Satan leading on,"
+
+which they regarded as recreation rather than worship.
+
+It was also recalled for years that a pet lamb came into Donald
+Menzies's barn and wandered about for a while, and Carmichael told that
+pretty legend of St. Francis, how he saw a white lamb among the kids,
+and burst into tears at the sight, because it reminded him of Jesus
+among the sinners.  Indeed, these services were very extemporaneous,
+with hymns instead of psalms, and sermons without divisions.
+Carmichael also allowed himself illustrations from the life around, and
+even an anecdote at a time, which was all the more keenly relished that
+it would have been considered a confession of weakness in a regular
+sermon.  He has been heard to say that he came nearer the heart of
+things once or twice in the barns than he has ever done since, not even
+excepting that famous course of sermons every one talked about last
+year, the "Analysis of Doubt," which almost converted two professors to
+Christianity, and were heard by the editor of the _Caledonian_ in the
+disguise of a street preacher.  It was also pleasantly remembered for
+long in the parish that Dr. Davidson appeared one evening in Donald
+Menzies's barn and joined affably in the "Sweet By-and-Bye."
+Afterward, being supplied with a large arm-chair, he heard the address
+with much attention--nodding approval four times, if not five--and
+pronouncing the benediction with such impressiveness that Donald felt
+some hesitation in thrashing his last stack in the place next day.  The
+Doctor followed up this visit with an exhortation from the pulpit on
+the following Sabbath, in which he carefully distinguished such
+services by an ordained minister, although held in a barn, from
+unlicensed Plymouthistic gatherings held in corn rooms--this at
+Milton's amateur efforts--and advised his people in each district to
+avail themselves of "my friend Mr. Carmichael's excellent
+ministrations," which Papal Bull, being distributed to the furthest
+corner of the parish before nightfall, greatly lifted the Free Kirk and
+sweetened the blood of the Glen for years.  It seemed to me, watching
+things in Drumtochty during those days with an impartial mind, that the
+Doctor, with his care for the poor, his sympathy for the oppressed, his
+interest in everything human, his shrewd practical wisdom, and his wide
+toleration, was the very ideal of the parish clergyman.  He showed me
+much courtesy while I lived in the Cottage, although I did not belong
+to his communion, and as my imagination reconstructs the old parish of
+a winter night by the fire, I miss him as he used to be on the road, in
+the people's homes, in his pulpit, among his books--ever an honourable
+and kind-hearted gentleman.
+
+One evening a woman came into Donald Menzies's barn just before the
+hour of service, elderly, most careful in her widow's dress, somewhat
+austere in expression, but very courteous in her manner.  No one
+recognised her at the time, but she was suspected to be the forerunner
+of the Carnegie household, and Donald offered her a front seat.  She
+thanked him for his good-will, but asked for a lower place, greatly
+delighting him by a reference to the parable wherein the Master rebuked
+the ambitious Pharisees who scrambled for chief seats.  Their accent
+showed of what blood they both were, and that their Gaelic had still
+been mercifully left them, but they did not use it because of their
+perfect breeding, which taught them not to speak a foreign tongue in
+this place.  So the people saw Donald offer her a hymn-book and heard
+her reply:
+
+"It iss not a book that I will be using, and it will be a peety to take
+it from other people;" nor would she stand at the singing, but sat very
+rigid and with closed lips.  When Carmichael, who had a pleasant tenor
+voice and a good ear, sang a solo, then much tasted in such meetings,
+she arose and left the place, and the minister thought he had never
+seen anything more uncompromising than her pale set face.
+
+[Illustration: Carmichael sang a solo.]
+
+It was evident that she was Free Kirk and of the Highland persuasion,
+which was once over-praised and then has been over-blamed, but is never
+understood by the Lowland mind; and as Carmichael found that she had
+come to live in a cottage at the entrance to the Lodge, he looked in on
+his way home.  She was sitting at a table reading the Bible, and her
+face was more hostile than in the meeting; but she received him with
+much politeness, dusting a chair and praying him to be seated.  "You
+have just come to the district to reside, I think?  I hope you will
+like our Glen."
+
+"It wass here that I lived long ago, but I hef been married and away
+with my mistress many years, and there are not many that will know me."
+
+"But you are not of Drumtochty blood?" inquired the minister.
+
+"There iss not one drop of Sassenach blood in my veins"--this with a
+sudden flash.  "I am a Macpherson and my husband wass a Macpherson; but
+we hef served the house of Carnegie for four generations."
+
+"You are a widow, I think, Mrs. Macpherson?" and Carmichael's voice
+took a tone of sympathy.  "Have you any children?"
+
+"My husband iss dead, and I had one son, and he iss dead also; that iss
+all, and I am alone;" but in her voice there was no weakening.
+
+"Will you let me say how sorry I am?" pleaded Carmichael, "this is a
+great grief, but I hope you have consolations."
+
+"Yes, I will be having many consolations; they both died like brave men
+with their face to the enemy.  There were six that did not feel fery
+well before Ian fell; he could do good work with the sword as well as
+the bayonet, and he wass not bad with the dirk at a time."
+
+Neither this woman nor her house were like anything in Drumtochty, for
+in it there was a buffet for dishes, and a carved chest and a large
+chair, all of old black oak; and above the mantelpiece two broadswords
+were crossed, with a circle of war medals beneath on a velvet ground,
+flanked by two old pistols.
+
+"I suppose those arms have belonged to your people, Mrs. Macpherson;
+may I look at them?"
+
+"They are not anything to be admiring, and it wass not manners that I
+should hef been boasting of my men.  It iss a pleasant evening and good
+for walking."
+
+"You were at the meeting, I think?" and Carmichael tried to get nearer
+this iron woman.  "We were sorry you had to go out before the end.  Did
+you not feel at home?"
+
+"I will not be accustomed to the theatre, and I am not liking it
+instead of the church."
+
+"But surely there was nothing worse in my singing alone than praying
+alone?" and Carmichael began to argue like a Scotsman, who always
+fancies that people can be convinced by logic, and forgets that many
+people, Celts in especial, are ruled by their heart and not by their
+head; "do you see anything wrong in one praising God aloud in a hymn,
+as the Virgin Mary did?"
+
+"It iss the Virgin Mary you will be coming to next, no doubt, and the
+Cross and the Mass, like the Catholics, although I am not saying
+anything against them, for my mother's cousins four times removed were
+Catholics, and fery good people.  But I am a Presbyterian, and do not
+want the Virgin Mary."
+
+Carmichael learned at that moment what it was to argue with a woman,
+and he was to make more discoveries in that department before he came
+to terms with the sex, and would have left in despair had it not been
+for an inspiration of his good angel.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Macpherson, I did n't come to argue about hymns, but to bid
+you welcome to the Glen and to ask for a glass of water, for preaching
+is thirsty work."
+
+"It iss black shame I am crying on myself for sitting here and offering
+you neither meat nor drink," and she was stung with regret in an
+instant.  "It iss a little spirits you will be tasting, and this iss
+Talisker which I will be keeping for a friend, for whisky iss not for
+women."
+
+She was full of attention, but when Carmichael took milk instead of
+whisky, her suspicions revived, and she eyed him again.
+
+"You are not one of those new people I am hearing of in the Lowlands
+that are wiser than the fery Apostles?"
+
+"What people?" and Carmichael trembled for his new position.
+
+"'Total abstainers' they will call themselves," and the contempt in her
+accent was wonderful.
+
+"No, I am not," Carmichael hastened to reassure his hostess; "but there
+are worse people than abstainers in the world, and it would be better
+if we had a few more.  I will stick to the milk, if you please."
+
+"You will take what you please," and she was again mollified; "but the
+great ministers always had their tasting after preaching; and I hef
+heard one of them say that it wass a sin to despise the Lord's mercies.
+You will be taking another glass of milk and resting a little."
+
+"This hospitality reminds me of my mother, Mrs. Macpherson."
+Carmichael was still inspired, and was, indeed, now in full sail.  "She
+was a Highland woman, and had the Gaelic.  She sometimes called me Ian
+instead of John."
+
+"When you wass preaching about the shepherd finding the sheep, I wass
+wondering how you had the way to the heart, and I might have been
+thinking, oh yes, I might hef known"--all the time Janet was ever
+bringing something new out of the cupboard, though Carmichael only
+sipped the milk.  "And what wass your mother's name?"
+
+"Farquharson; her people came from Braemar; but they are all dead now,
+and I am the last of the race."
+
+"A good clan," cried Janet, in great spirits, "and a loyal; they were
+out with the Macphersons in the '45.  Will you happen to know whether
+your ancestor suffered?"
+
+"That he did, for he shot an English officer dead on his doorstep, and
+had to flee the country; it was not a pretty deed."
+
+"Had the officer broken bread with him?" inquired Janet, anxiously.
+
+"No, he had come to quarter himself and his men on him, and said
+something rude about the Prince."
+
+"Your ancestor gave him back his word like a gentleman; but he would
+maybe hef to stay away for a while.  Wass he of the chief's blood?"
+
+"Oh no, just a little laird, and he lost his bit of land, and we never
+saw the place again."
+
+"He would be a Dunniewassal, and proud it iss I am to see you in my
+house; and the Gaelic, will you hef some words?"
+
+"Just the sound of it, Mrs. Macpherson," and he repeated his three
+sentences, all that he had learned of his mother, who had become a
+Scotswoman in her speech.
+
+"Call me Janet, my dear; and it iss the good Gaelic your mother must
+have had, and it makes my heart glad to think my minister iss a
+Farquharson, by the mother's side."
+
+"We sing nothing but Psalms at church, Mrs. . . . . Janet, so you will
+be pleased, and we stand to pray and sit to sing."
+
+"Tuts, tuts, I am not minding about a bit hime at a time from a friend,
+but it iss those Lowlanders meddling with everything I do not like, and
+I am hoping to hear you sing again, for it wass a fery pretty tune;"
+and the smith, passing along the road when Carmichael left that
+evening, heard Janet call him "my dear," and invoke a thousand
+blessings on his head.
+
+When he called again in the end of the week to cement the alliance and
+secure her presence on Sabbath, Janet was polishing the swords, and was
+willing enough to give their history.
+
+"This wass my great-grandfather's, and these two nicks in the blade
+were made on the dragoons at Prestonpans; and this wass my husband's
+sword, for he wass sergeant-major before he died, a fery brave man,
+good at the fighting and the praying too.
+
+"Maybe I am wrong, and I do not know what you may be thinking, but
+things come into my mind when I am reading the Bible, and I will be
+considering that it wass maybe not so good that the Apostles were
+fishing people."
+
+"What ails you at fishermen, Janet?"
+
+"Nothing at all but one thing; they are clever at their nets and at
+religion, but I am not hearing that they can play with the sword or the
+dirk.
+
+"It wass a fery good intention that Peter had that night, no doubt, and
+I will be liking him for it when he took his sword to the policeman,
+but it wass a mighty poor blow.  If Ian or his father had got as near
+as that, it would not have been an ear that would have been missing."
+
+"Perhaps his head," suggested Carmichael.
+
+"He would not have been putting his nose into honest people's business
+again, at any rate," and Janet nodded her head as one who could see a
+downright blow that left no regrets; "it hass always made me ashamed to
+read about that ear.
+
+"It wass not possible, and it iss maybe no good speaking about it
+now"--Janet felt she had a minister now she could open her mind
+to--"but it would hef been better if our Lord could hef had twelve
+Macphersons for His Apostles."
+
+"You mean they would have been more brave and faithful?"
+
+"There 'wass a price of six thousand pounds, or it might be four, put
+on Cluny's head after Culloden, and the English soldiers were all up
+and down the country, but I am not hearing that any clansman betrayed
+his chief.
+
+"Thirty pieces of silver wass a fery small reward for such a dirty
+deed, and him one of the Chief's tail too; it wass a mistake to be
+trusting to fisher folk instead of Glen's men.
+
+"There iss something I hef wished," concluded Janet, who seemed to have
+given her mind to the whole incident, "that Peter or some other man had
+drawn his skean-dhu and slippit it quietly into Judas.  We would hef
+been respecting him fery much to-day, and it would hef been a good
+lesson--oh yes, a fery good lesson--to all traitors."
+
+As they got more confidential, Janet began to speak of signs and
+dreams, and Carmichael asked her if she had the second sight.
+
+"No; it iss not a lie I will be telling you, my dear, nor will I be
+boasting.  I have not got it, nor had my mother, but she heard sounds,
+oh yes, and knew what wass coming to pass.
+
+"'Janet,' she would say, 'I have heard the knock three times at the
+head of the bed; it will be your Uncle Alister, and I must go to see
+him before he dies.'"
+
+"And was she--"
+
+"Oh yes, she wass in time, and he wass expecting her; and once she saw
+the shroud begin to rise on her sister, but no more; it never covered
+the face before her eyes; but the knock, oh yes, many times."
+
+"Have you known any one that could tell what was happening at a
+distance, and gave warning of danger?" for the latent Celt was
+awakening in Carmichael, with his love of mystery and his sense of the
+unseen.
+
+"Listen, my dear"--Janet lowered her voice as one speaking of sacred
+things--"and I will tell you of Ina Macpherson, who lived to a hundred
+and two, and had the vision clear and sure.
+
+"In the great war with Russia I wass staying in the clachan of my
+people, and then seven lads of our blood were with the Black Watch, and
+every Sabbath the minister would pray for them and the rest of the lads
+from Badenoch that were away at the fighting.
+
+"One day Ina came into my sister's house, and she said, 'It iss danger
+that I am seeing,' and my heart stood still in my bosom for fear that
+it wass my own man Hamish.
+
+"'No,' and she looked at me, 'not yet, and not to-day,' but more she
+would not say about him.  'Is it my son Ronald?' my sister cried, and
+Ina only looked before her.  'It's a sore travail, and round a few
+black tartans I see many men in grey, pressing them hard; ochone,
+ochone.'
+
+"'It 's time to pray,' I said, and there wass a man in the clachan that
+wass mighty in prayer, and we gathered into his kitchen, four and
+twenty women and four men, and every one had a kinsman in the field.
+
+"It iss this minute that I hear Dugald crying to the Almighty,
+'Remember our lads, and be their help in the day of battle, and give
+them the necks of their enemies,' and he might be wrestling for half an
+hour, when Ina rose from her knees and said, 'The prayer is answered,
+for the tartans have the field, and I see blood on Ronald, but it is
+not his own.'"
+
+"And did you ever hear--"
+
+"Wait, my dear, and I will tell you, for the letter came from my
+nephew, and this is what he wrote:
+
+"'It wass three to one, and the gloom came on me, for I thought that I
+would never see Glenfeshie again, nor the water of the loch, nor the
+deer on the side of the hill.  Then I wass suddenly strengthened with
+all might in the inner man, and it iss five Russians that I hef killed
+to my own hands.'
+
+"And so it wass, and a letter came from his captain, who wass of
+Cluny's blood, and it will be read in church, and a fery proud woman
+wass my sister."
+
+These were the stories that Janet told to her minister in the days
+before the Carnegies came home, as well as afterwards, and so she
+prepared him to be an easier prey to a soldier's daughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE.
+
+They met under the arch of the gate, and Carmichael returned with the
+Carnegies, Kate making much of him and insisting that he should stay to
+luncheon.
+
+"You are our first visitor, Mr. Carmichael, and the General says that
+we need not expect more than six, so we mean to be very kind to them.
+Do you live far from here?"
+
+"Quite near--just two miles west.  I happened to be passing; in fact, I
+'m going down to the next parish, and I . . . I thought that I would
+like to call and . . . and bid you welcome;" for Carmichael had not yet
+learned the art of conversation, which stands mainly in touching
+details lightly and avoiding the letter I.
+
+"It is very cruel of you to be so honest and dispel our flattering
+illusions"--Kate marvelled at his mendacity--"we supposed you had come
+'anes errand'--I'm picking up Scotch--to call on your new neighbours.
+Does the high road pass the Lodge?"
+
+"Oh no; the road is eight miles further; but the Drumtochty people take
+the near way through the woods; it's also much prettier.  I hope you
+will not forbid us, General? two people a week is all the traffic."
+
+"Forbid them--not I," said Carnegie, laughing.  "A man is not born and
+bred in this parish without learning some sense.  It would be a right
+of way case, and Drumtochty would follow me from court to court, and
+would never rest till they had gained or we were all ruined.
+
+"Has it ever struck you, Mr. Carmichael, that one of the differences
+between a Highlander and a Scot is that each has got a pet enjoyment?
+With the one it's a feud, and with the other it's a lawsuit.  A Scot
+dearly loves a 'ganging plea.'
+
+"No, no; Tochty woods will be open so long as Kate and I have anything
+to say in the matter.  The Glen and our people have not had the same
+politics, but we 've lived at peace, as neighbours ought to do, with
+never a lawsuit even to give a fillip to life."
+
+"So you see, Mr. Carmichael," said Kate, "you may come and go at all
+times through our territory; but it would be bare courtesy to call at
+the Lodge for afternoon tea."
+
+"Or tiffin," suggested the General; "and we can always offer curry, as
+you see.  My daughter has a capital recipe she wiled out of an old
+Hindoo rascal that cooked for our mess.  You really need not take it on
+that account," as Carmichael was doing his best in much misery; "it is
+only meant to keep old Indians in fair humour--not to be a test of good
+manners.  By the way, Janet has been sounding your praises, how have
+you won her heart?"
+
+"Oh, very easily--by having some drops of Highland blood in my veins;
+and so I am forgiven all my faults, and am credited with all sorts of
+excellences."
+
+"Then the Highlanders are as clannish as ever," cried the General.
+"Scotland has changed so much in the last half century that the
+Highlanders might have become quite unsentimental and matter-of-fact.
+
+"Lowland civilisation only crossed the Highland line after '45, and it
+will take more than a hundred and thirty years to recast a Celt.
+Scottish education and theology are only a veneer on him, and below he
+has all his old instincts.
+
+"So far as I can make out, a Celt will rather fish than plough, and be
+a gamekeeper than a workman; but if he be free to follow his own way, a
+genuine Highlander would rather be a soldier than anything else under
+the sun."
+
+"What better could a man be?" and Kate's eyes sparkled; "they must envy
+the old times when their fathers raided the Lowlands and came home with
+the booty.  It's a pity everybody is so respectable now, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Certainly the police are very meddlesome," and Carmichael now devoted
+himself to Kate, without pretence of including the General; "but the
+spirit is not dead.  A Celt is the child of generations of
+cattle-stealers, and the raiding spirit is still in the blood.  May I
+offer an anecdote?"
+
+"Six, if you have got so many, and they are all about Highlanders," and
+Kate leant forward and nursed her knee, for they had gone into the
+library.
+
+"Last week I was passing the cattle market in Edinburgh, and a big
+Highland drover stopped me, begging for a little money.
+
+"'It iss from Lochaber I hef come with some beasties, and to-morrow I
+will be walking back all the way, and it iss this night I hef no bed.
+I wass considering that the gardens would be a good place for a night,
+but they are telling me that the police will be disturbing me.'
+
+"He looked so simple and honest that I gave him half-a-crown and said
+that I was half a Highlander.  I have three Gaelic sentences, and I
+reeled them off with my best accent.
+
+"'Got forgive me,' he said, 'for thinking you to be a Sassenach body,
+and taking your money from you.  You are a fery well-made man, and here
+iss your silver piece, and may you always hef one in your pocket.'"
+
+[Illustration: "Here is your silver piece."]
+
+"'But what about your bed?'
+
+"'Tuts, tuts, that will be all right, for I hef maybe got some six or
+five notes of my own that were profit on the beasties; but it iss a
+pity not to be taking anything that iss handy when a body happens to be
+in the south.'"
+
+"Capital."  Kate laughed merrily, and her too rare laugh I used to
+think the gayest I ever heard.  "It was the only opportunity left him
+of following his fathers.  What a fine business it must have been,
+starting from Braemar one afternoon, a dozen men well armed, and
+getting down to Strathmore in the morning; then lying hid in some wood
+all day, and collecting a herd of fat cattle in the evening, and
+driving them up Glen Shee, not knowing when there might be a fight."
+
+"Hard lines on the Scottish farmers, Kit, who might be very decent
+fellows, to lose their cattle or get a cut from a broadsword."
+
+"Oh, they had plenty left; and seriously, dad, without joking, you
+know, what better could a Presbyterian Lowlander do than raise good
+beef for Highland gentlemen?  Mr. Carmichael, I beg pardon; you seem so
+good a Celt, that I forgot you were not of our faith."
+
+"We are not Catholics," the General explained, gravely, "although many
+of our blood have been, and my daughter was educated in a convent.  We
+belong to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and will go into Muirtown
+at a time, but mostly we shall attend the kirk of my old friend Dr.
+Davidson.  Every man is entitled to his faith, and Miss Carnegie rather
+. . ."
+
+"Forgot herself."  Kate came to her father's relief.  "She often does;
+but one thing Miss Carnegie remembers, and that is that General
+Carnegie likes his cheroot after tiffin.  Do you smoke, Mr. Carmichael?
+Oh, I am allowed to stay, if you don't object, and have forgiven my
+rudeness."
+
+"You make too much of a word, Miss Carnegie."  Carmichael was not a man
+to take offence till his pride was roused.  "Very likely my drover was
+a true blue Presbyterian, and his minister as genuine a cateran as
+himself.
+
+"Years ago I made the acquaintance of an old Highland minister called
+MacTavish, and he sometimes stays with me on his way north in the
+spring.  For thirty years he has started at the first sign of snow, and
+spent winter spoiling the good people of the south.  Some years he has
+gone home with three hundred pounds."
+
+"But how does he get the money?" inquired the General, "and what does
+he use it for?"
+
+"He told me the history of his campaigns when he passed in March, and
+it might interest you; it's our modern raid, and although it's not so
+picturesque as a foray of the Macphersons, yet it has points, and shows
+the old spirit lives.
+
+"'She wass a goot woman, Janet Cameron, oh yes, Mr. John, a fery
+exercised woman, and when she wass dying she will be saying peautiful
+things, and one day she will be speaking of a little field she had
+beside the church.
+
+"'"What do you think I should be doing with that piece of ground," she
+will be saying, "for the end iss not far off, and it iss not earth I
+can be taking with me, oh no, nor cows."
+
+"'"No, Janet," I said, "but it iss a nice field, and lies to the sun.
+It might be doing good after you are gone, if it wass not wasted on
+your mother's cousins twice removed in Inverness, who will be drinking
+every drop of it, and maybe going to the Moderate Kirk."
+
+"'It wass not for two months or maybe six weeks she died, and I will be
+visiting her every second day.  Her experiences were fery good, and I
+hef told them at sacraments in the north.  The people in the south are
+free with their money, but it iss not the best of my stories that I can
+give them; they are too rich for their stomachs.
+
+"'Janet will often be saying to me, "Mister Dugald, it iss a thankful
+woman that I ought to be, for though I lost my man in the big storm and
+two sons in the war, I hef had mercies, oh yes.  There wass the
+Almighty and my cow, and between them I hef not wanted, oh no: they
+just did."
+
+"'"Janet, you will be forgetting your field that iss lying next the
+manse, and the people will be thinking that it iss a glebe; but I am
+telling them that it iss Janet Cameron's, who iss a fery experienced
+woman, and hass nefer seen the inside of a Moderate Kirk since the
+Disruption."
+
+"'Maybe you will be astonished, Mister John, but when Janet's will will
+be read that piece of ground wass left to the Free Kirk, which wass
+fery kind and mindful of Janet, and I made a sermon about her from the
+text of the "elect lady."
+
+"'It wass a good field, but it needed a dyke and some drains, and it
+wass not our people that had the money.  So I made another sermon on
+the text, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast
+of the field doth devour it," and went down to the south.  It wass not
+a dyke and some drains, but enough to build a byre and a stable I came
+back with.  That wass in '55, and before '60 there will be a new manse
+with twelve rooms that iss good for letting to the English people.  But
+it wass ten years the church needed, and a year for the porch to keep
+it warm, for I am not liking stoves, and will not hef one in
+Crianshalloch.
+
+"'It iss wonderful how much money the bodies hef in Glasgow, and it iss
+good for them to be hearing sound doctrine at a time.  There will be no
+Arminianism when I am preaching, and no joking; but maybe there will be
+some parables, oh yes, about the sheep coming in at the manse door for
+want of a fence, and the snow lying in the pulpit.'
+
+"There is a cateran for you, and, mind you, a good fellow too.  It's
+not greed sends him out, but sheer love of spoil.  Would you like to
+see MacTavish next time he passes up with the cattle?" for Carmichael
+was emboldened by the reception of his sketch.
+
+"Nothing we should like better, for the General and I want to know all
+about Scotland; but don't you think that those ministers have injured
+the Highlanders?  Janet, you know, has such gloomy ideas about
+religion."
+
+"There is no doubt, Miss Carnegie, that a load of Saxon theology has
+been landed on the Celt, and it has disfigured his religion.  Sometimes
+I have felt that the Catholic of the west is a truer type of northern
+faith than the Presbyterian of Ross-shire."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that," said Miss Carnegie, "for we had
+one or two west Catholics in the old regiment, and their superstitions
+were lovely.  You remember, dad, the MacIvers."
+
+"That was all well enough, Kit, but none of them could get the length
+of corporal; they were fearfully ignorant, and were reported at
+intervals for not keeping their accoutrements clean."
+
+"That only showed how religious they were, did n't it, Mr. Carmichael?
+Hadn't the early Christians a rooted objection to the bath?  I remember
+our Padre saying that in a lecture."
+
+"There are a good many modern Christians of the same mind, Miss
+Carnegie, and I don't think our poor Highlanders are worse than
+Lowlanders; but Catholic or Protestant, they are all subject to the
+gloom.  I cannot give the Gaelic word.
+
+"What is that?  Oh, a southerner would call it depression, and assign
+it to the liver, for he traces all trouble to that source.  But there
+is no word for this mood in English, because it is not an English
+experience.  My mother fell under it at times, and I saw the effect."
+
+"Tell us, please, if all this description does not weary you?" and Kate
+shone on Carmichael, who would have talked on the Council of Nice or
+the rotation of crops to prolong his privileges.
+
+"It comes on quite suddenly, and is quite a spiritual matter--a cloud
+which descends and envelops the soul.  While it lasts a Highlander will
+not laugh nor sing; he will hardly speak, and he loses all hope about
+everything.  One of our men has the gloom at a time, and then he
+believes that he is . . . damned.  I am speaking theologically."
+
+"The regiment must have been fond of theology, dad.  Yes, we
+understand."
+
+"Once he went out to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and
+agonising to be sure whether there was a God.  You know he 's just a
+small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give
+himself to the big problems of the universe.  Do you know," and
+Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great peace, "I
+believe that is the reason the Highlanders are such good fighting men.
+They fear God, and they don't fear any other person."
+
+"I 'll vouch for one thing," said the veteran with emphasis; "our men
+put off the gloom, or whatever you call it, when they smelt powder; I
+never saw a panic in a Highland regiment in more than forty years'
+soldiering."
+
+"What's the reason of the gloom?  I believe that I have a touch of it
+myself at times--don't stare at me, dad, it's rude--just a thin mist,
+you know, but distinctly not indigestion.  Is it a matter of race?"
+
+"Of course, but that's no explanation."  Carmichael had fallen into his
+debating society style.  "I mean one has to go further back; all our
+habits are shaped by environment."
+
+"One moment, please.  I have always wanted to ask some clever person
+what environment meant.  I asked Colonel MacLeod once, dad, and he said
+it was out of the new book on tactics, and he was thankful he had
+retired.  Now Mr. Carmichael will make it plain," and Kate was very
+demure.
+
+"It is rather stupid to use the word so much as people do now," and
+Carmichael glanced dubiously at Kate; "scientific men use it for
+circumstances."
+
+"Is that all? then do pray say environment.  Such a word introduces one
+into good society, and gives one the feeling of being well dressed; now
+about a Highlander's environment, is it his kilt you are thinking of,
+or his house, or what?"
+
+"His country"--and Carmichael's tone had a slight note of resentment,
+as of one ruffled by this frivolity--"with its sea lochs, and glens,
+and mists.  Any one who has been bred and reared at the foot of one of
+our mountains will have a different nature and religion from one living
+in Kent or Italy.  He has a sense of reverence, and surely that is a
+good thing."
+
+"Nothing more needed nowadays," the General broke in with much spirit;
+"it seems to me that people nowadays respect nobody, neither the Queen
+nor Almighty God.  As for that man Brimstone, he will never cease till
+he has ruined the Empire.  You need n't look at me, Kate, for Mr. . . .
+Carmichael must know this as well as any other sensible man.
+
+"Why, sir," and now the General was on his feet, "I was told on good
+authority at the club last week by a newspaper man--a monstrously
+clever man--that Mr. Brimstone, when he is going down to the House of
+Commons to disestablish the Church, or the army, or something, will
+call in at a shop and order two hundred silk hats to be sent to his
+house.  What do you call that, sir?"
+
+"I should call it a deliberate--"
+
+[Illustration: "I should call it a deliberate--"]
+
+"_Jeu d'esprit_.  Of course it is, dad," and Kate threw an appealing
+glance to Carmichael, who had sprung to his feet and was standing
+stiffly behind his chair, for he was a fierce Radical.
+
+"Perhaps it was, lassie--those war correspondents used to be sad
+rascals--and, at any rate, politics are bad taste.  Another cheroot,
+Mr. Carmichael?  Oh, nonsense; you must tell my daughter more about
+your Highlanders.  They are a loyal set, at any rate, and we all admire
+that."
+
+"Yes, they are," and Carmichael unbent again, "and will stick by their
+side whether it be right or wrong.  They 're something like a woman in
+their disposition."
+
+"Indeed," said Kate, who did not think Carmichael had responded very
+courteously to her lead, "that is very interesting.  They are, you
+mean, full of prejudices and notions."
+
+"If a Highlander takes you into his friendship, you may say or do what
+you like, he will stand by you, and although his views are as different
+from yours as black from white, will swear he agrees with every one.
+If he 's not your friend, he can see no good in anything you do,
+although you be on his own side."
+
+"In fact, he has very little judgment and no sense of justice; and I
+think you said," Kate went on sweetly, "his nature reminded you of a
+woman's?"
+
+"You're sure that you like cheroots?" for the General did not wish this
+lad, Radical though he was, sacrificed on his first visit; "some men
+are afraid of the opium in them."
+
+"Please do not interrupt Mr. Carmichael when he is making a capital
+comparison," and Kate held him to the point.
+
+"What I intend is really a compliment," went on Carmichael, "and shows
+the superior fineness and sensitiveness of a woman's mind."
+
+Kate indicated that she was sure that was his meaning, but waited for
+details.
+
+"You see," with the spirit of one still fresh to the pulpit, "a man is
+slower, and goes by evidence; a woman is quicker, and goes by her
+instincts."
+
+"Like the lower animals," suggested Kate, sweetly, "by scent, perhaps.
+Well?"
+
+"You are twisting my words, Miss Carnegie."  Carmichael did not like
+being bantered by this self-possessed young woman.  "Let me put it this
+way.  Would a jury of women be as impartial as a jury of men?  Why, a
+bad-looking man would have no chance, for they would condemn him at
+once, not for what he did, but for what they imagined he was."
+
+"Which would save a lot of time and rid society of some precious
+scoundrels," with vivid recollections of her own efforts in this
+direction.  "Then you grant that women have some intelligence, although
+no sense of justice, which is a want?"
+
+"Far brighter than men," said Carmichael, eagerly; "just consider the
+difference between a man's and a woman's speech.  A man arranges and
+argues from beginning to end, and is the slave of connection.  He will
+labour every idea to exhaustion before he allows it to escape, and then
+will give a solemn cough by way of punctuating with a full stop, before
+he goes on to his next point.  Of course the audience look at their
+watches and make for the door."
+
+"What would a woman do?" Kate inquired with much interest.
+
+"A lady was speaking lately at Muirtown for an orphanage at
+Ballyskiddle, and described how Patsy was rescued from starvation, and
+greatly affected us.  'Patsy will never want bread again,' she
+concluded, and two bailies wept aloud.
+
+"Then she went on, and it seemed to me a stroke of genius, 'Speaking
+about Patsy, has any lady present a black dress suitable for a widow
+woman?'  Before we knew that we had left Patsy, the people were in a
+widow's home, and the bailies were again overcome.  I mention them
+because it is supposed that a bailie is the most important human being
+in Scotland, and he feels it his duty not to yield to emotion.
+
+"No, a woman speaker never sacrifices her capital; she carries it with
+her from England to France in her speech, and recognises no channel
+passage.  In fact," and Carmichael plunged into new imagery, "a man's
+progress is after the manner of a mole, while a woman flits from branch
+to branch like a--"
+
+"Squirrel--I know," came in Kate, getting tired.
+
+"Bird, I meant.  Why do you say squirrel?" and Carmichael looked
+suspiciously at Kate.
+
+"Because it's such a careless, senseless, irresponsible little beast.
+Have you met many women, Mr. Carmichael?  Really they are not all
+fools, as you have been trying to suggest for the last ten minutes."
+
+"Highlanders are a safer subject of conversation than women," said the
+General, good-naturedly, as he bade Carmichael good-bye.  "And you must
+tell us more about them next time you call, which I hope will be soon."
+
+Carmichael halted twice on his way through the woods; once he stamped
+his foot and looked like a man whose pride had been ruffled; the other
+time he smiled to himself as one who was thinking of a future pleasure.
+
+It was dusk as he crossed Lynedoch Bridge, and he looked down upon the
+pool below where the trout were leaping.  Half an hour passed, and then
+he started off at high speed for Kilbogie Manse.  "Please God if I am
+worthy," he was saying to himself; "but I fear she is too high above me
+every way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN.
+
+Jeremiah Saunderson had remained in the low estate of a "probationer"
+for twelve years after he left the Divinity Hall, where he was reported
+so great a scholar that the Professor of Apologetics spoke to him
+deprecatingly, and the Professor of Dogmatics openly consulted him on
+obscure writers.  He had wooed twenty-three congregations in vain, from
+churches in the black country where the colliers rose in squares of
+twenty and went out without ceremony, to suburban places of worship
+where the beadle, after due consideration of the sermon, would take up
+the afternoon notices and ask that they be read at once for purposes of
+utility, which that unflinching functionary stated to the minister with
+accuracy and much faithfulness.  Vacant congregations desiring a list
+of candidates made one exception, and prayed that Jeremiah should not
+be let loose upon them, till at last it came home to the unfortunate
+scholar himself that he was an offence and a byeword.  He began to
+dread the ordeal of giving his name, and, as is still told, declared to
+a household, living in the fat wheat lands and without any imagination,
+that he was called Magor Missabib.  When a stranger makes a statement
+of this kind with a sad seriousness, no one judges it expedient to
+offer any remark, but it was skilfully arranged that Missabib's door
+should be locked from the outside, and one member of the household sat
+up all night.  The sermon next day did not tend to confidence--having
+seven quotations in unknown tongues--and the attitude of the
+congregation was one of alert vigilance; but no one gave any outward
+sign of uneasiness, and six able-bodied men collected in a pew below
+the pulpit knew their duty in an emergency.
+
+Saunderson's election to the Free Church of Kilbogie was therefore an
+event in the ecclesiastical world, and a consistent tradition in the
+parish explained its inwardness on certain grounds, complimentary both
+to the judgment of Kilbogie and the gifts of Mr. Saunderson.  On
+Saturday evening he was removed from the train by the merest accident,
+and left the railway station in such a maze of meditation that he
+ignored the road to Kilbogie altogether, although its sign post was
+staring him in the face, and continued his way to Drumtochty.  It was
+half-past nine when Jamie Soutar met him on the high road through our
+Glen, still travelling steadily west, and being arrested by his
+appearance, beguiled him into conversation, till he elicited that
+Saunderson was minded to reach Kilbogie.  For an hour did the wanderer
+rest in Jamie's kitchen, during which he put Jamie's ecclesiastical
+history into a state of thorough repair--making seven distinct
+parallels between the errors that had afflicted the Scottish Church and
+the early heretical sects--and then Jamie gave him in charge of a
+ploughman who was courting in Kilbogie and was not averse to a journey
+that seemed to illustrate the double meaning of charity.  Jeremiah was
+handed over to his anxious hosts at a quarter to one in the morning,
+covered with mud, somewhat fatigued, but in great peace of soul, having
+settled the place of election in the prophecy of Habakkuk as he came
+down with his silent companion through Tochty woods.
+
+Nor was that all he had done.  When they came out from the shadow and
+struck into the parish of Kilbogie--whose fields, now yellow unto
+harvest, shone in the moonlight--his guide broke silence and enlarged
+on a plague of field-mice which had quite suddenly appeared and had
+sadly devastated the grain of Kilbogie, Saunderson awoke from study and
+became exceedingly curious, first of all demanding a particular account
+of the coming of the mice, their multitude, their habits, and their
+determination.  Then he asked many questions about the moral conduct
+and godliness of the inhabitants of Kilbogie, which his companion, as a
+native of Drumtochty, painted in gloomy colours, although indicating
+that even in Kilbogie there was a remnant.  Next morning the minister
+rose at daybreak, and was found wandering through the fields in such a
+state of excitement that he could hardly be induced to look at
+breakfast.  When the "books" were placed before him, he turned promptly
+to the ten plagues of Egypt, which he expounded in order as preliminary
+to a full treatment of the visitations of Providence.
+
+"He cowes (beats) a' ye ever saw or heard," the farmer of Mains
+explained to the elders at the gate.  "He gaed tae bed at half twa and
+wes oot in the fields by four, an' a 'm dootin' he never saw his bed.
+He 's lifted abune the body a'thegither, an' can hardly keep himsel'
+awa' frae the Hebrew at his breakfast.  Ye 'll get a sermon the day, or
+ma name is no Peter Pitillo."  Mains also declared his conviction that
+the invasion of mice would be dealt with after a Scriptural and
+satisfying fashion.  The people went in full of expectation, and to
+this day old people recall Jeremiah Saunderson's trial sermon with
+lively admiration.  Experienced critics were suspicious of candidates
+who read lengthy chapters from both Testaments and prayed at length for
+the Houses of Parliament, for it was justly held that no man would take
+refuge in such obvious devices for filling up the time unless he was
+short of sermon material.  One unfortunate, indeed, ruined his chances
+at once by a long petition for those in danger on the sea--availing
+himself with some eloquence of the sympathetic imagery of the 107th
+Psalm--for this effort was regarded as not only the most barefaced
+padding, but also as evidence of an almost incredible blindness to
+circumstances.  "Did he think Kilbogie wes a fishing village?" Mains
+inquired of the elders afterwards, with pointed sarcasm.  Kilbogie was
+not indifferent to a well-ordered prayer--although its palate was
+coarser in the appreciation of felicitous terms and allusions than that
+of Drumtochty--and would have been scandalised if the Queen had been
+omitted; but it was by the sermon the young man must stand or fall, and
+Kilbogie despised a man who postponed the ordeal.
+
+Saunderson gave double pledges of capacity and fulness before he opened
+his mouth in the sermon, for he read no Scripture at all that day, and
+had only one prayer, which was mainly a statement of the Divine Decrees
+and a careful confession of the sins of Kilbogie; and then, having
+given out his text from the prophecy of Joel, he reverently closed the
+Bible and placed it on the seat behind him.  His own reason for this
+proceeding was a desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject,
+and a painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church
+when he landed a Bible--with clasps--on the head of the precentor in
+the heat of a discourse defending the rejection of Esau.  Our best and
+simplest actions--and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe--can be
+misconstrued, and the only dissentient from Saunderson's election
+insisted that the Bible had been deposited on the floor, and asserted
+that the object of this profanity was to give the preacher a higher
+standing in the pulpit.  This malignant reading of circumstances might
+have wrought mischief--for Saunderson's gaunt figure did seem to grow
+in the pulpit--had it not been for the bold line of defence taken up by
+Mains.
+
+"Gin he wanted tae stand high, wes it no tae preach the word? an' gin
+he wanted a soond foundation for his feet, what better could he get
+than the twa Testaments?  Answer me that."
+
+It was seen at once that no one could answer that, and the captious
+objector never quite recovered his position in the parish, while it is
+not the least of Kilbogie's boasting, in which the Auld Kirk will even
+join against Drumtochty, that they have a minister who not only does
+not read his sermons and does not need to quote his texts, but carries
+the whole book in at least three languages in his head, and once, as a
+proof thereof, preached with it below his feet.
+
+Much was to be looked for from such a man, but even Mains, whetted by
+intercourse with Saunderson, was astonished at the sermon.  It was a
+happy beginning to draw a parallel between the locusts of Joel and the
+mice of Kilbogie, and gave the preacher an opportunity of describing
+the appearance, habits, and destruction of the locusts, which he did
+solely from Holy Scripture, translating various passages afresh and
+combining lights with marvellous ingenuity.  This brief preface of half
+an hour, which was merely a stimulant for the Kilbogie appetite, led up
+to a thorough examination of physical judgments, during which both
+Bible and Church history were laid under liberal contribution.  At this
+point the minister halted, and complimented the congregation on the
+attention they had given to the facts of the case, which were his first
+head, and suggested that before approaching the doctrine of visitations
+they might refresh themselves with a Psalm.  The congregation were
+visibly impressed, and many made up their minds while singing:
+
+  "That man hath perfect blessedness;"
+
+and while others thought it due to themselves to suspend judgment till
+they had tasted the doctrine, they afterwards confessed their
+confidence.  It goes without saying that he was immediately beyond the
+reach of the ordinary people on the second head, and even veterans in
+theology panted after him in vain, so that one of the elders, nodding
+assent to an exposure of the Manichaean heresy, suddenly blushed as one
+who had played the hypocrite.  Some professed to have noticed a
+doctrine that had not been touched upon, but they never could give it a
+name, and it excited just admiration that a preacher, starting from a
+plague of mice, should have made a way by strictly scientific methods
+into the secret places of theology.  Saunderson allowed his hearers a
+brief rest after the second head, and cheered them with the assurance
+that what was still before them would be easy to follow.  It was the
+application of all that had gone before to the life of Kilbogie, and
+the preacher proceeded to convict the parish under each of the ten
+commandments--with the plague of mice ever in reserve to silence
+excuses--till the delighted congregation could have risen in a body and
+taken Saunderson by the hand for his fearlessness and faithfulness.
+Perhaps the extent and thoroughness of this monumental sermon can be
+best estimated by the fact that Claypots, father of the present tenant,
+who always timed his rest to fifty minutes exactly, thus overseeing
+both the introduction and application of the sermon, had a double
+portion, and even a series of supplementary dozes, till at last he sat
+upright through sheer satiety.  It may also be offered as evidence that
+the reserve of peppermint held by mothers for their bairns was pooled,
+doles being furtively passed across pews to conspicuously needy
+families, and yet the last had gone before Saunderson finished.
+
+Mains reported to the congregational meeting that the minister had been
+quiet for the rest of the day, but had offered to say something about
+Habakkuk to any evening gathering, and had cleared up at family worship
+some obscure points in the morning discourse.  He also informed the
+neighbours that he had driven his guest all the way to Muirtown, and
+put him in an Edinburgh carriage with his own hands, since it had
+emerged that Saunderson, through absence of mind, had made his down
+journey by the triangular route of Dundee.  It was quite impossible for
+Kilbogie to conceal their pride in electing such a miracle of learning,
+and their bearing in Muirtown was distinctly changed; but indeed they
+did not boast vainly about Jeremiah Saunderson, for his career was
+throughout on the level of that monumental sermon.  When the Presbytery
+in the gaiety of their heart examined Saunderson to ascertain whether
+he was fully equipped for the work of the ministry, he professed the
+whole Old Testament in Hebrew, and MacWheep of Pitscowrie, who always
+asked the candidate to read the twenty-third Psalm, was beguiled by
+Jeremiah into the Book of Job, and reduced to the necessity of asking
+questions by indicating verbs with his finger.  His Greek examination
+led to an argument between Jeremiah and Dr. Dowbiggin on the use of the
+aorist, from which the minister-elect of Kilbogie came out an easy
+first; and his sermons were heard to within measurable distance of the
+second head by an exact quorum of the exhausted court, who were kept by
+the clerk sitting at the door, and preventing MacWheep escaping.  His
+position in the court was assured from the beginning, and fulfilled the
+function of an Encyclopaedia with occasional amazing results, as when
+information was asked about some Eastern sect for whose necessities the
+Presbytery were asked to collect, and to whose warm piety affecting
+allusion was made, and Jeremiah showed clearly, with the reporters
+present, that the Cappadocians were guilty of a heresy beside
+which Morisonianism was an unsullied whiteness.  His work as
+examiner-in-general for the court was a merciful failure, and
+encouraged the students of the district to return to their district
+court, who on the rumour of him had transferred themselves in a body to
+a Highland Presbytery, where the standard question in Philosophy used
+to be, "How many horns has a dilemma, and distinguish the one from the
+other."  No man knew what the minister of Kilbogie might not ask--he
+was only perfectly certain that it would be beyond his knowledge; but
+as Saunderson always gave the answer himself in the end, and imputed it
+to the student, anxiety was reduced to a minimum.  Saunderson, indeed,
+was in the custom of passing all candidates and reporting them as
+marvels of erudition, whose only fault was a becoming modesty--which,
+however, had not concealed from his keen eye hidden treasures of
+learning.  Beyond this sphere the good man's services were not used by
+a body of shrewd ecclesiastics, as the inordinate length of an
+ordination sermon had ruined a dinner prepared for the court by "one of
+our intelligent and large-hearted laymen," and it is still pleasantly
+told how Saunderson was invited to a congregational _soirée_--an
+ancient meeting where the people ate oranges and the speaker rallied
+the minister on being still unmarried--and discoursed---as a carefully
+chosen subject--on the Jewish feasts, with illustrations from the
+Talmud, till some one burst a paper bag and allowed the feelings of the
+people to escape.  When this history was passed round Muirtown Market,
+Kilbogie thought still more highly of their minister, and indicated
+their opinion of the other parish in severely theological language.
+
+Saunderson's reputation for unfathomable learning and saintly
+simplicity was built up out of many incidents, and grew with the lapse
+of years to a solitary height in the big strath, so that no man would
+have dared to smile had the Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie appeared in
+Muirtown in his shirt sleeves, and Kilbogie would only have been a
+trifle more conceited.  Truly he was an amazing man, and, now that he
+is dead and gone, the last of his race, I wish some man of his
+profession had written his life, for the doctrine he taught and the way
+he lived will not be believed by the new generation.  The arrival of
+his goods was more than many sermons to Kilbogie, and I had it from
+Mains's own lips.  It was the kindly fashion of those days that the
+farmers carted the new minister's furniture from the nearest railway
+station, and as the railway to Kildrummie was not yet open, they had to
+go to Stormont Station on the north line; and a pleasant procession
+they made passing through Pitscowrie, ten carts in their best array,
+and drivers with a semi-festive air.  Mr. Saunderson was at the
+station, having reached it by some miracle without mistake, and was in
+a condition of abject nervousness about the handling and conveyance of
+his belongings.
+
+"You will be careful--exceeding careful," he implored; "if one of the
+boxes were allowed to descend hurriedly to the ground, the result to
+what is within would be disastrous.  I am much afraid that the weight
+is considerable, but I am ready to assist;" and he got ready.
+
+"Dinna pit yirsel' intae a ferry tarry (commotion)," but Mains was
+distinctly pleased to see a little touch of worldliness, just enough to
+keep the new minister in touch with humanity.  "It 'll be queer stuff
+oor lads canna lift, an' a 'll gie ye a warranty that the' 'll no be a
+cup o' the cheeny broken," and then Saunderson conducted his
+congregation to the siding.
+
+"Dod, man," remarked Mains to the station-master, examining a truck
+with eight boxes; "the manse 'll no want for dishes at ony rate; but
+let's start on the furniture; whar hae ye got the rest o' the
+plenishing?
+
+"Naething mair? havers, man, ye dinna mean tae say they pack beds an'
+tables in boxes; a' doot there 's a truck missin'."  Then Mains went
+over where the minister was fidgeting beside his possessions.
+
+"No, no," said Saunderson, when the situation was put before him, "it's
+all here.  I counted the boxes, and I packed every box myself.  That
+top one contains the fathers--deal gently with it; and the Reformation
+divines are just below it.  Books are easily injured, and they feel it.
+I do believe there is a certain life in them, and . . . and . . . they
+don't like being ill-used," and Jeremiah looked wistfully at the
+ploughmen.
+
+"Div ye mean tae say," as soon as Mains had recovered, "that ye 've
+brocht naethin' for the manse but bukes, naither bed nor bedding?
+Keep's a'," as the situation grew upon him, "whar are ye tae sleep, and
+what are ye to sit on?  An' div ye never eat?  This croons a';" and
+Mains gazed at his new minister as one who supposed that he had taken
+Jeremiah's measure and had failed utterly.
+
+"_Mea culpa_--it's . . . my blame," and Saunderson was evidently
+humbled at this public exposure of his incapacity; "some slight
+furnishing will be expedient, even necessary, and I have a plan for
+book-shelves in my head; it is ingenious and convenient, and if there
+is a worker in wood . . ."
+
+"Come awa' tae the dog-cart, sir," said Mains, realising that even
+Kilbogie did not know what a singular gift they had obtained, and that
+discussion on such sublunary matters as pots and pans was useless, not
+to say profane.  So eight carts got a box each; one, Jeremiah's ancient
+kist of moderate dimensions; and the tenth--that none might be left
+unrecognised--a handbag that had been on the twelve years' probation
+with its master.  The story grew as it passed westwards, and when it
+reached us we were given to understand that the Free Kirk minister of
+Kilbogie had come to his parish with his clothing in a paper parcel and
+twenty-four packing cases filled with books, in as many languages--half
+of them dating from the introduction of printing, and fastened by
+silver clasps--and that if Drumtochty seriously desired to hear an
+intellectual sermon at a time, we must take our way through Tochty
+woods.
+
+Mrs. Pitillo took the minister into her hands, and compelled him to
+accompany her to Muirtown, where she had him at her will for some time,
+so that she equipped the kitchen (fully), a dining-room (fairly), a
+spare bedroom (amply), Mr. Saunderson's own bedroom (miserably), and
+secured a table and two chairs for the study.  This success turned her
+head.  Full of motherly forethought, and having a keen remembrance that
+probationers always retired in the afternoon at Mains to think over the
+evening's address, and left an impress of the human form on the bed
+when they came down to tea, Mrs. Pitillo suggested that a sofa would be
+an admirable addition to the study.  As soon as this piece of
+furniture, of a size suitable for his six feet, was pointed out to the
+minister, he took fright, and became quite unmanageable.  He would not
+have such an article in his study on any account, partly because it
+would only feed a tendency to sloth--which, he explained, was one of
+his besetting sins--and partly because it would curtail the space
+available for books, which, he indicated, were the proper furniture of
+any room, but chiefly of a study.  So great was his alarm that he
+repented of too early concessions about the other rooms, and explained
+to Mrs. Pitillo that every inch of space must be rigidly kept for the
+overflow from the study, which he expected--if he were spared--would
+reach the garrets.  Several times on their way back to Kilbogie,
+Saunderson looked wistfully at Mrs. Pitillo, and once opened his mouth
+as if to speak, from which she gathered that he was grateful for her
+kindness, but dared not yield any farther to the luxuries of the flesh.
+
+What this worthy woman endured in securing a succession of reliable
+housekeepers for Mr. Saunderson and overseeing the interior of that
+remarkable home, she was never able to explain to her own satisfaction,
+though she made many honest efforts, and one of her last intelligible
+utterances was a lamentable prophecy of the final estate of the Free
+Church manse of Kilbogie.  Mr. Saunderson himself seemed at times to
+have some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her
+name to Carmichael in feeling terms.  There had been some delay in
+providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles'
+walk from Drumtochty, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to
+take his meal standing for want of a chair.
+
+"While Mrs. Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting
+to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better
+ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree,
+and was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.
+
+"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an
+unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange
+them after an artificial fashion.  This she called tidying, and, in its
+most extreme form, cleaning."
+
+[Illustration: "She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my
+books."]
+
+"With all her excellencies, there was also in her what I have noticed
+in most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I
+was making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of
+comely editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the
+garden and dusted.  It was the space of two years before I regained
+mastery of my library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on
+the service book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second
+edition, to say nothing of an original edition of Rutherford's _Lex
+Rex_.
+
+"It does not become me, however, to reflect on the efforts of that
+worthy matron, for she was by nature a good woman, and if any one could
+be saved by good works, her place is assured.  I was with her before
+she died, and her last words to me were, 'Tell Jean tae dust yir bukes
+aince in the sax months, and for ony sake keep ae chair for sittin'
+on.'  It was not the testimony one would have desired in the
+circumstances, but yet, Mr. Carmichael, I have often thought that there
+was a spirit of . . . of unselfishness, in fact, that showed the
+working of grace."  Later in the same evening Mr. Saunderson's mind
+returned to his friend's spiritual state, for he entered into a long
+argument to show that while Mary was more spiritual, Martha must also
+have been within the Divine Election.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+IN THE GLOAMING.
+
+August is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it
+pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie.  The softness of the
+gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the
+honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the
+fields--for harvest is earlier down there than with us--and the cattle
+chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed
+peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination.  Fancies
+he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except
+his mother and his aunt.  There had been times when he and his set
+declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to
+be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union.  It was
+never completed--and therefore never signed--because the brotherhood
+could not agree about the duration of the vows--the draftsman, who has
+been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity,
+while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in
+the Moderator of Assembly.
+
+This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure
+boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk,
+but Carmichael had more of a mind on the matter.  There was in him an
+ascetic bent, inherited from some Catholic ancestor, and he was almost
+convinced that a minister would serve God with more abandonment in the
+celibate state.  As an only child, and brought up by a mother given to
+noble thoughts, he had learned to set women in a place by themselves,
+and considered marriage for ordinary men to flavour of sacrilege.  His
+mother had bound it as a law upon him that he was never to exercise his
+tongue on a woman's failings, never to argue with a woman unto her
+embarrassment, never to regard her otherwise than as his superior.
+Women noticed that Carmichael bore himself to them as if each were a
+Madonna, and treated him in turn according to their nature.  Some were
+abashed, and could not understand the lad's shyness; those were saints.
+Some were amused, and suspected him of sarcasm; those were less than
+saints.  Some horrified him unto confusion of face because of the
+shameful things they said.  One middle-aged female, whose conversation
+oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to
+sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak
+about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described
+him as a prude.  It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some
+women because he thought more highly of them than they thought of
+themselves.
+
+Carmichael was much tried by the baser of his fellow-students,
+especially a certain class of smug, self-contented, unctuous men, who
+neither had endured hardship to get to college, nor did any work at
+college.  They were described in reports as the "fruits of the
+revival," and had been taken from behind counters and sent to the
+University, not because they had any love of letters, like Domsie's
+lads at Drumtochty, but because rich old ladies were much impressed by
+the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they
+would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could
+gain by their own merits.  As Carmichael grew older, and therefore more
+charitable, he discovered with what faulty tools the work of the world
+and even of kirks is carried on, and how there is a root of good in
+very coarse and common souls.  When he was a young judge--from whom may
+the Eternal deliver us all--he was bitter against the "fruits," as he
+called them, because they did their best to escape examinations, and
+spoke in a falsetto voice, and had no interest in dogs, and because
+they told incredible tales of their spiritual achievements.  But
+chiefly did Carmichael's gorge rise against those unfortunates because
+of the mean way they spoke of marriage, and on this account, being a
+high-spirited young fellow, he said things which could hardly be
+defended, and of which afterwards he honestly repented.
+
+"Yes, religion is profitable for both worlds," one of them would exhort
+by the junior common-room fire, "and if you doubt it, look at me;
+five-and-twenty shillings a week as a draper's assistant was all I had,
+and no chance of rising.  Now I 'm a gentleman"--here Carmichael used
+to look at the uncleanly little man and snort--"and in two years I
+could ask any girl in religious society, and she would take me.  A
+minister can marry any woman, if he be evangelical.  Ah," he would
+conclude, with a fine strain of piety, "the Gospel is its own reward."
+
+What enraged Carmichael as he listened in the distance to these paeans
+of Pharisaism was the disgusting fact that the "fruits" did carry off
+great spoil in the marriage field, so that to a minister without
+culture, manners, or manliness, a middle-class family would give their
+pet daughter, when they would have refused her to a ten times better
+man fighting his way up in commerce.  If she died, then this
+enterprising buccaneer would achieve a second and third conquest, till
+in old age he would rival the patriarchs in the number of his wives and
+possessions.  As for the girl, Carmichael concluded that she was still
+under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a
+very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion.  This particular
+"fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness
+especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more
+illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made
+man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat
+disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry--a
+mysterious providence, as he often explained--but allowed him to enjoy
+life with a guarded satisfaction.  What Carmichael said to him about
+his ways and his Gospel was very unpleasant and quite unlike
+Carmichael's kindly nature, but the only revenge the victim took was to
+state his conviction that Scotland would have nothing to do with a man
+that was utterly worldly, and in after years to warn vacant churches
+against one who did not preach the Cross.
+
+After one of those common-room encounters, Carmichael used to fling
+himself out into the east wind and greyness of Edinburgh, fuming
+against the simplicity of good people, against the provincialism of his
+college, against the Pharisaism of his church, against the Philistinism
+of Scottish life.  He would go down to Holyrood and pity Queen Mary,
+transported from the gay court of France to Knox's Scotland, divided
+between theology and bloodshed.  In the evening he would sweep his
+table clean of German books on the Pentateuch, and cover it with prints
+of the old masters, which he had begun to collect, and ancient books of
+Catholic devotion, and read two letters to his mother from her uncle,
+who had been a Vicar-General, and died in an old Scottish convent in
+Spain.  There was very little in the letters beyond good wishes, and an
+account of the Vicar-General's health, but they seemed to link a Free
+Kirk divinity student on to the Holy Catholic Church.  Mother Church
+cast her spell over his imagination, and he envied the lot of her
+priests, who held a commission no man denied and administered a
+world-wide worship, whom a splendid tradition sanctioned, whom each of
+the arts hastened to aid; while he was to be the minister of a local
+sect and work with the "fruits," who knew nothing of Catholic
+Christianity, but supposed their little eddy, whereon they danced like
+rotten sticks, to be the main stream.  Next day a reaction would set
+in, and Carmichael would have a fit of Bohemianism, and resolve to be a
+man of letters.  So the big books on theology would again be set aside,
+and he would write an article for _Ferrier's Journal_, that kindliest
+of all journals to the young author, which he would receive back in a
+week "with thanks."  The Sunday night came, and Carmichael sat down to
+write his weekly letter to his mother--she got notes between, he found
+them all in her drawers, not a scrap missing--and as he wrote, his
+prejudices, and petulances, and fancies, and unrest passed away.
+Before he had told her all that happened to him during the
+week--touching gently on the poor Revivalist--although his mother had a
+saving sense of humour, and was a quite wonderful mimic--and saying
+nothing of his evening with St. Francis de Sales--for this would have
+alarmed her at once--he knew perfectly well that he would be neither a
+Roman nor a reporter, but a Free Kirk minister, and was not utterly
+cast down; for notwithstanding the yeasty commotion of youth and its
+censoriousness, he had a shrewd idea that a man is likely to do his
+life-work best in the tradition of his faith and blood.  Next morning
+his heart warmed as he went in through the college gates, and he would
+have defended Knox unto the death, as the maker of Scotland.  His
+fellow-students seemed now a very honest set of men, as indeed they
+were, although a trifle limited in horizon, and he hoped that one of
+the "fruits" was "satisfied with his Sunday's work," which shows that
+as often as a man of twenty-one gets out of touch with reality, he
+ought straightway to sit down and write to his mother.  Carmichael
+indeed told me one evening at the Cottage that he never had any
+mystical call to the ministry, but only had entered the Divinity Hall
+instead of going to Oxford because his mother had this for her heart's
+desire, and he loved her.  As a layman it perhaps did not become me to
+judge mysteries, but I dared to say that any man might well be guided
+by his mother in religion, and that the closer he kept to her memory
+the better he would do his work.  After which both of us smoked
+furiously, and Carmichael, two minutes later, was moved to remark that
+some Turkish I had then was enough to lure a man up Glen Urtach in the
+month of December.
+
+The young minister was stirred on the way to Kilbogie, and began to
+dream dreams in the twilight.  Love had come suddenly to him, and after
+an unexpected fashion.  Miss Carnegie was of another rank and another
+faith, nor was she even his ideal woman, neither conspicuously
+spiritual nor gentle, but frank, outspoken, fearless, self-willed.  He
+could also see that she had been spoiled by her father and his friends,
+who had given her _carte blanche_ to say and do what she pleased.  Very
+likely--he could admit that even in the first blush of his emotion--she
+might be passionate and prejudiced on occasion, even a fierce hater.
+This he had imagined in the Tochty woods, and was not afraid, for her
+imperfections seemed to him a provocation and an attraction.  They were
+the defects of her qualities--of her courage, candour, generosity,
+affection.  Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of
+her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the
+fascination of her manner.  She was free from the affectations,
+gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known.
+St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his
+heart, but life might have been a trifle tiresome if a man were married
+to a saint.  The saints have no humour, and do not relax.  Life with a
+woman like Miss Carnegie would be effervescent and stimulating, full of
+surprises and piquancy.  No, she was not a saint, but he felt by an
+instinct she was pure, loyal, reverent, and true at the core.  She was
+a gallant lass, and . . . he loved her.
+
+[Illustration: Mother Church cast her spell over his imagination.]
+
+What an absurdity was this revery, and Carmichael laughed aloud at
+himself.  Twice he had met Miss Carnegie--on one occasion she had found
+him watering strange dogs out of his hat, and on the other he had given
+her to understand that women were little removed from fools.  He had
+made the worst of himself, and this young woman who had lived with
+smart people must have laughed at him.  Very likely she had made him
+into a story, for as a raconteur himself he knew the temptation to work
+up raw material, or perhaps Miss Carnegie had forgotten long ago that
+he had called.  Suppose that he should call to-morrow on his way home
+and say, "General Carnegie, I think it right to tell you that I admire
+your daughter very much, and should like your permission to pay my
+addresses.  I am Free Church minister in Drumtochty, and my stipend is
+200 pounds a year" . . . his laugh this time was rather bitter.  The
+Carnegies would be at once admitted into the county set, and he would
+only meet them at a time . . .  Lord Hay was a handsome and pleasant
+young fellow.  He would be at Glen Urtach House for the shooting in a
+few days . . . that was a likely thing to happen . . . the families
+were old friends . . . there would be great festivities in the
+Glen . . . perhaps he would be asked to propose the bride's
+health . . .  It really seemed a providence that Saunderson should come
+along the road when he was playing the fool like a puling boy, for if
+any man could give a douche to love-sickness it was the minister of
+Kilbogie.
+
+Carmichael was standing in the shadow as Saunderson came along the
+road, and the faint light was a perfect atmosphere for the dear old
+bookman.  Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but
+with much poring over books and meditation he had descended some three
+inches.  His hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to
+genius, but because he forgot to get it cut, and with his flowing,
+untrimmed beard, was now quite grey.  Within his clothes he was the
+merest skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out in
+sharp outline, and his hands were almost transparent.  The redeeming
+feature in Saunderson was his eyes, which were large and eloquent, of a
+trustful, wistful hazel, the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal.  Whether
+he was expounding doctrines of an incredible disbelief in humanity or
+exalting, in rare moments, the riches of a divine love in which he did
+not expect to share, or humbly beseeching his brethren to give him
+information on some point in scholarship no one knew anything about
+except himself, or stroking the hair of some little child sitting upon
+his knee, those eyes were ever simple, honest, and most pathetic.
+Young ministers coming to the Presbytery full of self-conceit and new
+views were arrested by their light shining through the glasses, and
+came in a year or two to have a profound regard for Saunderson,
+curiously compounded of amusement at his ways, which for strangeness
+were quite beyond imagination, admiration for his knowledge, which was
+amazing for its accuracy and comprehensiveness, respect for his
+honesty, which feared no conclusion, however repellent to flesh and
+blood, but chiefly of love for the unaffected and shining goodness of a
+man in whose virgin soul neither self nor this world had any part.  For
+years the youngsters of the Presbytery knew not how to address the
+minister of Kilbogie, since any one who had dared to call him
+Saunderson, as they said "Carmichael" and even "MacWheep," though he
+was elderly, would have been deposed, without delay, from the
+ministry--so much reverence at least was in the lads--and "Mister"
+attached to this personality would be like a silk hat on the head of an
+Eastern sage.  Jenkins of Pitrodie always considered that he was
+inspired when he one day called Saunderson "Rabbi," and unto the day of
+his death Kilbogie was so called.  He made protest against the title as
+being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be
+understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it on
+the ground of his slender attainments.  The lads saw the force of this
+objection, and admitted that the honourable word belonged by rights to
+MacWheep, but it was their fancy to assign it to Saunderson--whereat
+Saunderson yielded, only exacting a pledge that he should never be so
+called in public, lest all concerned be condemned for foolishness.
+When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to
+confer the degree of D. D. on him for his distinguished learning and
+great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was
+delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an
+ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone
+out in a body and compelled him to accept.  They also purchased a
+Doctor's gown and hood, and invested him with them in the name of
+Kilbogie two days before the capping.  One of them saw that he was duly
+brought to the Tolbooth Kirk, where the capping ceremonial in those
+days took place.  Another sent a list of Saunderson's articles to
+British and foreign theological and philological reviews, which filled
+half a column of the _Caledonian_, and drew forth a complimentary
+article from that exceedingly able and caustic paper, whose editor lost
+all his hair through sympathetic emotion the morning of the Disruption,
+and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of the Free Kirk with much
+frankness.  The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so spread abroad that a
+great cheer went up as he came in with the other Doctors elect, in
+which he cordially joined, considering it to be intended for his
+neighbour, a successful West-end clergyman, the author of a Life of
+Dorcas and other pleasing booklets.  For some time after his boys said
+"Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common
+title, and fell back on Rabbi, by which he was known unto the day of
+his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.
+
+The Rabbi was tasting some morsel of literature as he came along, and
+halted opposite Carmichael, whom he did not see in the shadow, that he
+might enjoy it aloud.
+
+"That is French verse, Rabbi, I think, but it sounds archaic; is it
+from a Huguenot poet?"
+
+"Assuredly," replied the Rabbi, not one whit astonished that a man
+should come out from a hedge on Kilbogie road and recognise his
+quotation; "from Clement Marot, whom, as you remember, there is good
+evidence Queen Mary used to read.  It is you, John Carmichael."  The
+Rabbi awoke from the past, and held Carmichael's hand in both of his.
+"This was very mindful.  You were going home from Pitscowrie and turned
+aside to visit me.
+
+"It is unfortunate that I am hastening to a farm called the Mains, on
+the border of Pitscourie parish, to expound the Word; but you will go
+on to the Manse and straitly charge Barbara to give you food, and I
+will hasten to return."  And the Rabbi looked forward to the night with
+great satisfaction.
+
+"No, I am not coming from Pitscowrie, and you are not going there, as
+far as one can see.  Why, you are on your way to Tochty woods; you are
+going west instead of east; Rabbi, tell the truth, have you been
+snuffing?"
+
+This was a searching question, and full of history.  When the Rabbi
+turned his back against the wind to snuff with greater comfort, he was
+not careful to resume his original position, but continued cheerfully
+in the new direction.  This weakness was so well known that the school
+bairns would watch till he had started, and stand in a row on the road
+to block his progress.  Then there would be a parley, which would end
+in the Rabbi capitulating and rewarding the children with peppermints,
+whereupon they would see him fairly off again and go on their
+way--often looking back to see that he was safe, and somehow loving him
+all the more for his strange ways.  So much indeed was the Rabbi
+beloved that a Pitscowrie laddie, who described Saunderson freely as a
+"daftie" to Mains' grandson, did not see clearly for a week, and never
+recovered his lost front tooth.
+
+"That," remarked young Mains, "'ll learn Pitscowrie tae set up
+impidence aboot the minister."
+
+"There is no doubt, that I snuffed--it was at Claypots steading--but
+there was no wind that I should turn.  This is very remarkable, John,
+and . . . disconcerting.
+
+"These humiliations are doubtless a lesson," resumed the Rabbi as they
+hurried to Mains, "and a rebuke.  Snuffing is in no sense a necessity,
+and I have long recognised that the habit requires to be
+restricted--very carefully restricted.  For some time I have had fixed
+times--once in the forenoon, once in the afternoon, and again in the
+evening.  Had I restrained myself till my work was over and I had
+returned home this misadventure would not have occurred, whereby I have
+been hindered and the people will have been kept waiting for their
+spiritual food.
+
+"It is exactly twenty years to-night since I began this meeting in
+Mains," the Rabbi explained to Carmichael, "and I have had great
+pleasure in it and some profit.  My subject has been the Epistle to the
+Romans, and by the goodness of God we are approaching the last
+chapters.  The salutations will take about a year or so; Rufus, chosen
+in the Lord, will need careful treatment; and then I thought, if I were
+spared, of giving another year to a brief review of the leading points
+of doctrine; eh?"
+
+Carmichael indicated that the family at Mains would almost expect
+something of the sort, and inquired whether there might not be a few
+passages requiring separate treatment at fuller length than was
+possible in this hurried commentary.
+
+"Quite so, John, quite so; no one is more bitterly conscious of the
+defects of this exposition than myself--meagre and superficial to a
+degree, both in the patristic references and the experimental
+application; but we are frail creatures, John, and it is doubtful
+whether the exposition of any book should extend unto a generation.  It
+has always caused me regret that Mains--I mean the father of the
+present tenant--departed before we had come to the comfort of the
+eighth chapter."
+
+The Rabbi's mind was much affected by this thought, and twice in the
+kitchen his eye wandered to the chair where his friend had sat, with
+his wife beside him.  From Priscilla and Aquila he was led into the
+question of hospitality, on which he spoke afterwards till they came to
+the Manse, where he stationed Carmichael on the doorstep till he
+secured a light.
+
+"There is a parcel of books on the floor, partially opened, and the way
+of passing is narrow and somewhat dangerous in the darkness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+KILBOGIE MANSE.
+
+Ministers there were in the great strath so orderly that they kept
+their sealing-wax in one drawer and their string in another, while
+their sermons were arranged under the books of the Bible, and tied with
+green silk.  Dr. Dowbiggin, though a dull man and of a heavy carriage,
+could find in an instant the original draft of a motion on instrumental
+music he made in the Presbytery of Muirtown in the year '59, and could
+also give the exact page in the blue-books for every word he had
+uttered in the famous case when he showed that the use of a harmonium
+to train MacWheep's choir was a return to the bondage of Old Testament
+worship.  His collection of pamphlets was supposed to be unique, and
+was a terror to controversialists, no man knowing when a rash utterance
+on the bottomless mystery of "spiritual independence" might not be
+produced from the Doctor's coat-tail pocket.  He retired to rest at
+10.15, and rose at six, settling the subject of his next sermon on
+Sabbath evening, and finishing the first head before breakfast on
+Monday morning.  He had three hats--one for funerals, one for
+marriages, one for ordinary occasions--and has returned from the
+Presbytery door to brush his coat.  Morning prayers in Dr. Dowbiggin's
+house were at 8.05, and the wrath of the Doctor was so dangerous that
+one probationer staying at the manse, and not quite independent of
+influence, did not venture to undress, but snatched a fearful doze
+sitting upright on a cane-bottomed chair, lest he should not be in at
+the psalm.  Young ministers of untidy habits regarded Dr. Dowbiggin's
+study with despair, and did not recover their spirits till they were
+out of Muirtown.  Once only did this eminent man visit the manse of
+Kilbogie, and in favourable moments after dinner he would give his
+choicer experiences.
+
+"It is my invariable custom to examine the bed to see that everything
+is in order, and any one sleeping in Kilbogie Manse will find the good
+of such a precaution.  I trust that I am not a luxurious person--it
+would ill become one who came out in '43--but I have certainly become
+accustomed to the use of sheets.  When I saw there were none on the
+bed, I declined to sleep without them, and I indicated my mind very
+distinctly on the condition of the manse.
+
+"Would you believe it?" the Doctor used to go on.  "Saunderson
+explained, as if it were a usual occurrence, that he had given away all
+the spare linen in his house to a girl that had to marry in . . .
+urgent circumstances, and had forgotten to get more.  And what do you
+think did he offer as a substitute for sheets?"  No one could even
+imagine what might not occur to the mind of Saunderson.
+
+"Towels, as I am an honourable man; a collection of towels, as he put
+it, 'skilfully attached together, might make a pleasant covering.'
+That is the first and last time I ever slept in the Free Church Manse
+of Kilbogie.  As regards Saunderson's study, I will guarantee that the
+like of it cannot be found within Scotland," and at the very thought of
+it that exact and methodical ecclesiastic realised the limitations of
+language.
+
+His boys boasted of the Rabbi's study as something that touched genius
+in its magnificent disorderliness, and Carmichael was so proud of it
+that he took me to see it as to a shrine.  One whiff of its atmosphere
+as you entered the door gave an appetite and raised the highest
+expectations.  For any bookman can estimate a library by scent--if an
+expert he could even write out a catalogue of the books and sketch the
+appearance of the owner.  Heavy odour of polished mahogany, Brussels
+carpets, damask curtains and tablecloths; then the books are kept
+within glass, consist of sets of standard works in half calf, and the
+owner will give you their cost wholesale to a farthing.  Faint
+fragrance of delicate flowers, and Russia leather, with a hint of
+cigarettes; prepare yourself for a marvellous wall-paper, etchings,
+bits of oak, limited editions, and a man in a velvet coat.  Smell of
+paste and cloth binding and general newness means yesterday's books and
+a man racing through novels with a paper knife.  Those are only
+book-rooms by courtesy, and never can satisfy any one who has breathed
+the sacred air.  It is a rich and strong spirit, not only filling the
+room, but pouring out from the door and possessing the hall, redeeming
+an opposite dining-room from grossness, and a more distant drawing-room
+from frivolity, and even lending a goodly flavour to bedrooms on upper
+floors.  It is distilled from curious old duodecimos packed on high
+shelves out of sight, and blows over folios, with large clasps, that
+once stood in monastery libraries, and gathers a subtle sweetness from
+parchments that were illuminated in ancient scriptoriums, that are now
+grass grown, and is fortified with good old musty calf.  The wind was
+from the right quarter on the first day I visited Kilbogie Manse, and
+as we went up the garden walk the Rabbi's library already bade us
+welcome, and assured us of our reward for a ten miles' walk.
+
+Saunderson was perfectly helpless in all manner of mechanics--he could
+not drive a tack through anything except his own fingers, and had given
+up shaving at the suggestion of his elders--and yet he boasted, with
+truth, that he had got three times as many books into the study as his
+predecessor possessed in all his house.  For Saunderson had shelved the
+walls from the floor to the ceiling, into every corner and over the
+doors, and above the windows, as well as below them.  The wright had
+wished to leave the space clear above the mantelpiece.
+
+"Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there, or maybe John Knox, and a bit
+clock 'll be handy for letting ye ken the 'oors on Sabbath."
+
+[Illustration: "Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there."]
+
+The Rabbi admitted that he had a Knox, but was full of a scheme for
+hanging him over his own history, which he considered both appropriate
+and convenient.  As regards time, it was the last thing of which that
+worthy man desired to be reminded--going to bed when he could no longer
+see for weariness, and rising as soon as he awoke, taking his food when
+it was brought to him, and being conducted to church by the beadle
+after the last straggler was safely seated.  He even cast covetous eyes
+upon the two windows, which were absurdly large, as he considered, but
+compromised matters by removing the shutters and filling up the vacant
+space with slender works of devotion.  It was one of his conceits that
+the rising sun smote first on an À Kempis, for this he had often
+noticed as he worked of a morning.
+
+Book-shelves had long ago failed to accommodate Rabbi's treasures, and
+the floor had been bravely utilised.  Islands of books, rugged and
+perpendicular, rose on every side; long promontories reached out from
+the shore, varied by bold headlands; and so broken and varied was that
+floor that the Rabbi was pleased to call it the Aegean Sea, where he
+had his Lesbos and his Samos.  It is absolutely incredible, but it is
+all the same a simple fact, that he knew every book and its location,
+having a sense of the feel as well as the shape of his favourites.
+This was not because he had the faintest approach to orderliness--for
+he would take down twenty volumes and never restore them to the same
+place by any chance.  It was a sort of motherly instinct by which he
+watched over them all, even loved prodigals that wandered over all the
+study and then set off on adventurous journeys into distant rooms.  The
+restoration of an emigrant to his lawful home was celebrated by a feast
+in which, by a confusion of circumstances, the book played the part of
+the fatted calf, being read afresh from beginning to end.  During his
+earlier and more agile years the Rabbi used to reach the higher levels
+of his study by wonderful gymnastic feats, but after two falls--one
+with three Ante-Nicene fathers in close pursuit--he determined to call
+in assistance.  This he did after an impressive fashion.  When he
+attended the roup at Pitfoodles--a day of historical prices--and
+purchased in open competition, at three times its value, a small stack
+ladder, Kilbogie was convulsed, and Mains had to offer explanations.
+
+"He 's cuttit aff seevin feet, and rins up it tae get his tapmaist
+bukes, but that's no a'," and then Mains gave it to be understood that
+the rest of the things the minister had done with that ladder were
+beyond words.  For in order that the rough wood might not scar the
+sensitive backs of the fathers, the Rabbi had covered the upper end
+with cloth, and for that purpose had utilised a pair of trousers.  It
+was not within his ability in any way to reduce or adapt his material,
+so that those interesting garments remained in their original shape,
+and, as often as the ladder stood reversed, presented a very impressive
+and diverting spectacle.  It was the inspiration of one of Carmichael's
+most successful stories--how he had done his best to console a woman on
+the death of her husband, and had not altogether failed, till she
+caught sight of the deceased's nether garments waving disconsolately on
+a rope in the garden, when she refused to be comforted.  "Toom (empty)
+breeks tae me noo," and she wept profusely, "toom breeks tae me."
+
+One of the great efforts of the Rabbi's life was to seat his visitors,
+since, beyond the one chair, accommodation had to be provided on the
+table, wheresoever there happened to be no papers, and on the ledges of
+the bookcases.  It was pretty to see the host suggesting from a long
+experience those coigns of vantage he counted easiest and safest,
+giving warnings also of unsuspected danger in the shape of restless
+books that might either yield beneath one's feet or descend on one's
+head.  Carmichael, however, needed no such guidance, for he knew his
+way about in the marvellous place, and at once made for what the boys
+called the throne of the fathers.  This was a lordly seat, laid as to
+its foundation in mediaeval divines of ponderous content, but
+excellently finished with the Benedictine edition of St. Augustine,
+softened by two cushions, one for a seat and another for a back.  Here
+Carmichael used to sit in great content, smoking and listening while
+the Rabbi hunted an idea through Scripture with many authorities, or
+defended the wildest Calvinism with strange, learned arguments; from
+this place he would watch the Rabbi searching for a lost note on some
+passage of Holy Writ amid a pile of papers two feet deep, through which
+he burrowed on all fours, or climbing for a book on the sky-line, to
+forget his errand and to expound some point of doctrine from the top of
+the ladder.
+
+"You 're comfortable, John, and you do not want to put off your boots
+after all that travelling to and fro? then I will search for Barbara,
+and secure some refreshment for our bodies," and Carmichael watched the
+Rabbi depart with pity, for he was going on a troublous errand.
+
+Housekeepers are, after beadles, the most wonderful functionaries in
+the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, and every species could be found
+within a day's journey of Drumtochty.  Jenkins, indeed, suggested that
+a series of papers on Church Institutions read at the clerical club
+should include one on housekeepers, and offered to supply the want,
+which was the reason why Dr. Dowbiggin refused to certify him to a
+vacancy, speaking of him as "frivolous and irresponsible."  The class
+ranged from Sarah of Drumtochty, who could cook and knew nothing about
+ecclesiastical affairs, to that austere damsel, Margaret Meiklewham of
+Pitscowrie, who had never prepared an appetising meal in her life, but
+might have sat as an elder in the Presbytery.
+
+Among all her class, Barbara MacCluckie stood an easy worst, being the
+most incapable, unsightly, evil-tempered, vexatious woman into whose
+hands an unmarried man had ever been delivered.  MacWheep had his own
+trials, but his ruler saw that he had sufficient food and some comfort,
+but Barbara laid herself out to make the Rabbi's life a misery.  He
+only obtained his meals as a favour, and an extra blanket had to be won
+by a week's abject humiliation.  Fire was only allowed him at times,
+and he secured oil for his lamp by stratagems.  Latterly he was glad to
+send strange ministers to Mains, and his boys alone forced lodgment in
+the manse.  The settlement of Barbara was the great calamity of the
+Rabbi's life, and was the doing of his own good nature.  He first met
+her when she came to the manse one evening to discuss the unlawfulness
+of infant baptism and the duty of holding Sunday on Saturday, being the
+Jewish Sabbath.  His interest deepened on learning that she had been
+driven from twenty-nine situations through the persecution of the
+ungodly; and on her assuring him that she had heard a voice in a dream
+bidding her take charge of Kilbogie Manse, the Rabbi, who had suffered
+many things at the hands of young girls given to lovers, installed
+Barbara, and began to repent that very day.  A tall, bony, forbidding
+woman, with a squint and a nose turning red, as she stated, from
+chronic indigestion, let it be said for her that she did not fall into
+the sins of her predecessors.  It was indeed a pleasant jest in
+Kilbogie for four Sabbaths that she allowed a local Romeo, who knew not
+that his Juliet was gone, to make his adventurous way to her bedroom
+window, and then showed such an amazing visage that he was laid up for
+a week through the suddenness of his fall.  What the Rabbi endured no
+one knew, but his boys understood that the only relief he had from
+Barbara's tyranny was on Sabbath evening, when she stated her
+objections to the doctrine, and threatened henceforward to walk into
+Muirtown in order to escape from unsound doctrine.  On such occasions
+the Rabbi laid himself out for her instruction with much zest, and he
+knew when he had produced an impression, for then he went supperless to
+bed.  Between this militant spirit and the boys there was an undying
+feud, and Carmichael was not at all hurt to hear her frank references
+to himself.
+
+[Illustration: A tall, bony, forbidding woman.]
+
+"What need he come stravagin' doon frae Drumtochty for? it wud set him
+better tae wait on his ain fouk.  A licht-headed fellow, they say as
+kens; an' as for his doctrine--weel, maybe it 'll dae for Drumtochty.
+
+"Tea?  Did ye expect me tae hae biling water at this 'oor o' the nicht?
+My word, the money wud flee in this hoose gin a' wesna here.  Milk 'll
+dae fine for yon birkie: he micht be gled tae get onything, sorning on
+a respectable manse every ither week."
+
+"You will pardon our humble provision"--this is how the Rabbi prepared
+Carmichael; "we have taken my worthy Abigail unawares, and she cannot
+do for us what in other circumstances would be her desire.  She has a
+thorn in the flesh which troubles her, and makes her do what she would
+not; but I am convinced that her heart is right."
+
+That uncompromising woman took no notice of Drumtochty, but busied
+herself in a search for the Rabbi's bag, which he insisted had been
+brought home from Muirtown that morning, and which was at last found
+covered with books.
+
+"Do not open it at present, Barbara; you can identify the contents
+later if it be necessary, but I am sure they are all right," and the
+Rabbi watched Barbara's investigations with evident anxiety.
+
+"Maybe ye hae brocht back what ye started wi', but gin ye hev, it's the
+first time a' can mind.  Laist sacrament at Edinburgh ye pickit up twal
+books, ae clothes brush, an' a crochet cover for a chair, an' left
+a'thing that belonged tae ye."
+
+"It was an inadvertence; but I obtained a drawer for my own use this
+time, and I was careful to pack its contents into the bag, leaving
+nothing."  But the Rabbi did not seem over-confident.
+
+"There 's nae question that ye hev filled the pack," said Barbara, with
+much deliberation and an ominous calmness; "but whether wi' yir ain
+gear or some ither body's, a'll leave ye tae judge yirsel'.  A 'll
+juist empty the bag on the bukes;" and Barbara selected a bank of
+Puritans for the display of her master's spoil.
+
+"Ae slipbody (bodice), well hemmed and gude stuff--ye didna tak' that
+wi' ye, at ony rate; twa pillow slips--they 'll come in handy, oor ain
+are wearin' thin; ae pair o' sheets--'ll juist dae for the next trimmie
+that ye want tae set up in her hoose; this 'll be a bolster slip, a 'm
+judgin'--"
+
+"It must be the work of Satan," cried the poor Rabbi, who constantly
+saw the hand of the great enemy in the disorder of his study.  "I
+cannot believe that my hands packed such garments in place of my own."
+
+"Ye 'll be satisfied when ye read the name; it's plain eneuch; ye
+needna gang dodderin' aboot here and there lookin' for yir glasses;
+there's twa pair on your head already;" for it was an hour of triumph
+to Barbara's genial soul.
+
+"It's beyond understanding," murmured the Rabbi.  "I must have mistaken
+one drawer for another in the midst of meditation;" and then, when
+Barbara had swept out of the room with the varied linen on her arm,
+"this is very humiliating, John, and hard to bear."
+
+"Nonsense, Rabbi; it's one of the finest things you have ever done.
+Half a dozen journeys of that kind would refurnish the manse; it's just
+a pity you can't annex a chair;" but he saw that the good man was
+sorely vexed.
+
+"You are a good lad, John, and it is truly marvellous what charity I
+have received at the hands of young men who might have scorned and
+mocked me.  God knows how my heart has been filled with gratitude, and
+I . . . have mentioned your names in my unworthy prayers that God may
+do to you all according to the kindness ye have shown unto me."
+
+It was plain that this lonely, silent man was much moved, and
+Carmichael did not speak.
+
+"People consider that I am ignorant of my failings and weaknesses, and
+I can bear witness with a clear conscience that I am not angry when
+they smile and nod the head; why should I be?  But, John, it is known
+to myself only and Him before whom all hearts are open how great is my
+suffering in being among my neighbours as a sparrow upon the housetop.
+
+"May you never know, John, what it is to live alone and friendless till
+you lose the ways of other men and retire within yourself, looking out
+on the multitude passing on the road as a hermit from his cell, and
+knowing that some day you will die alone, with none to . . . give you a
+draught of water."
+
+"Rabbi, Rabbi"--for Carmichael was greatly distressed at the woe in the
+face opposite him, and his heart was tender that night--"why should you
+have lived like that?  Do not be angry, but . . . did God intend . . .
+it cannot be wrong . . .  I mean . . . God did give Eve to Adam."
+
+"Laddie, why do ye speak with fear and a faltering voice?  Did I say
+aught against that gracious gift or the holy mystery of love, which is
+surely the sign of the union betwixt God and the soul, as is set forth
+after a mystical shape in the Song of Songs?  But it was not for
+me--no, not for me.  I complain not, neither have I vexed my soul.  He
+doeth all things well."
+
+"But, dear Rabbi"--and Carmichael hesitated, not knowing where he stood.
+
+"Ye ask me why"--the Rabbi anticipated the question--"and I will tell
+you plainly, for my heart has ever gone forth to you.  For long years I
+found no favour in the eyes of the Church, and it seemed likely I would
+be rejected from the ministry as a man useless and unprofitable.  How
+could I attempt to win the love of any maiden, since it did not appear
+to be the will of God that I should ever have a place of habitation?
+It consisted not with honour, for I do hold firmly that no man hath any
+right to seek unto himself a wife till he have a home."
+
+"But . . ."
+
+"Afterwards, you would say.  Ah, John, then had I become old and
+unsightly, not such a one as women could care for.  It would have been
+cruel to tie a maid for life to one who might only be forty years in
+age, but was as seventy in his pilgrimage, and had fallen into unlovely
+habits."
+
+Then the Rabbi turned on Carmichael his gentle eyes, that were shining
+with tears.
+
+"It will be otherwise with you, and so let it be.  May I live to see
+you rejoicing with the wife of your youth."
+
+So it came to pass that it was to this unlikely man Carmichael told his
+new-born love, and he was amazed at the understanding of the Rabbi, as
+well as his sympathy and toleration.
+
+"A maid of spirit--and that is an excellent thing; and any excess will
+be tamed by life.  Only see to it that ye agree in that which lieth
+beneath all churches and maketh souls one in God.  May He prosper you
+in your wooing as He did the patriarch Jacob, and far more abundantly."
+
+Very early in the morning Carmichael awoke, and being tempted by the
+sunrise, arose and went downstairs.  As he came near the study door he
+heard a voice in prayer, and knew that the Rabbi had been all night in
+intercession.
+
+"Thou hast denied me wife and child; deny me not Thyself. . . .  A
+stranger Thou hast made me among men; refuse me not a place in the
+City. . . .  Deal graciously with this lad who has been to me as a son
+in the Gospel. . . .  He has not despised an old man; put not his heart
+to confusion. . . ."
+
+Carmichael crept upstairs again, but not to sleep, and at breakfast he
+pledged the Rabbi to come up some day and see Kate Carnegie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT.
+
+English folk have various festivals in the religious year, as becometh
+a generous country, but in our austere and thrifty Glen there was only
+one high day, and that was Sacrament Sabbath.  It is rumoured--but one
+prefers not to believe scandals--that the Scottish Kirk nowadays is
+encouraging a monthly Sacrament, after which nothing remains in the way
+of historical declension except for people to remain for the Sacrament
+as it may occur to them, and for men like Drumsheugh to get up at
+meetings to give their religious experiences, when every one that has
+any understanding will know that the reserve has gone out of Scottish
+character, and the reverence from Scottish faith.  Dr. Davidson's
+successor, a boisterous young man of bourgeois manners, elected by
+popular vote, has got guilds, where Hillocks' granddaughter reads
+papers on Emerson and refers to the Free Kirk people as Dissenters, but
+things were different in the old days before the Revolution.  The
+Doctor had such unquestioning confidence in himself that he considered
+his very presence a sufficient defence for the Kirk, and was of such
+perfect breeding that he regarded other Kirks with unbroken charity.
+He was not the man to weary the parish with fussy little schemes, and
+he knew better than level down the Sacrament.  It was the summit of the
+year to which the days climbed, from which they fell away, and it was
+held in the middle of August.  Then nature was at her height in the
+Glen, and had given us of her fulness.  The barley was golden, and,
+rustling in the gentle wind, wearied for the scythe; the oats were
+changing daily, and had only so much greenness as would keep the
+feathery heads firm for the handling; the potatoes having received the
+last touch of the plough, were well banked up and flowering pleasantly;
+the turnips, in fine levels, like Hillocks', or gently sloping fields,
+like Menzies', were so luxuriant that a mere townsman could not have
+told the direction of the drills; the hay had been gathered into long
+stacks like unto the shape of a two-storied house, and the fresh
+aftermath on the field was yielding sweet morsels for the horses of an
+evening; the pasture was rich with the hardy white clover, and one
+could hear from the road the cattle taking full mouthfuls; young spring
+animals, like calves and lambs, were now falling into shape and
+beginning independent life, though with an occasional hankering after
+the past, when the lambs would fall a-bleating for their mothers, and
+calves would hang about the gate at evening, where they had often
+fought shamelessly to get a frothy nose once more into the milk-pail.
+
+Our little gardens were full a-blow, a very blaze and maze of colour
+and foliage, wherein the owner wandered of an evening examining flowers
+and fruit with many and prolonged speculations--much aided by the smoke
+of tobacco--as to the chance of gaining a second at our horticultural
+show with his stocks, or honourable mention for a dish of mixed fruit.
+The good wife might be seen of an afternoon about that time, in a
+sun-bonnet and a gown carefully tucked up, gathering her berry harvest
+for preserves, with two young assistants, who worked at a modest
+distance from their mother, very black as to their mouths, and
+preserving the currants, as they plucked them, by an instantaneous
+process of their own invention.  Next afternoon a tempting fragrance of
+boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same
+assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of
+black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of
+blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really
+the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome.
+Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live
+in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories.  Some man
+reading these pages will remember that red-letter day of the
+summer-time long ago, and the faithful hands that plucked the fruit,
+and the old kitchen, with its open beams, and the peat fire glowing
+red, and the iron arm that held the copper-lined pan--much lent round
+the district--and the smack of the hot, sweet berries, more grateful
+than any banquet of later days.
+
+[Illustration: Gathering her berry harvest.]
+
+The bees worked hard in this time of affluence, and came staggering
+home with spoil from the hills, but it was holiday season on the farms.
+Between the last labours on the roots and the beginning of harvest
+there was no exacting demand from the land, and managing farmers
+invented tasks to fill up the hours.  An effort was made to restore
+carts and implements to their original colour, which was abruptly
+interrupted by the first day of cutting, so that one was not surprised
+to see a harvest cart blue on one side and a rich crusted brown on the
+other.  Drumsheugh would even send his men to road-making, and
+apologise to the neighbours--"juist reddin' up aboot the doors"--while
+Saunders the foreman and his staff laboured in a shamefaced manner like
+grown-ups playing at a children's game.  Hillocks used to talk vaguely
+about going to see a married sister in Glasgow, and one year got as far
+as Kildrummie, where he met Piggie Walker, and returned to have a deal
+in potatoes with that enterprising man.  More than once Drumsheugh--but
+then his position was acknowledged--set off on the Monday for
+Carnoustie with a large carpet bag containing, among other things, two
+pounds of butter and two dozen eggs, and announced his intention of
+spending a fortnight at the "saut water."  The kirkyard would bid him
+good-bye, and give him a united guarantee that Sabbath would be kept at
+Drumtochty during his absence, but the fathers were never astonished to
+see the great man drop into Muirtown market next Friday on his way
+west--having found four days of unrelieved gaiety at that Scottish
+Monaco enough for flesh and blood.
+
+This season of small affairs was redeemed by the Sacrament, and
+preparations began far off with the cleaning of the kirk.  As early as
+June our beadle had the face of one with something on his mind, and
+declined to pledge himself for roups of standing corn, where his
+presence was much valued, not on business grounds, but as an official
+sanction of the proceedings.  Drumtochty always felt that Dr. Davidson
+was fully represented by his man, and John could no longer disentangle
+the two in his own mind--taking a gloomy view of the parish when he was
+laid up by lumbago and the Doctor had to struggle on single-handed, and
+regarding the future when both would be gone with despair.
+
+"Ay, ay, Hillocks," he once remarked to that worthy, "this 'll be a
+queer-like place when me an' the Doctor 's awa'.
+
+"Na, na, a' daurna promise for the roup, but ye can cairry it on
+whether a 'm there or no; prices dinna hang on a beadle, and they 're
+far mair than appearances.  A 'm juist beginning tae plan the reddin'
+up for the Saicrament, an' a 've nae speerit for pleesure; div ye ken,
+Hillocks, a' wud actually coont a funeral distrackin'."
+
+"Ye hev an awfu' responsibility, there 's nae doot o' that, John, but
+gin ye juist jined the fouk for ae field, it wud be an affset tae the
+day, an' the auctioneer wud be lifted."
+
+With the beginning of July, John fairly broke ground in the great
+effort, and was engaged thereon for six weeks, beginning with the
+dusting of the pulpit and concluding with the beating of Drumsheugh's
+cushion.  During that time the Doctor only suggested his wants to John,
+and the fathers themselves trembled of a Sabbath morning lest in a
+moment of forgetfulness they might carry in some trace of their farms
+with them and mar the great work.  It was pretty to see Whinnie
+labouring at his feet in a grassy corner, while John watched him from
+the kirk door with an unrelenting countenance.
+
+The elders also had what might be called their cleaning at this season,
+examining into the cases of any who had made a "mistak'" since last
+August, and deciding whether they should be allowed to "gang forrit."
+These deliberations were begun at the door, where Drumsheugh and Domsie
+stood the last five minutes before the Doctor appeared, and were open
+to the congregation, who from their places within learned the
+offenders' prospects.
+
+"The Doctor 'll dae as he considers richt, an' he 's juist ower easy
+pleased wi' onybody 'at starts a-greetin', but yon's ma jidgment,
+Dominie."
+
+"I do not wish to dispute with you, Drumsheugh"--Domsie always spoke
+English on such occasions--"and the power of the keys is a solemn
+charge.  But we must temper a just measure of severity with a spirit of
+mercy."
+
+"Ye may temper this or temper that," said Drumsheugh, going to the root
+of the matter, "but a' tell ye, Dominie, there's ower mony o' thae
+limmers in the country juist noo, an' a 'm for making an example o'
+Jean Ferguson."
+
+So Jean did not present herself for a token on the approaching
+Fast-day, and sat out with the children during the Sacrament with as
+becoming an expression of penitence as her honest, comely face could
+accomplish.  Nor did Jean or her people bear any grudge against the
+Doctor or the Session for their severity.  She had gone of her own
+accord to confess her fault, and was willing that her process of
+cleansing should be thorough before she received absolution.  When a
+companion in misfortune spoke of the greater leniency of Pitscowrie,
+Jean expressed her thankfulness that she was of Drumtochty.
+
+"Nane o' yir loose wys for me--gie me a richt minister as dis his
+duty;" which showed that whatever might be her deflections in practice,
+Jean's ideas of morals were sound.
+
+Preparations in the parish at large began two weeks before the
+Sacrament, when persons whose attendance had been, to say the least,
+irregular slipped in among the fathers without ostentation, and
+dropping into a conversation on the weather, continued, as it were,
+from last Sabbath, used it skilfully to offer an apology for past
+failures in church observance.
+
+"It's keepit up wonderfu' through the week, for a' never like ower
+bricht mornin's," old Sandie Ferguson would remark casually, whose
+arrival, swallow-like, heralded the approach of the great occasion.
+"The roads are graund the noo frae the heich (high glen); we 've hed an
+awfu' winter, neeburs, up oor wy--clean blockit up.  Them 'at lives
+ablow are michty favoured, wi' the kirk at their door."
+
+"It's maist extraordinar' hoo the seasons are changin'"--Jamie Soutar
+could never resist Sandie's effrontery--"A' mind when Mairch saw the
+end o' the snow, an' noo winter is hangin' aboot in midsummer.  A'm
+expeckin' tae hear, in another five year, that the drifts last through
+the Sacrament in August.  It 'll be a sair trial for ye, Sandie, a
+wullin' kirkgoer--but ye 'll hae the less responsibility."
+
+"Millhole 's here, at ony rate, the day, an' we 're gled tae see
+him"--for Drumsheugh's pride was to have a large Sacrament--and so
+Sandie would take his place at an angle to catch the Doctor's eye, and
+pay such rapt attention to the sermon that any one not knowing the
+circumstances might have supposed that he had just awaked from sleep.
+
+Ploughmen who on other Sabbaths slept in the forenoon and visited their
+sweethearts the rest of the day, presented themselves for tokens on the
+Fast-day, and made the one elaborate toilette of the year on Saturday
+evening, when they shaved in turns before a scrap of glass hung outside
+the bothy door, and the foreman, skilled in the clipping of horses, cut
+their hair, utilising a porridge bowl with much ingenuity to secure a
+round cut.  They left early on the Sabbath morning, and formed
+themselves into a group against the gable of the kirk,--being reviewed
+with much satisfaction by Drumsheugh, who had a keen eye for absentees
+from the religious function of the year.  At the first sound of the
+bell the ploughmen went into kirk a solid mass, distributing themselves
+in the servants' pews attached to the farmers' pews, and maintaining an
+immovable countenance through every part of the service, any tendency
+to somnolence being promptly and effectually checked by the foreman,
+who allowed himself some ease when alone on other days, but on
+Sacrament Sabbath realised his charge and never closed an eye.  The
+women and children proceeded to their places on arrival, and the
+fathers followed them as the bell gave signs of ceasing.  Drumsheugh
+and Domsie then came in from the plate and the administration of
+discipline, and the parish waited as one man for the appearance of John
+with the Bible, the Doctor following, and envied those whose seat
+commanded the walk from the manse down which the procession came every
+Sabbath with dignity, but once a year with an altogether peculiar
+majesty.
+
+Drumtochty exiles meeting in London or other foreign places and
+recalling the Glen, never part without lighting on John and passing
+contempt on all officials beside him.  "Ye mind John?" one will say,
+wagging his head with an amazement that time and distance has in no
+wise cooled, and his fellow glensman will reply, "Ay, ye may traivel
+the warld ower or ye see his marrow."  Then they will fall into a
+thoughtful silence, and each knows that his neighbour is following John
+as he comes down the kirkyard on the great day.  "Comin' in at the door
+lookin' as if he didna ken there wes a body in the kirk, a' aye coontit
+best," but his friend has another preference.  "It wes fine, but, man,
+tae see him set the bukes doon on the pulpit cushion, and then juist
+gie ae glisk roond the kirk as much as tae say, 'What think ye o'
+that?' cowed a' thing."  It has been given to myself amid other
+privileges to see (and store in a fond memory) the walk of a University
+mace-bearer, a piper at the Highland gathering, a German stationmaster
+(after the war), and an alderman (of the old school), but it is bare
+justice to admit, although I am not of Drumtochty, but only as a
+proselyte of the gate, that none of those efforts is at all to be
+compared with John's achievement.  Within the manse the Doctor was
+waiting in pulpit array, grasping his father's snuff-box in a firm
+right hand, and it was understood that, none seeing them, and as a
+preparation for the strain that would immediately be upon them, both
+the minister and his man relaxed for a minute.
+
+"Is there a respectable attendance, John?" and the Doctor would take a
+preliminary pinch.  "Drumsheugh does not expect many absentees."
+
+"Naebody 's missin' that a' cud see, sir, except that ill gettit
+wratch, Tammie Ronaldson, and a' coont him past redemption.  A' gaed in
+as a' cam doon, and gin he wesna lyin' in his bed sleepin' an' snorin'
+like a heathen."
+
+"Well, John, did you do your duty as an officer of the church?"
+
+"A' stood ower him, Doctor, an' a' juist said tae masel', 'Shall a'
+smite wi' the sword?' but a' left him alane for this time."  And so
+they started--John in front with the books, and the Doctor a pace
+behind, his box now in the left hand, with a handkerchief added, and
+the other holding up his gown, both dignitaries bare-headed,
+unself-conscious, absorbed in their office.
+
+The books were carried level with the top button of John's
+waistcoat--the Psalm-book being held in its place by the two extended
+thumbs--and neither were allowed to depart from the absolute horizontal
+by an eighth of an inch, even going up the pulpit stairs.  When they
+had been deposited in their place, and slightly patted, just to settle
+them, John descended to make way for the Doctor, who had been waiting
+beneath in a commanding attitude.  He then followed the minister up,
+and closed the door--not with a bang, but yet so that all might know he
+had finished his part of the work.  If any one had doubted how much
+skill went to this achievement, he had his eyes opened when John had
+the lumbago, and the smith arrived at the kirk door three yards ahead
+of the Doctor, and let the Psalm-book fall on the pulpit floor.
+
+"We 're thankfu' tae hae ye back, John," said Hillocks.  "Yon wes a
+temptin' o' Providence."
+
+Once only had I the privilege of seeing John in this his glory, and the
+sight of him afflicted me with a problem no one has ever solved.  It
+might, indeed, be made a branch of scientific investigation, and would
+then be called the Genesis of Beadles.  Was a beadle ever a baby?  What
+like was he before he appeared in his office?  Was he lying as a
+cardinal in petto till the right moment, and then simply showed himself
+to be appointed as one born unto this end?  No one dared to hint that
+John had ever followed any other avocation, and an effort to connect
+John with the honourable trade of plumbing in the far past was justly
+regarded as a disgraceful return of Tammie Ronaldson's for much
+faithful dealing.  Drumtochty refused to consider his previous history,
+if he had any, and looked on John in his office as a kind of
+Melchizedek, a mysterious, isolated work of Providence.
+
+He was a mere wisp of a man, with a hard, keen face, iron-grey hair
+brushed low across his forehead, and clean-shaven cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: He was a mere wisp of a man.]
+
+"A 've naething tae say against a beard," on being once consulted, "an'
+a 'm no prepared tae deny it maun be in the plan o' Providence.  In
+fact, gin a' wes in a private capaucity, a' michtna shave, but in ma
+public capaucity, a 've nae alternative.  It wud be a fine story tae
+gang roond the Presbytery o' Muirtown that the Beadle o' Drumtochty hed
+a beard."
+
+His authority was supreme under the Doctor, and never was disputed by
+man or beast save once, and John himself admitted that the
+circumstances were quite peculiar.  It was during the Doctor's famous
+continental tour, when Drumsheugh fought with strange names in the
+kirkyard, and the Presbytery supplied Drumtochty in turn.  The minister
+of St. David's, Muirtown, was so spiritual that he left his voice at
+the foot of the pulpit stairs, and lived in the Song of Solomon, with
+occasional excursions into the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and it was
+thoughtless not to have told Mr. Curlew that two or three dogs--of
+unexceptionable manners--attended our kirk with their masters.  They
+would no more have thought of brawling in church than John himself, and
+they knew the parts of the service as well as the Doctor, but dogs have
+been so made by our common Creator that they cannot abide falsetto, and
+Mr. Curlew tried them beyond endurance.  When he lifted up his voice in
+"Return, return, O Shulamite, return, return," a long wail in reply,
+from below a back seat where a shepherd was slumbering, proclaimed that
+his appeal had not altogether failed.  "Put out that dog," said the
+preacher in a very natural voice, with a strong suggestion of bad
+temper, "put that dog out immediately; it's most disgraceful that such
+. . . eh, conduct should go, on in a Christian church.  Where is the
+church officer?"
+
+"A'm the Beadle o' Drumtochty"--standing in his place--"an' a'll dae
+yir pleesure;" and the occasion was too awful for any one, even the
+dog's master, to assist, far less to laugh.
+
+So Laddie was conducted down the passage--a dog who would not
+condescend to resist--and led to the outer gate of the kirkyard, and
+John came in amid a dead silence--for Mr. Curlew had not yet got his
+pulpit note again--and faced the preacher.
+
+"The dog 's oot, sir, but a' tak this congregation tae witness, ye
+begood (began) it yirsel'," and it was said that Mr. Curlew's pious and
+edifying chant was greatly restricted in country kirks from that day.
+
+It was not given to the beadle to sit with the elders in that famous
+court of morals which is called the Kirk Session, and of which strange
+stories are told by Southern historians, but it was his to show out and
+in the culprits with much solemnity.  He was able to denote the exact
+offence in the language of Kirk law, and was considered happy in his
+abbreviations for technical terms.  As a familiar of the Inquisition,
+he took oversight of the district, and saw that none escaped the
+wholesome discipline of the Church.
+
+"Ye 're back," he said, arresting Peter Ferguson as he tried to escape
+down a byroad, and eyeing the prodigal sternly, who had fled from
+discipline to London, and there lost a leg; "the' 'll be a meetin' o'
+Session next week afore the Saicrament; wull a' tell the Doctor ye're
+comin'?"
+
+"No, ye 'll dae naething o' the kind, for a 'll no be there.  A 've nae
+suner got hame aifter ma accident but ye're tormentin' me on the verra
+road wi' yir Session.  Ye drave me awa' aince, an' noo ye wud harry
+(hunt) me aft again."
+
+"A weel, a weel"--and John was quite calm--"dinna pit yirsel' in a
+feery farry (excitement); ye 'll gang yir ain wy and earn yir ain
+jidgment.  It wes for yir gude a' spoke, and noo a 've dune ma pairt,
+an' whatever comes o't, ye 'll no hae me or ony ither body tae blame."
+
+"What think ye 'll happen?"--evidently sobered by John's tone, yet
+keeping up a show of defiance.  "Ye wud think the Session wes the
+Sheriff o' Perthshire tae hear ye blawin' and threatenin'."
+
+"It's no for me tae say what may befa' ye, Peter Ferguson, for a 'm no
+yir jidge, but juist a frail mortal, beadle though I be; but a' may hev
+ma thochts.
+
+"Ye refused the summons sax month syne, and took yir wys tae
+London--that wes contumacy added tae yir ither sin.  Nae doot ye made
+certain ye hed escapit, but hed ye?  A' leave it tae yirsel', for the
+answer is in yir body," and John examined Peter's wooden leg with an
+austere interest.
+
+"Ay, ay, ma man," he resumed--for Peter was now quite silenced by this
+uncompromising interpretation of the ways of Providence--"ye aff tae
+London, an' the Lord aifter ye, an' whuppit aff ae leg.  Noo ye declare
+ye 'll be as countermacious as ever, an' a 'm expeckin' the Lord 'll
+come doon here an' tak the ither leg, an' gin that disna dae, a' that
+remains is tae stairt on yir airms; and, man Peter, ye 'll be a
+bonnie-like sicht before a' 's dune."
+
+This was very faithful dealing, and it had its desired effect, for
+Peter appeared at next meeting, and in due course was absolved, as
+became an obedient son of the Church.
+
+John did not, however, always carry the sword, but bore himself gently
+to young people so long as they did not misbehave in church, and he had
+a very tender heart toward probationers, as being callow members of
+that great ecclesiastical guild in which he was one of the heads.
+
+When one of those innocents came to take the Doctor's place, John used
+to go in to visit them in the dining-room on Saturday evening, partly
+to temper the severity of his wife, Dr. Davidson's housekeeper, who
+dealt hardly with the lads, and partly to assist them with practical
+hints regarding pulpit deportment and the delivery of their sermons.
+One unfortunate was so nervous and clinging that John arranged his
+remarks for him into heads--with an application to two classes--and
+then, having suggested many points, stopped under the yew arch that
+divided the kirkyard from the manse garden, and turned on the shaking
+figure which followed.
+
+"Ae thing mair; aifter ye 're dune wi' yir sermon, whether ye 're
+sweatin' or no, for ony sake fa' back in yir seat and dicht (wipe) yir
+broo," which being done by the exhausted orator, made a great
+impression on the people, and was so spread abroad that a year
+afterwards it won for him the parish of Pitscowrie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A MODERATE.
+
+As a matter of fact, Dr. Davidson, minister of Drumtochty, stood
+exactly five feet nine in his boots, and was therefore a man of quite
+moderate height; but this is not what you had dared to state to any
+loyal and self-respecting person in the parish.  For "the Doctor"--what
+suggestions of respect and love were in that title on a Drumtochty
+tongue--was so compactly made and bore himself with such dignity, both
+in walk and conversation, that Drumsheugh, although not unaccustomed to
+measurement and a man of scrupulous accuracy, being put into the
+witness-box, would have sworn that Dr. Davidson was "aboot sax feet aff
+and on--maybe half an inch mair, standin' at his full hicht in the
+pulpit."  Which fond delusion seemed to declare abroad, as in a
+parable, the greatness of the Doctor.
+
+Providence had dealt bountifully with Dr. Davidson, and had bestowed on
+him the largest benefit of heredity.  He was not the first of his house
+to hold this high place of parish minister--the only absolute monarchy
+in the land--and he must not receive over-praise for not falling into
+those personal awkwardnesses and petty tyrannies which are the
+infallible signs of one called suddenly to the throne.  His were the
+pride of blood, the inherent sense of authority, the habit of rule, the
+gracious arts of manner, the conviction of popular devotion, the grasp
+of affairs, the interest in the people's life, which are the marks and
+aids of a royal caste.  It was not in the nature of things that the
+Doctor should condescend to quarrel with a farmer or mix himself up
+with any vulgar squabble, because his will was law in ninety cases in a
+hundred, and in the other ten he skilfully anticipated the people's
+wishes.  When the minister of Nether Pitfoodles--who had sermons on
+"Love, Courtship, and Marriage," and was much run after in
+Muirtown--quarrelled with his elders about a collection, and asked the
+interference of the Presbytery, Dr. Davidson dealt severely with him in
+open court as one who had degraded the ministry and discredited
+government.  It was noticed also that the old gentleman would afterward
+examine Nether Pitfoodles curiously for minutes together in the
+Presbytery, and then shake his head.
+
+"Any man," he used to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as
+they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle
+with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a
+fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of
+Scotland."  And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry
+over their wine in Kildrummie Manse--being both of the same school,
+cultured, clean-living, kind-hearted, honourable, but not extravagantly
+evangelical clergymen.  They agreed in everything except the matter of
+their after-dinner wine, Dr. Davidson having a partiality for port,
+while the minister of Kildrummie insisted that a generous claret was
+the hereditary drink of a Scottish gentleman.  This was only, however,
+a subject of academic debate, and was not allowed to interfere with
+practice--the abbe of Drumtochty taking his bottle of claret, in an
+appreciative spirit, and the cure of Kildrummie disposing of his two or
+three glasses of port with cheerful resignation.
+
+If Drumtochty exalted its minister above his neighbours, it may be
+urged in excuse that Scottish folk are much affected by a man's birth,
+and Dr. Davidson had a good ancestry.  He was the last of his line, and
+represented a family that for two centuries had given her sons to the
+Kirk.  Among those bygone worthies, the Doctor used to select one in
+especial for honourable mention.  He was a minister of Dunleith, whose
+farmers preferred to play ball against the wall of the kirk to hearing
+him preach, and gave him insolence on his offering a pious
+remonstrance.  Whereupon the Davidson of that day, being, like all his
+race, short in stature, but mighty in strength, first beat the champion
+player one Sabbath morning at his own game to tame an unholy pride, and
+then thrashed him with his fist to do good to his soul.  This happy
+achievement in practical theology secured an immediate congregation,
+and produced so salutary an effect on the schismatic ball-player that
+he became in due course an elder, and was distinguished for his
+severity in dealing with persons absenting themselves from public
+worship, or giving themselves overmuch to vain amusements.
+
+At the close of the last century the Doctor's grandfather was minister
+of the High Kirk, Muirtown, where he built up the people in loyalty to
+Kirk and State, and himself recruited for the Perthshire Fencibles.  He
+also delivered a sermon entitled "The French Revolution the just
+judgment of the Almighty on the spirit of insubordination," for which
+he received a vote of thanks from the Lord Provost and Bailies of
+Muirtown in council assembled, as well as a jewel from the Earl of
+Kilspindie, the grandfather of our lord, which the Doctor inherited and
+wore on the third finger of his left hand.  Had Carmichael or any other
+minister decked himself after this fashion, it had not fared well with
+him, but even the Free Kirk appreciated a certain pomp in Dr. Davidson,
+and would have resented his being as other men.  He was always pleased
+to give the history of the ring, and generally told a story of his
+ancestor, which he had tasted much more frequently than the sermon.  A
+famous judge had asked him to dinner as he made his circuit, and they
+had disputed about the claret, till at last its excellence compelled
+respect at the close of the first bottle.
+
+"'Now, Reverend Sir,' said the judge, 'this wine has been slandered and
+its fair fame taken away without reason.  I demand that you absolve it
+from the scandal.'
+
+"'My Lord,' said my worthy forbear, 'you are a great criminal lawyer,
+but you are not well read in Kirk law, for no offender can be absolved
+without three appearances.'
+
+"My grandfather," the Doctor used to conclude, "had the best of that
+jest besides at least two bottles of claret, for in those days a
+clergyman took more wine than we would now think seemly, although, mark
+you, the old gentleman always denounced drunkenness on two grounds:
+first, because it was an offence against religion, and second, because
+it was a sign of weakness."
+
+Some old folk could remember the Doctor's father, who never attained to
+the Doctorate, but was a commanding personage.  He published no
+sermons, but as the first Davidson in Drumtochty, he laid the
+foundations of good government.  The Kilspindie family had only
+recently come into the parish--having purchased the larger part of the
+Carnegies' land--and Drumtochty took a thrawn fit, and among other acts
+of war pulled down time after time certain new fences.  The minister
+was appealed to by his lordship, and having settled the rights of the
+matter, he bade the factor wait in patience till the Sacrament, and
+Drumsheugh's father used to tell unto the day of his death, as a
+historical event, how the Doctor's father stood at the communion-table
+and debarred from the Sacrament evil livers of all kinds, and that day
+in especial all who had broken Lord Kilspindie's fences,--which was an
+end of the war.  There was a picture of him in the Doctor's study,
+showing a very determined gentleman, who brought up both his parish and
+his family upon the stick, and with undeniable success.
+
+With such blood in his veins it was not to be expected that our Doctor
+should be after the fashion of a modern minister.  No one had ever seen
+him (or wished to see him) in any other dress than black cloth, and a
+broad-brimmed silk hat, with a white stock of many folds and a bunch of
+seals depending from some mysterious pocket.  His walk, so assured, so
+measured, so stately, was a means of grace to the parish, confirming
+every sound and loyal belief, and was crowned, so to say, by his stick,
+which had a gold head, and having made history in the days of his
+father, had reached the position of a hereditary sceptre.  No one could
+estimate the aid and comfort that stick gave to the Doctor's visits,
+but one quite understood the force of the comparison Hillocks once
+drew, after the Doctor's death, between the coming to his house of the
+Doctor and a "cry" from his energetic successor under the new _régime_.
+
+"He 's a hard-workin' body, oor new man, aye rin rinnin', fuss fussin'
+roond the pairish, an' he 's a pop'lar hand in the pulpit, but it's a
+puir business a veesit frae him.
+
+"It's juist in an' oot like a cadger buyin' eggs, nae peace an' nae
+solemnity.  Of coorse it's no his blame that he 's naethin' tae look
+at, for that's the wy he wes made, an' his father keepit a pig (china)
+shop, but at ony rate he micht get a wise-like stick.
+
+"Noo, there wes the Doctor 'at's dead an' gone; he didna gang
+scrammelin' an' huntin' aifter the fouk frae Monday tae Saiturday.  Na,
+na, he didna lower himsel' preachin' an' paiterin' like a missionary
+body.  He announced frae the pulpit whar he wes gaein' and when he wes
+comin'.
+
+"'It's my purpose,'" and Hillocks did his best to imitate the Doctor,
+"'to visit the farm of Hillocks on Wednesday of this week, and I desire
+to meet with all persons living thereon;' it wes worth callin' an
+intimation, an' gied ye pleesure in yir seat.
+
+"On Tuesday aifternoon John wud juist drap in tae see that a'thing wes
+ready, and the next aifternoon the Doctor comes himsel', an' the first
+thing he dis is tae lay the stick on the table an' gin he hed never
+said a word, tae see it lyin' there wes a veesitation.  But he 's a
+weel-meanin' bit craturie, Maister Peebles, an' handy wi' a magic
+lantern.  Sall," and then Hillocks became incapable of speech, and you
+knew that the thought of Dr. Davidson explaining comic slides had quite
+overcome him.
+
+This visitation counted as an event in domestic life, and the Doctor's
+progress through the Glen was noted in the kirkyard, and any special
+remark duly reported.  Nothing could be more perfect than his manner on
+such occasions, being leisurely, comprehensive, dignified, gracious.
+First of all he saluted every member of the family down to the bairns
+by name, for had he not at least married the heads of the household,
+and certainly baptised all the rest?  Unto each he made some kindly
+remark also--to the good man a commendation of his careful farming, to
+the good-wife a deserved compliment on her butter; the eldest daughter
+was praised for the way in which she was sustaining the ancient
+reputation of Hillocks' dairy; there was a word to Hillocks' son on his
+masterly ploughing; and some good word of Dominie Jamieson's about the
+little lassie was not forgotten.  After which the Doctor sat
+down--there was some difficulty in getting the family to sit in his
+presence--and held a thorough review of the family history for the last
+year, dwelling upon the prospects of Charlie, for whom the Doctor had
+got a situation, and Jean, the married daughter, whose husband might
+one day have a farm with four pair of horses in the carse of Gowrie.
+The Doctor would then go out to give his opinion on the crops, which
+was drawn from keen practical knowledge--his brochure on "The Potato
+Disease: Whence it Came and How it is to be Met" created much stir in
+its day--and it was well known that the Doctor's view on bones or guano
+as a preferable manure was decisive.  On his return the servants came
+in--to whom also he said a word--and then from the head of the table he
+conducted worship--the ploughmen looking very uneasy and the children
+never taking their eyes off his face, while the gude-wife kept a
+watchful eye on all.  At the prayer she was careful to be within arm's
+reach of Hillocks, since on one memorable occasion that excellent man
+had remained in an attitude of rapt devotion after the others had risen
+from their knees, which sight profoundly affected the family, and led
+the Doctor to remark that it was the only time he had seen Hillocks
+play the Pharisee in public.  The Doctor's favourite passages were the
+eulogium on the model housewife in Proverbs, the parable of the Good
+Samaritan, and the 12th chapter of Romans, from which he deduced many
+very searching and practical lessons on diligence, honesty, mercy, and
+hospitality.  Before he left, and while all were under the spell of his
+presence, the Doctor would approach the delicate subject of Hillocks'
+"tout-mout" (dispute) with Gormack over a purchase at a roup, in which
+it was freely asserted that Gormack had corrupted the Kildrummie
+auctioneer, a gentleman removed above pecuniary bribes, but not
+unaffected by liquid refreshment.  So powerfully did the Doctor appeal
+to Hillocks' neighbourliness that he took snuff profusely, and
+authorised the Doctor to let it be understood at Gormack that the
+affair was at an end, which treaty was confirmed by the two parties in
+Kildrummie train, when Hillocks lent Gormack his turnip-sowing machine
+and borrowed in turn Gormack's water-cart.  Mr. Curlew had more than
+once hinted in the Presbytery of Muirtown that Dr. Davidson was not so
+evangelical as might be desired, and certainly Mr. Curlew's visitation
+was of a much more exciting nature; but St. David's congregation was
+never without a quarrel, while the Doctor created an atmosphere in
+Drumtochty wherein peace and charity flourished exceedingly.
+
+Whatever might be urged in praise of his visitation, surely the Doctor
+could never be more stately or fatherly than on Sacrament Sabbath, as
+he stood in his place to begin service.  His first act was to wipe
+elaborately those gold eye-glasses, without which nothing would have
+been counted a sermon in Drumtochty Kirk, and then, adjusting them with
+care, the Doctor made a deliberate survey of the congregation,
+beginning at his right hand and finishing at his left.  Below him sat
+the elders in their blacks, wearing white stocks that had cost them no
+little vexation that morning, and the precentor, who was determined no
+man, neither Saunders Baxter nor another, should outsing him that day
+in Coleshill.  Down the centre of the kirk ran a long table, covered
+with pure white linen, bleached in the June showers and wonderfully
+ironed, whereon a stain must not be found, for along that table would
+pass the holy bread and wine.  Across the aisle on either side, the
+pews were filled with stalwart men, solemn beyond their wonted gravity,
+and kindly women in simple finery, and rosy-cheeked bairns.  The women
+had their tokens wrapped in snowy handkerchiefs, and in their Bibles
+they had sprigs of apple-ringy and mint, and other sweet-scented
+plants.  By-and-by there would be a faint fragrance of peppermint in
+the kirk--the only religious and edifying sweet, which flourishes
+wherever sound doctrine is preached and disappears before new views,
+and is therefore now confined to the Highlands of Wales and Scotland,
+the last home of our fathers' creed.  The two back seats were of black
+oak, richly carved.  In the one sat the General and Kate, and across
+the passage Viscount Hay, Lord Kilspindie's eldest son, a young man of
+noble build and carriage, handsome and debonair, who never moved during
+the sermon save twice, and then he looked at the Carnegies' pew.
+
+When the Doctor had satisfied himself that none were missing of the
+people, he dropped his eye-glass--each act was so closely followed that
+Drumsheugh below could tell where the Doctor was--and took snuff after
+the good old fashion, tapping the box twice, selecting a pinch,
+distributing it evenly, and using first a large red bandana and then a
+delicate white cambric handkerchief.  When the cambric disappeared,
+each person seized his Bible, for the Doctor would say immediately with
+a loud, clear voice, preceded by a gentlemanly clearance of the throat,
+"Let us compose our minds for the worship of Almighty God by singing to
+His praise the first Psalm.
+
+  "'That man hath perfect blessedness
+  Who walketh not astray--'"
+
+Then Peter Rattray, of the high Glen, would come in late, and the
+Doctor would follow him with his eye till the unfortunate man reached
+his pew, where his own flesh and blood withdrew themselves from him as
+if he had been a leper, and Peter himself wished that he had never been
+born.
+
+"Five minutes earlier, Peter, would have prevented this unseemly
+interruption--ahem.
+
+  "'In counsel of ungodly men,
+  Nor stands in sinners' way.'"
+
+
+Before the Sacrament the Doctor gave one of his college sermons on some
+disputed point in divinity, and used language that was nothing short of
+awful.
+
+"Grant me those premises," he would say, while the silence in the kirk
+could be felt, "and I will show to any reasonable and unprejudiced
+person that those new theories are nothing but a resuscitated and
+unjustifiable Pelagianism."  Such passages produced a lasting
+impression in the parish, and once goaded Drumsheugh's Saunders into
+voluntary speech.
+
+"Yon wes worth ca'in' a sermon.  Did you ever hear sic words out o' the
+mouth o' a man?  Noo that bleatin' cratur Curlew 'at comes frae
+Muirtown is jist pittin' by the time.  Sall, ae sermon o' the Doctor's
+wud last yon body for a year."
+
+After the sermon the people sang,
+
+  "'T was on that night when doomed to know,"
+
+and the elders, who had gone out a few minutes before, entered the kirk
+in procession, bearing the elements, and set them before the Doctor,
+now standing at the table.  The people came from their pews and took
+their seats, singing as they moved, while the children were left to
+their own devices, tempered by the remembrance that their doings could
+be seen by the Doctor, and would receive a just recompense of reward
+from their own kin in the evening.  Domsie went down one side and
+Drumsheugh the other, collecting the tokens, whose clink, clink in the
+silver dish was the only sound.
+
+"If there be any other person who desires to take the Sacrament at this
+the first table" (for the Sacrament was given then to detachments),
+"let him come without delay."
+
+"Let us go, dad," whispered Kate.  "He is a dear old padre, and . . .
+they are good people and our neighbours."
+
+"But they won't kneel, you know, Kit; will you . . . ?"
+
+"We 'll do as they do; it is not our Sacrament."  So the father and
+daughter went up the kirk and took their places on the Doctor's left
+hand.  A minute later Lord Hay rose and went up his aisle, and sat down
+opposite the Carnegies, looking very nervous, but also most modest and
+sincere.
+
+The Doctor gave the cup to the General, who passed it to Kate, and from
+her it went to Weelum MacLure, and another cup he gave to Hay, whom he
+had known from a child, and he handed it to Marget Howe, and she to
+Whinnie, her man; and so the two cups passed down from husband to wife,
+from wife to daughter, from daughter to servant, from lord to tenant,
+till all had shown forth the Lord's death in common fellowship and love
+as becometh Christian folk.  In the solemn silence the sunshine fell on
+the faces of the communicants, and the singing of the birds came in
+through the open door with the scent of flowers and ripe corn.  Before
+the congregation left, the Doctor addressed a few words of most
+practical advice, exhorting them, in especial, to live in the spirit of
+the Sermon on the Mount, and to be good neighbours.  It was on one of
+those occasions that he settled a dispute between masters and
+men--whether the cutting of grass for the horses' breakfast should be
+included in the day's work--and ended the only bitterness known in
+Drumtochty.
+
+At the kirk gate Hay introduced himself to his father's friend, and the
+General looked round to find his daughter, but Kate had disappeared.
+She had seen the face of Marget Howe after the Sacrament as the face of
+one in a vision, and she had followed Marget to the road.
+
+"Will you let me walk with you for a little?  I am General Carnegie's
+daughter, and I would like to speak to you about the Sacrament; it was
+lovely."
+
+[Illustration: "Will you let me walk with you for a little?"]
+
+"Ye dae me much honour, Miss Carnegie," and Marget slightly flushed,
+"an' much pleasure, for there is naething dearer tae me than keeping
+the Sacrament; it is my joy every day and muckle comfort in life."
+
+"But I thought you had it only once a year?" questioned Kate.
+
+"With bread and wine in outward sign that is once, and maybe eneuch,
+for it makes ane high day for us all, but div ye not think, Miss
+Carnegie, that all our life should be ane Sacrament?"
+
+"Tell me," said Kate, looking into Marget's sweet, spiritual face.
+
+"Is it no the picture of His Luve, who thocht o' everybody but Himsel',
+an' saved everybody but Himsel', an' didna He say we maun drink His cup
+and live His life?"
+
+Kate only signed that Marget should go on.
+
+"Noo a 'm judgin' that ilka ane o's is savit juist as we are baptised
+intae the Lord's death, and ilka time ane o's keeps back a hot word, or
+humbles a proud heart, or serves anither at a cost, we have eaten the
+Body and drunk the Blood o' the Lord."
+
+"You are a good woman," cried Kate, in her impulsive way, so quick to
+be pleased or offended.  "May I come to see you some day?"
+
+"Dinna think me better than I am: a woman who had many sins tae fecht
+and needit many trials tae chasten her; but ye will be welcome at
+Whinny Knowe for yir ain sake and yir people's, an' gin it ever be in
+ma pooer tae serve ye, Miss Carnegie, in ony wy, it wull be ma joy."
+
+Twice as she came through the woods Kate stopped; once she bit her lip,
+once she dashed a tear from her eye.
+
+"Where did you go to, lassie?" and the General met Kate at the gateway.
+"Lord Hay came to the drive with me, and was quite disappointed not to
+meet you--a very nice lad indeed, manly and well-mannered."
+
+"Never mind Lord Hay, dad; I 've been with the most delightful woman I
+'ve ever seen."
+
+"Do you mean she was in kirk?"
+
+"Yes, sitting across the table--she is a farmer's wife, and a better
+lady than we saw in India.
+
+"Oh, dad," and Kate kissed her father, "I wish I had known my mother;
+it had been better for me, and . . . happier for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+JOINT POTENTATES.
+
+Among all the houses in a Scottish parish the homeliest and kindliest
+is the manse, for to its door some time in the year comes every
+inhabitant, from the laird to the cottar woman.  Within the familiar
+and old-fashioned study, where the minister's chair and writing-table
+could not be changed without discomposing the parish, and where there
+are fixed degrees of station, so that the laird has his chair and the
+servant lass hers, the minister receives and does his best for all the
+folk committed to his charge.  Here he consults with the factor about
+some improvement in the arrangements of the little commonwealth, he
+takes counsel with a farmer about his new lease and promises to say a
+good word to his lordship, he confirms the secret resolution of some
+modest gifted lad to study for the holy ministry, he hears the
+shamefaced confession of some lassie whom love has led astray, he gives
+good advice to a son leaving the Glen for the distant dangerous world,
+he comforts the mother who has received bad news from abroad.
+Generations have come in their day to this room, and generations still
+unborn will come in their joys and sorrows, with their trials and their
+affairs, while the manse stands and human life runs its old course.
+And when, as was the case with Dr. Davidson in Drumtochty, the minister
+is ordained to the parish in his youth, and, instead of hurrying hither
+and thither, preaching in vacancies, scheming and intriguing, he dwells
+all his days among his own people, he himself knows three generations,
+and accumulates a store of practical wisdom for the help of his people.
+What may be the place of the clergyman in an English parish, and what
+associations of sympathy and counsel the rectory may have for the
+English farm-labourer, it is not permitted to a northern man to know,
+but it is one good thing at least in our poor land that the manse is
+another word for guidance and good cheer, so that Jean advises Jock in
+their poor little perplexity about a new place to "slip doon an' see
+the Doctor," and Jock, although appearing to refuse, does "gie a cry at
+the manse," and comes home to the gude-wife mightily comforted.
+
+The manse builders of the ancient days were men of a shrewd eye and
+much wisdom.  If anywhere the traveller in the north country sees a
+house of moderate size peeping from among a clump of trees in the lap
+of a hill where the north-easter cannot come and the sun shines full
+and warm, then let him be sure that is the manse, with the kirk and
+God's acre close beside, and that the fertile little fields around are
+the glebe, which the farmers see are ploughed and sown and reaped first
+in the parish.  Drumtochty Manse lay beneath the main road, so that the
+cold wind blowing from the north went over its chimneys, and on the
+east it was sheltered by the Tochty woods.  Southwards it overlooked
+the fields that sloped towards the river, and westwards, through some
+ancient trees, one study window had a peep of the west, although it was
+not given to the parish manse to lie of an evening in the glory of the
+setting sun, as did the Free Kirk.  Standing at the gate and looking
+down beneath the beeches that stood as sentinels on either side of the
+little drive, one caught a pleasant glimpse of the manse garden, with
+its close-cut lawn and flower-beds and old summer-house and air of
+peace.  No one troubled the birds in that place, and they had grown
+shameless in their familiarity with dignities--a jackdaw having once
+done his best to steal the Doctor's bandana handkerchief and the robins
+settling on his hat.  Irreverence has limits, and in justice to a
+privileged friend it ought to be explained that the Doctor wore on
+these occasions an aged wide-awake and carried no gold-headed stick.
+His dog used to follow him step by step as he fed the birds and
+pottered among the flowers, and then it always ended in the old man
+sitting down on a seat at the foot of the lawn, with Skye at his feet,
+and looking across the Glen where he had been born and where for nearly
+half a century he had ministered.  Kate caught him once in this
+attitude, and was so successful in her sketch that some have preferred
+it to the picture in oils that was presented to the Doctor by the
+Presbytery of Muirtown, and was painted by an R. A. who spent a
+fortnight at the manse and departed with some marvellous heads, still
+to be identified in certain councillors and nobles of the past.  Both
+are hanging in the same house now, far from Drumtochty, and there they
+call one "Public Capaucity" and the other "Private Capaucity," and you
+require to have seen both to know our kindly, much-loved Moderate.
+
+[Illustration: "Private Capaucity."]
+
+As John grew old with his master and mellowed, he would make believe to
+work close by, so that at times they might drop into talk, recalling
+names that had died out of the Glen, shrewd sayings that fell from lips
+now turned to dust, curious customs that had ceased forever, all in
+great charity.  Then there would come a pause, and John would say, "Ay,
+ay," and go away to the bees.  Under the influence of such
+reminiscences John used to become depressed, and gently prepare Rebecca
+for the changes that were not far off, when Drumtochty would have a new
+minister and a new beadle.
+
+"The Doctor's failin', Becca, an' it's no tae be expeckit that a 'll be
+lang aifter him; it wudna be fittin', an' a 'm no wantin' 't.  Aifter
+ye 've carried the bukes afore ae minister for five and thirty year,
+ye're no anxious for a change; naebody 'll ever come doon the kirkyaird
+like the Doctor, an' a' cudna brak ma step; na, na, there's no mony
+things a' michtna learn, but a' cudna brak ma step."
+
+Rebecca went on with her dinner in silence; even capable men had
+weaknesses somewhere, and she was accustomed to those moralisings.
+
+"A 'm the auldest beadle in the Presbytery o' Muirtown--though a' say
+it as sudna--an' the higher the place the mair we 'll hae tae answer
+for, Becca.  Nae man can hold the poseetion a 'm in withoot anxieties.
+Noo there wes the 'Eruption' in '43"--it could not be ignorance which
+made John cling to this word, and so we supposed that the word was
+adopted in the spirit of historical irony--"that wes a crisis.  Did a'
+ever tell ye, Rebecca, that there wes juist ae beadle left the next
+morning tae cairry on the Presbytery of Muirtown?"
+
+"Ay, forty times an' mair," replied that uncompromising woman, "an' it
+wud set ye better tae be servin' the Doctor's lunch than sittin'
+haverin' an' blawin' there."
+
+No sane person in Drumtochty would have believed that any human being
+dared to address John after this fashion, and it is still more
+incredible that the great man should have risen without a word and gone
+about his duty.  Such a surprising and painful incident suggests the
+question whether a beadle or any other person in high position ought to
+be married, and so be exposed to inevitable familiarities.  Hillocks
+took this view strongly in the kirkyard at the time of John's
+marriage--although neither he nor any one knew with how much
+reason--and he impressed the fathers powerfully.
+
+"Becca cam frae Kilspindie Castle near thirty year syne, and John's
+took the bukes aboot the same time; they've agreed no that ill for sic
+a creetical poseetion a' that time, him oot an' her in, an' atween them
+the Doctor's no been that ill-servit; they micht hae lat weel alane.
+
+"She 's no needin' a man tae keep her," and Hillocks proceeded to
+review the situation, "for Becca's hed a gude place, an' she disna
+fling awa' her siller on dress.  As for John, a' canna mak him oot, for
+he gets his stockin's darned and his white stock dune as weel an' maybe
+better than if he wes mairried."
+
+The kirkyard could see no solution of the problem, and Hillocks grew
+pessimistic.
+
+"It 'll be a doon-come tae him, a 'm judgin', an' 'll no be for the
+gude o' the parish.  He 's never been crossed yet, an' he 'll no tak
+weel wi' contradickin' . . ."
+
+"She wudna daur," broke in Whinny, "an' him the beadle."
+
+"Ye ken little aboot weemen," retorted Hillocks, "for yir gude-wife is
+by hersel' in the pairish, an' micht be a sanct; the maist o' them are
+a camsteary lot.  A 'm no sayin'," he summed up, "that Becca 'll gie
+the beadle the word back or refuse to dae his biddin', but she 'll be
+pittin' forrit her ain opeenions, an' that's no what he 's been
+accustomed tae in Drumtochty."
+
+They were married one forenoon in the study, with Drumsheugh and Domsie
+for witnesses--the address given by the Doctor could hardly be
+distinguished from an ordination charge--and John announced his
+intention of accompanying his master that afternoon to the General
+Assembly, while Rebecca remained in charge of the manse.
+
+"It wudna be wise-like for us twa," exclaimed the beadle, "tae be
+stravagin' ower the country for three or fower days like wild geese,
+but the pairish micht expect something.  Noo, a 've hed ma share o' a
+Presbytery an' a Synod, tae say naethin' o' Kirk Sessions, but a 've
+never seen an Assembly.
+
+"Gin you cud get a place, a' wud spend ma time considering hoo the
+officer comes in, and hoo he lays doon the buke an' sic-like; a' micht
+get a hint," said John, with much modesty.
+
+So John went alone for his wedding tour, and being solemnly introduced
+to Thomas, the chief of all beadles, discussed mysteries with him unto
+great edification; but he was chiefly impressed by the Clerk of the
+Free Kirk Assembly--into which he had wandered on an errand of
+exploration--who was a fiery-faced old gentleman with a stentorian
+voice and the heart of a little child.
+
+"Ye never heard him cry, 'Officer, shut the door,' afore a vote?" he
+inquired of the Doctor.  "Weel, ye 've missed a real pleesure, sir; gin
+ye stude on Princes Street, wi' the wind frae the richt airt, ye micht
+hear him.  A' never heard onything better dune; hoo ony man wi' sic a
+face and voice cud be content ootside the Auld Kirk passes me."
+
+John was so enamoured of this performance that after much cogitation he
+unburdened his mind to the Doctor, and showed how such a means of grace
+might be extended to Drumtochty.
+
+"Noo, if there wes nae objection in order, aifter ye hed settled in the
+pulpit, an' hed yir first snuff, ye micht say, 'Officer, shut the
+door.'  Then a' wud close the kirk door deleeberately in sicht o' the
+hale congregation an' come back tae ma place, an' Peter Rattray himsel'
+wudna daur tae show his face aifter that.  Ye hae the voice an' the
+manner, Doctor, an' it's no richt tae wyste them."
+
+In public John defended the Doctor's refusal as a proof of his
+indulgence to the prodigals of the parish, but with his intimates he
+did not conceal his belief that the opportunity had been lost of
+bringing the service in Drumtochty Kirk to absolute perfection.  John's
+own mind still ran on the mighty utterance, and so it came to pass that
+the question of mastery in the kitchen of the manse under the new
+_régime_ was settled within a week after his ecclesiastical honeymoon.
+
+"Rebecca"--this with a voice of thunder from the fireplace, where the
+beadle was reading the _Muirtown Advertiser_--"shut the door."
+
+The silence was so imperative that John turned round, and saw his
+spouse standing with a half-dried dish in her hand.
+
+[Illustration: Standing with a half-dried dish in her hand.]
+
+"Ma name is Rebecca," as she recovered her speech, "an' there 's nae
+ither wumman in the hoose, but a 'm judgin' ye werena speakin' tae me
+or"--with awful severity--"ye 've made a mistak', an' the suner it's
+pit richt the better for baith you an' me an' the manse o' Drumtochty.
+
+"For near thirty year ye 've gane traivellin' in an' oot o' this
+kitchen withoot cleanin' yir feet, and ye 've pit yir shoon on the
+fender, an' hung up yir weet coat on the back o' the door, an'
+commandit this an' that as if ye were the Doctor himsel', an' a' cud
+dae naethin', for ye were beadle o' Drumtochty.
+
+"So a' saw there wes nae ither wy o't but tae mairry ye an' get some
+kind of order in the hoose; noo ye 'll understand the poseetion an' no
+need anither tellin'; ootside in the kirk an' pairish ye 're maister,
+an' a 'll never conter ye, for a' ken ma place as a kirk member an' yir
+place as beadle; inside in this hoose a 'm maister, an' ye 'll dae what
+ye 're bid, always in due submission tae the Doctor, wha 's maister
+baith in an' oot.  Tak yir feet aff that steel bar this meenut"--this
+by way of practical application; and when after a brief pause, in which
+the fate of an empire hung in the balance, John obeyed, the two chief
+officials in the parish had made their covenant.
+
+Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they carefully kept their bounds,
+so that Becca would no more have thought of suggesting a new attitude
+to John as he stood at the foot of the pulpit stair waiting for the
+Doctor's descent than John would have interfered with the cooking of
+the Doctor's dinner.  When the glass was set at fair, they even
+exchanged compliments, the housekeeper expressing her sense of
+unworthiness as she saw John in his high estate, while he would
+indicate that the Doctor's stock on Sacrament Sabbath reached the
+highest limits of human attainment.  The Doctor being left to the
+freedom of his own will, laboured at a time to embroil the powers by
+tempting them to cross one another's frontiers, but always failed,
+because they foresaw the consequences with a very distinct imagination.
+If he asked Rebecca to convey a message to Drumsheugh, that cautious
+woman would send in John to receive it from the Doctor's own lips, and
+if the Doctor gave some directions regarding dinner to John, Rebecca
+would appear in a few minutes to learn what the Doctor wanted.  It was
+an almost complete delimitation of frontiers, and the Doctor used to
+say that he never quite understood the Free Kirk theory of the relation
+between Church and State till he considered the working agreement of
+his two retainers.  It was, he once pleasantly said to the minister of
+Kildrummie, a perfect illustration of "co-ordinate jurisdiction with
+mutual subordination."  It is just possible that some one may not fully
+grasp those impressive words, in which case let him appreciate other
+people's accomplishments and mourn his ignorance, for they were common
+speech in Drumtochty, and were taught at their porridge to the Free
+Kirk children.
+
+It is an unfortunate circumstance, however, that even a scientific
+frontier wavers at places, and leaves a piece of doubtful territory
+that may at any moment become a cause of war.  Surely there is not on
+the face of the Scottish earth a more unoffending, deferential,
+conciliatory person than a "probationer," who on Saturdays can be seen
+at every country junction, bag in hand, on his patient errand of
+"supply," and yet it was over his timid body the great powers of the
+manse twice quarrelled disastrously.  As a guest in the manse, to be
+received on Saturday evening, to be conducted to his room, to be fed
+and warmed, to go to his bed at a proper hour--ten on Saturday and
+ten-thirty on Sabbath--to be sent away on Monday morning in good time
+for the train, he was within the province of Rebecca.  As a minister to
+be examined, advised, solemnised, encouraged, to be got ready on
+Sabbath morning and again disrobed, to be edified with suitable
+conversation and generally made as fit as possible for his work, he was
+evidently within John's sphere of influence.  It was certainly the
+beadle's business to visit the dining-room on Saturday evening, where
+the young man was supposed to be meditating against the ordeal of the
+morrow, to get the Psalms for the precentor, to answer strictly
+professional questions, and generally to advise the neophyte about the
+sermon that would suit Drumtochty, and the kind of voice to be used.
+One thing John knew perfectly well he ought not to do, and that was to
+invite a probationer to spend the evening in the Doctor's study, for on
+this point Rebecca was inexorable.
+
+"A' dinna say that they wud read the Doctor's letters, an' a' dinna say
+they wud tak a buke as a keepsake, but a' can never forget ane o'
+them--he hed a squint and red hair--comin' oot frae the cupboard as a'
+opened the door.
+
+"'There 's juist ae wy oot o' the room, an' it's by the door ye cam in
+at,' a' said; 'maybe ye wud like tae come an' sit in the dinin'-room;
+ye 'll be less distrackit.'"  And Rebecca charged John that no
+probationer should in future be allowed to enter the Doctor's sanctum
+on any consideration.
+
+John's excuse for his solitary fault was that the lad thought that he
+could study his sermon better with books round him, and so Rebecca
+found the young gentleman seated in the Doctor's own chair and working
+with the Doctor's own pen, unblushing and shameless.
+
+"Gin ye want Cruden's _Concordance_"--this was when Rebecca had led him
+out a chastened man--"or Matthew Henry tae fill up yir sermon, the
+books 'll be brocht by the church officer."
+
+Rebecca's intrusion, in turn, into John's sphere was quite without
+excuse, and she could only explain her conduct by a general reference
+to the foolishness of the human heart.  It came out through the
+ingenuousness of the probationer, who mentioned casually that he was
+told Drumtochty liked four heads in the sermon.
+
+"May I ask the name of yir adviser?" said the beadle, with awful
+severity.  "The hoosekeeper?  A' thocht so, an' a' wud juist gie ye due
+intimation that the only person qualified an' entitled tae gie ye
+information on sic subjects is masel', an' ony ither is unjustified an'
+unwarranted.
+
+"Fower heads?  Three an' an application is the Doctor's invariable
+rule, an' gin a probationer gied oot a fourth, a' winna undertake tae
+say what michtna happen.  Drumtochty is no a pairish tae trifle wi',
+an' it disna like new-fangled wys.  Power!" and the scorn for this
+unorthodox division was withering.
+
+Rebecca realised the gravity of the situation in the kitchen, and
+humbled herself greatly.
+
+"It wes as a hearer that he askit ma opinion, an' no as an authority.
+He said that the new wy wes tae leave oot heads, an' a' saw a' the hay
+spread oot across the field, so a' told him tae gither it up intae
+'coles' (hay-cocks), an' it wud be easier lifted.  Maybe a' mentioned
+fower--a 'll no deny it; but it's the first time a' ever touched on
+heads, an' it 'll be the laist."
+
+Upon those terms of penitence, John granted pardon, but it was noticed
+on Sabbath that when Becca got in the way of the retiring procession to
+the manse, the beadle was heard in the kirkyard, "Oot o' ma road,
+wumman," in a tone that was full of judgment, and that Rebecca withdrew
+to the grass as one justly punished.
+
+This excellent woman once accomplished her will, however, in spite of
+John, and had all her days the pleasant relish of a secret triumph.
+Her one unfulfilled desire was to see the Doctor in his court dress
+which he wore as Moderator of the Kirk of Scotland during the Assembly
+time, and which had lain ever since in a box with camphor and such
+preservatives amid the folds.  It was aggravating to hear Drumsheugh
+and Hillocks--who had both gone to the Assembly that year for the sole
+purpose of watching the Doctor enter and bow to the standing
+house--enlarging on his glory in velvet and lace and silver buckles,
+and growing in enthusiasm with the years.
+
+"It's little better than a sin," she used to insist, "tae see the
+bonnie suit gien the Doctor by the Countess o' Kilspindie, wi' dear
+knows hoo much o' her ain auld lace on 't, lyin' useless, wi' naebody
+tae get a sicht o't on his back.  Dinna ye think, man"--this with much
+persuasiveness--"that ye cud get the Doctor tae pit on his velvets on
+an occasion, maybe a Saicrament?  The pairish wud be lifted; an' ye wud
+look weel walkin' afore him in his lace."
+
+"Dinna plead wi' me, wumman; a' wud gie a half-year's wages tae see him
+in his grandeur; but it 's offeecial, div ye no see, an' canna be used
+except by a Moderator.  Na, na, ye can dust and stroke it, but ye 'll
+never see yon coat on the Doctor."
+
+This was little less than a challenge to a woman of spirit, and Rebecca
+simply lived from that day to clothe the Doctor in embroidered
+garments.  Her opportunity arrived when Kate's birthday came round, and
+the Doctor insisted on celebrating it by a party of four.  By the
+merest accident his housekeeper met Miss Carnegie on the road, and
+somehow happened to describe the excellent glory of the Doctor's full
+dress, whereupon that wilful young woman went straight to the manse,
+nor left till the Doctor had promised to dine in ruffles, in which case
+she pledged herself that the General would come in uniform, and she
+would wear the family jewels, so that everything would be worthy of the
+Doctor's dinner.
+
+"Hoo daur ye," began John, coming down from the Doctor's room, where
+the suit was spread upon the bed; but his wife did not allow him to
+continue, explaining that the thing was none of her doing, and that it
+was only becoming that honour should be shown to Miss Carnegie when she
+dined for the first time at the manse of Drumtochty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+DRIED ROSE LEAVES.
+
+Townspeople are so clever, and know so much, that it is only just
+something should be hidden from their sight, and it is quite certain
+that they do not understand the irresistible and endless fascination of
+the country.  They love to visit us in early autumn, and are vastly
+charmed with the honeysuckle in the hedges, and the corn turning
+yellow, and the rivers singing in the sunlight, and the purple on the
+hill-side.  It is then that the dweller in cities resolves to retire,
+as soon as may be, from dust and crowds and turmoil and hurry, to some
+cottage where the scent of roses comes in at the open window, and one
+is wakened of a morning by the birds singing in the ivy.  When the corn
+is gathered into the stack-yard, and the leaves fall on the road, and
+the air has a touch of frost, and the evenings draw in, then the
+townsman begins to shiver and bethink him of his home.  He leaves the
+fading glory with a sense of relief, like one escaping from approaching
+calamity, and as often as his thoughts turn thither, he pities us in
+our winter solitude.  "What a day this will be in Drumtochty," he says,
+coming in from the slushy streets, and rubbing his hands before the
+fire.
+
+This good man is thankful to Providence for very slight mercies, since
+he knows only one out of the four seasons that make our glorious year.
+He had been wise to visit us in the summer-time, when the light hardly
+dies out of the Glen, and the grass and young corn presents six shades
+of green, and the scent of the hay is everywhere, and all young
+creatures are finding themselves with joy.  Perhaps he had done better
+to have come north in our spring-time, when nature, throwing off the
+yoke of winter, bursts suddenly into an altogether indescribable
+greenery, and the primroses are blooming in Tochty woods, and every
+cottage garden is sweet with wallflowers, and the birds sing of love in
+every wood, and the sower goes forth to sow.  And though this will
+appear quite incredible, it had done this comfortable citizen much good
+to have made his will, and risked his life with us in the big snowstorm
+that used to shut us up for fourteen days every February.  One might
+well endure many hardships to stand on the side of Ben Urtach, and see
+the land one glittering expanse of white on to the great strath on the
+left, and the hills above Dunleith on the right, to tramp all day
+through the dry, crisp snow, and gathering round the wood fire of an
+evening, tell pleasant tales of ancient days, while the wind powdered
+the glass with drift, and roared in the chimney.  Then a man thanked
+God that he was not confined to a place where the pure snow was trodden
+into mire, and the thick fog made it dark at mid-day.
+
+This very season of autumn, which frightened the townsfolk, and sent
+them home in silence, used to fill our hearts with peace, for it was to
+us the crown and triumph of the year.  We were not dismayed by the
+leaves that fell with rustling sound in Tochty woods, nor by the bare
+stubble fields from which the last straw had been raked by thrifty
+hands, nor by the touch of cold in the northwest wind blowing over Ben
+Urtach, nor by the greyness of the running water.  The long toil of the
+year had not been in vain, and the harvest had been safely gathered.
+The clump of sturdy little stacks, carefully thatched and roped, that
+stood beside each homestead, were the visible fruit of the long year's
+labour, and the assurance of plenty against winter.  Let it snow for a
+week on end, and let the blast from the mouth of Glen Urtach pile up
+the white drift high against the outer row of stacks, the horses will
+be put in the mill-shed, and an inner stack will be forked into the
+threshing loft, and all day long the mill will go with dull, rumbling
+sound that can be heard from the road, while within the grain pours
+into the corn-room, and the clean yellow straw is piled in the barn.
+Hillocks was not a man given to sentiment, yet even he would wander
+among the stacks on an October evening, and come into the firelight
+full of moral reflections.  A vague sense of rest and thankfulness
+pervaded the Glen, as if one had come home from a long journey in
+safety, bringing his possessions with him.
+
+The spirit of October was on the Doctor as he waited for his guests in
+the drawing-room of the manse.  The Doctor had a special affection for
+the room, and would often sit alone in it for hours in the gloaming.
+Once Rebecca came in suddenly, and though the light was dim and the
+Doctor was seated in the shadow by the piano, she was certain that he
+had been weeping.  He would not allow any change to be made in the
+room, even the shifting of a table, and he was very particular about
+its good keeping.  Twice a year Rebecca polished the old-fashioned
+rosewood furniture, and so often a man came from Muirtown to tune the
+piano, which none in the district could play, and which the Doctor kept
+locked.  Two little pencil sketches, signed with a childish hand, Daisy
+Davidson, the minister always dusted himself, as also a covered picture
+on the wall, and the half-yearly cleaning of the drawing-room was
+concluded when he arranged on the backs of two chairs one piece of
+needlework showing red and white roses, and another whereon was wrought
+a posy of primroses.  The room had a large bay window opening on the
+lawn, and the Doctor had a trick of going out and in that way, so that
+he often had ten minutes in its quietness; but no visitor was taken
+there, except once a year, when the wife of the Doctor's old friend,
+Lord Kilspindie, drove up to lunch, and the old man escorted her
+ladyship round the garden and brought her in by the window.  On that
+occasion, but only then, the curtain was lifted from the picture, and
+for a brief space they stood in silence.  Then he let the silken veil
+fall and gently arranged its folds, and offering her his arm with a
+very courtly bow, led the Countess into the dining-room, where Rebecca
+had done her best, and John waited in fullest Sabbath array.
+
+[Illustration: The old man escorted her ladyship.]
+
+The Doctor wandered about the room--looking out on the garden,
+mysterious in the fading light, changing the position of a chair,
+smoothing the old-fashioned needlework with caressing touch, breaking
+up a log in the grate.  He fell at last into a revery before the
+fire--which picked out each bit of silver on his dress and shone back
+from the black velvet--and heard nothing, till John flung open the door
+and announced with immense majesty, "General Carnegie and Miss
+Carnegie."
+
+"Welcome, Kate, to the house of your father's friend, and welcome for
+your own sake, and many returns of this day.  May I say how that white
+silk and those rubies become you?  It is very kind to put on such
+beautiful things for my poor little dinner.  As for you, Jack, you are
+glorious," and the Doctor must go over Carnegie's medals till that
+worthy and very modest man lost all patience.
+
+"No more of this nonsense; but, Sandie, that is a desperately becoming
+get-up of yours; does n't he suit it well, Kit?  I never saw a better
+calf on any man."
+
+"You are both 'rael bonnie,' and ought to be very grateful to me for
+insisting on full dress.  I 'm sorry that there is only one girl to
+admire two such handsome men; it's a poor audience, but at any rate it
+is very appreciative and grateful," and Kate courtsied to each in turn,
+for all that evening she was in great good-humour.
+
+"By the way, there will be one more to laugh at us, for I 've asked the
+Free Kirk minister to make a fourth for our table.  He is a nice young
+fellow, with more humanity than most of his kind; but did not I hear
+that he called at the Lodge to pay his respects?"
+
+"Certainly he did," said the General, "and I rather took a fancy to
+him.  He has an honest eye and is not at all bad-looking, and tells a
+capital story.  But Kit fell upon him about something, and I had to
+cover him.  It's a wonder that he ever came near the place again."
+
+"He has been at the Lodge eight times since then," explained Kate, with
+much composure; "but he will on no account be left alone with the head
+of the household.  The General insulted him on politics, and I had to
+interfere; so he looks on me as a kind of protector, and I walk him out
+to the Beeches lest he be massacred."
+
+"Take care, my dear Catherine," for the Doctor was a shrewd old
+gentleman; "protecting comes perilously near loving, and Carmichael's
+brown eyes are dangerous."
+
+"They are dark blue."  Kate was off her guard, and had no sooner spoken
+than she blushed, whereat the Doctor laughed wickedly.
+
+"You need not be afraid for Kate," said the General, cheerfully; "no
+man can conquer her; and as for the poor young padres, she made their
+lives miserable."
+
+"They were so absurd," said Kate, "so innocent, so ignorant, so
+authoritative, that it was for their good to be reduced to a proper
+level.  But I rather think your guest has forgotten his engagement.  He
+will be so busy with his book that even a manse dinner will have no
+attraction."  The Doctor looked again at Kate, but now she wore an air
+of great simplicity.
+
+It was surely not Carmichael's blame that he was late for Dr.
+Davidson's dinner, since he had thought of nothing else since he rose,
+which was at the unearthly hour of six.  He went out for a walk, which
+consisted of one mile east and another west from the village, and, with
+pauses, during which he rested on gates and looked from him, lasted two
+hours.  On his return he explained to Sarah that his health had
+received much benefit, and that she was not to be surprised if he went
+out every morning at or before daybreak.  He also mentioned casually
+that he was to dine at the manse that day, and Sarah, who had been
+alarmed lest this unexpected virtue might mean illness, was at rest.
+His habit was to linger over breakfast, propping a book against the
+sugar basin, and taking it and his rasher slice about, which was, he
+insisted, the peculiar joy of a bachelor's breakfast; but this morning
+Sarah found him at ten o'clock still at table, gazing intently at an
+untouched cutlet, and without any book.  He swallowed two mouthfuls
+hurriedly and hastened to the study, leaving her to understand that he
+had been immersed in a theological problem.  It seemed only reasonable
+that a man should have one pipe before settling down to a forenoon of
+hard study, but there is no doubt that the wreaths of smoke, as they
+float upwards, take fantastic shapes, and lend themselves to visions.
+Twelve o'clock--it was outrageous--six hours gone without a stroke of
+work.  Sarah is informed that, as he has a piece of very stiff work to
+do, luncheon must be an hour later, and that the terrier had better go
+out for a walk.  Then Carmichael cleared his table and set himself down
+to a new German critic, who was doing marvellous things with the
+Prophet Isaiah.  In three thick volumes--paper bound and hideous to
+behold--and in a style of elaborate repulsiveness, Schlochenboshen
+showed that the book had been written by a syndicate, on the principle
+that each member contributed one verse in turn, without reference to
+his neighbours.  It was, in fact, the simple plan of a children's game,
+in which you write a noun and I an adjective, and the result greatly
+pleases the company; and the theory of the eminent German was
+understood to throw a flood of light on Scripture.  Schlochenboshen had
+already discovered eleven alternating authors, and as No. 4 would
+occasionally, through pure perversity and just contrary to rules, pool
+his contribution with No. 6, several other interesting variations were
+introduced.  In such circumstances one must fix the list of authors in
+his head, and this can be conveniently done by letters of the alphabet.
+Carmichael made a beginning with four, KATE, and then he laid down his
+pen and went out for a turn in the garden.  When he came in with a
+resolute mind, he made a précis of the Professor's introduction, and it
+began, "Dear Miss Carnegie," after which he went to lunch and ate three
+biscuits.  As for some reason his mind could not face even the most
+fascinating German, Carmichael fell back on the twelve hundredth book
+on Mary Queen of Scots, which had just come from the library, and which
+was to finally vindicate that very beautiful, very clever, and very
+perplexing young woman.  An hour later Carmichael was on the moor, full
+of an unquenchable pity for Chatelard, who had loved the sun and
+perished in his rays.  The cold wind on the hill braced his soul, and
+he returned in a heroic mood.  He only was the soldier of the Cross,
+who denied himself to earthly love and hid a broken heart.  And now he
+read À Kempis and the _Christian Year_.  Several passages in the latter
+he marked in pencil with a cross, and when his wife asked him the
+reason only last week, he smiled, but would give no answer.  Having
+registered anew his vow of celibacy, he spent an hour in dressing, an
+operation, he boasted, which could be performed in six minutes, and
+which, on this occasion, his housekeeper determined to review.
+
+With all the women in the Glen, old and young, she liked the lad, for a
+way that he had and the kindness of his heart, and was determined that
+he should be well dressed for once in his life.  It was Sarah, indeed,
+that kept Carmichael late, for she not only laid out his things for him
+with much care and judgment, but on sight of the wisp of white round
+his neck she persuaded him to accept her services, and at last she was
+satisfied.  He also lost a little time as he came near the manse, for
+he grew concerned lest his tie was not straight, and it takes time to
+examine yourself in the back of your watch, when the light is dimming
+and it is necessary to retire behind a hedge lest some keen Drumtochty
+eye should detect the roadside toilet.
+
+John had brought in the lamp before Carmichael entered, and his
+confusion was pardonable, for he had come in from the twilight, and
+none could have expected such a sight.
+
+"Glad to see you, Carmichael"--the Doctor hastened to cover his
+embarrassment.  "It is very good of you to honour my little party by
+your presence.  You know the General, I think, and Miss Carnegie, whose
+first birthday in Drumtochty we celebrate to-night.
+
+"No wonder you are astonished," for Carmichael was blushing furiously;
+"and I must make our defence, eh, Carnegie? else it will be understood
+in Free Kirk circles that the manse is mad.  We seem, in fact, a pair
+of old fools, and you can have your jest at us; but there is an excuse
+even for our madness.
+
+"It is long since we have had a young lady in our Glen, and now that
+she has come to live among us--why, sir, we must just do her bidding.
+
+"Our Queen has but a little court, but her courtiers are leal and true;
+and when she ordered full dress, it was our joy to obey.  And if you
+choose to laugh, young sir--why, you may; we are not ashamed with such
+a Queen, and I do her homage."
+
+The Doctor stooped and kissed Kate's hand in the grand manner which is
+now lost, after which he drew out his snuff-box and tapped it
+pleasantly, as one who had taken part in a state function; but there
+was the suspicion of a tear in his eye, for these things woke old
+memories.
+
+"Kate 's a wilfu' lassie," said the General, fondly, "and she has long
+ruled me, so I suppose her father must do likewise."  And the General
+also kissed Kate's hand.
+
+"You are both perfectly absurd to-night," said Kate, confused and red,
+"but no Queen ever had truer hearts to love her, and if I cannot make
+you knights, I must reward you as I can."  And Kate, ignoring
+Carmichael, kissed first her father and then the Doctor.  Then she
+turned on him with a proud air, "What think you of my court, Mr.
+Carmichael?"
+
+"It is the best in Christendom, Miss Carnegie"--and his voice trembled
+with earnestness--"for it has the fairest Queen and two gentlemen of
+Christ for its servants."
+
+"Very prettily said"--the Doctor thought the little scene had gone far
+enough--"and as a reward for that courteous speech you shall take Her
+Majesty in to dinner, and we old battered fellows shall follow in
+attendance."  There was a moment's silence, and then Carmichael spoke.
+
+"If I had only known, Miss Carnegie, that I might have . . . put on
+something to do you honour too, but I have nothing except a white silk
+hood.  I wish I had been a Militiaman or . . . a Freemason."
+
+"This is your second remarkable wish in my hearing," and Kate laughed
+merrily; "last time you wished you were a dog on Muirtown platform.
+Your third will be your last, I suppose, and one wonders what it will
+be."
+
+"It is already in my heart"--Carmichael spoke low--"and some day I will
+dare to tell it to you."
+
+"Hush," replied Kate quickly, lifting her hand; "the padre is going to
+say grace."  As this was an official function in John's eyes, that
+worthy man allowed himself to take a general view, and he was pleased
+to express his high approval of the company, enlarging especially on
+Carmichael, whom, as a Free Kirkman, he had been accustomed rather to
+belittle.
+
+"Of coorse," he explained loyally, "he's no tae be compared wi' the
+Doctor, for there's nae minister ootside the Auld Kirk can hae sic an
+air, and he 's no set up like the General, but he lookit weel an'
+winsome.
+
+"His hair wes flung back frae his forehead, his een were fair dancin',
+an' there wes a bit o' colour in his cheek.  He hes a wy wi' him, a 'll
+no deny, 'at taks wi' fouk.
+
+"A 'm no sure that he 's been at mony denners though, Becca, for he
+hardly kent what he wes daein'.  A' juist pit the potatoes on his
+plate, for he never lat on he saw me; an' as for wine, a' cudna get a
+word oot o' him."
+
+"Ye 're lilted above ordinary concerns, John, an' it's no tae be
+expeckit that a beadle sud notice the way o' a lad wi' a lass," and
+Becca nodded her head with much shrewdness.
+
+"Div ye mean that, Rebecca?  That cowes a'; but it's no possible.  The
+General's dochter an' a Free Kirk minister, an' her an Esculopian--"
+
+"Love kens naither rank nor creeds; see what ye did yersel', and you
+beadle o' Drumtochty;" and John--every man has some weak
+point--swallowed the compliment with evident satisfaction.
+
+Meanwhile they had fallen on this very subject of creeds in the
+dining-room, and Kate was full of curiosity.
+
+"Will you two padres do me a favour?  I knew you would.  Well, I want
+to know for certain what is the difference between the two Kirks in
+Drumtochty.  Now which of you will begin?" and Kate beamed on them both.
+
+"Whatever you wish we will do, Kate," said the Doctor; "but you will
+have me excused in this matter, if you please, and hear my friend.  I
+am tired of controversy, and he has a fair mind, and, as I know well, a
+pleasant wit.  Tell Miss Carnegie how your people left the Kirk of
+Scotland."
+
+"Well, the dispute began"--and Carmichael faced his task
+manfully--"about the appointment of clergymen, whether it should lie
+with a patron or the people.  Lord Kilspindie had the nomination of
+Drumtochty, and if every patron had been as wise as our house, then
+there had been no Disruption."
+
+The Doctor bowed, and motioned to Carnegie to fortify himself with port.
+
+"Other patrons had no sense, and put in unsuitable men, and the people
+rebelled, since it is a sad thing for a country parish to have a
+minister who is not . . ."
+
+"A gentleman? or straight?  Quite so," chimed in Kate; "it must be
+beastly."
+
+"So a party fought for the rights of the people," resumed Carmichael,
+"and desired that the parish should have a voice in choosing the man
+who was to take charge of . . . their souls."
+
+"Isn't that like soldiers electing their officers?" inquired the
+General, doubtfully.
+
+"Go on, Carmichael; you are putting your case capitally; don't plunge
+into theology, Jack, whatever you do . . . it is Sandeman's--a sound
+wine."
+
+"Then what happened?" and Kate encouraged Carmichael with her eyes.
+
+"Four hundred clergymen threw up their livings one day and went out to
+begin a Free Kirk, where there are no patrons.
+
+"You have no idea--for I suppose you never heard of this before--how
+ministers suffered, living and dying in miserable cottages--and the
+people met for service on the sea-shore or in winter storms--all for
+conscience sake."
+
+Carmichael was glowing, and the Doctor sipped his port approvingly.
+
+"Perhaps they ought not to have seceded, and perhaps their ideas were
+wrong; but it was heroism, and a good thing for the land."
+
+"It was splendid!"  Kate's cheek flushed.  "And Drumtochty?"
+
+"Ah, something happened here that was by itself in Scotland.  Will you
+ask Dr. Davidson not to interrupt or browbeat me?  Thank you; now I am
+safe.
+
+"Some one of influence went to old Lord Kilspindie, who had no love to
+the Free Kirk, and told him that a few of his Drumtochty men wanted to
+get a site for a Free Kirk, and that he must give it.  And he did."
+
+"Now, Carmichael," began the Doctor, who had scented danger; but Kate
+held up her hand with an imperious gesture, and Carmichael went on:--
+
+"The same person used to send to the station for the Free Kirk
+probationer, and entertain him after a lordly fashion--with port, if he
+were worthy--and send him on his way rejoicing--men have told me.
+But," concluded Carmichael, averting his face from the foot of the
+table, "wild horses will not compel me to give that good Samaritan's
+name."
+
+"Was it you, Davidson, that sanctioned such a proceeding?  Why, it was
+mutiny."
+
+"Of course he did, dad," cried Kate; "just the very thing he would do;
+and so, I suppose, the Free Kirk love him as much as they do yourself,
+sir?"
+
+"As much? far more . . ."
+
+"Had I known what downright falsehood the Free Kirk minister of
+Drumtochty was capable of, I would never have allowed him to open his
+mouth."
+
+"Well, I am satisfied, at any rate," said Kate, "and I propose to
+retire to the drawing-room, and I know who would love a rubber of whist
+by-and-by.  We are just the number."
+
+A minute later Carmichael asked leave to join Kate, as he believed she
+was to have him for partner, and he must understand her game.
+
+"How adroit he is to-night, Jack;" but the General rather pitied the
+lad, with whom he imagined Kate was playing as a cat with a mouse.
+
+"Have you ever seen the face below the veil?" for they did not talk
+long about whist in the drawing-room.  "I do not think it would be
+wrong to look, for the padre told me the story.
+
+"Yes, a very winning face.  His only sister, and he simply lived for
+her.  She was only twelve when she died, and he loves her still,
+although he hardly ever speaks of her."
+
+They stood together before the happy girl-face enshrined in an old
+man's love.  They read the inscription: "My dear sister Daisy."
+
+"I never had a sister," and Carmichael sighed.
+
+"And I have now no brother."  Their hands met as they gently lowered
+the veil.
+
+"Well, have you arranged your plans?" and the Doctor came in intent on
+whist.
+
+"Only one thing.  I am going to follow Miss Carnegie's lead, and she is
+always to win," said the Free Kirk minister of Drumtochty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+SMOULDERING FIRES.
+
+It is the right of every Scot--secured to him by the Treaty of Union
+and confirmed by the Disruption--to criticise his minister with much
+freedom, but this privilege is exercised with a delicate charity.  When
+it is not possible for a conscientious hearer to approve a sermon, he
+is not compelled to condemnation.  "There wes naething wrang wi' the
+text," affords an excellent way of escape, and it is open to suggest
+efficiency in another department than the pulpit.
+
+"Mister MacWheep michtna be a special preacher, but there 's nae doot
+he wes a graund veesitor."  Before Carmichael left the West Kirk,
+Edinburgh, where he served his apprenticeship as an assistant, a worthy
+elder called to bid him good-bye, and spoke faithfully, to the lad's
+great delight.
+
+"You have been very acceptable, wonderfully so for a young man, and we
+shall follow your career with much interest.  It is right, however, to
+add, and you will accept this in a right spirit, that it was not by
+preaching that you commended yourself to our people, but by your
+visiting.  Your sermons are what I might call . . . hazy--you will get
+a hold of the truth by-and-by, no doubt--but you have a gift for
+visitation."
+
+The exact quality and popularity of this gift was excellently stated by
+the wife of a working man, who referred with enthusiasm to the edifying
+character of the assistant's conversation.
+
+"Tammas misses Maister Carmichael juist terrible, for he wud come in on
+a forenicht an' sit, an' smoke, an' haver wi' the gude man by the 'oor.
+He wes the maist divertin' minister a' ever saw in the West Kirk."
+
+It will be evident that Carmichael's visitation belonged to a different
+department of art from that of Dr. Davidson.  He arrived without
+intimation by the nearest way that he could invent, clothed in a
+shooting jacket and a soft hat, and accompanied by at least two dogs.
+His coming created an instant stir, and Carmichael plunged at once into
+the life of the household.  It is kept on fond record, and still told
+by the surviving remnant of his flock, that on various occasions and in
+the course of pastoral visitation he had turned the hay in summer, had
+forked the sheaves in harvest-time, had sacked the corn for market, and
+had driven a gude wife's churn.  After which honourable toil he would
+eat and drink anything put before him except boiled tea, against which
+he once preached with power--and then would sit indefinitely with the
+family before the kitchen fire, telling tales of ancient history,
+recalling the old struggles of Scottish men, describing foreign sights,
+enlarging on new books, till he would remember that he had only dropped
+in for an hour, and that two meals must be waiting for him at the
+manse.  His visits were understood to be quite unfinished, and he left
+every house pledged to return and take up things at the point where he
+had been obliged to break off, and so he came at last in this matter of
+visitation into a condition of hopeless insolvency.  His adventures
+were innumerable and always enjoyable--falling off the two fir trees
+that made a bridge over our deeper burns, and being dried at the next
+farm-house--wandering over the moor all night and turning up at a
+gamekeeper's at daybreak, covered with peat and ravening with
+hunger--fighting his way through a snowstorm to a marriage, and digging
+the bridegroom out of a drift--dodging a herd of Highland cattle that
+thought he had come too near their calves, or driving off Drumsheugh's
+polled Angus bull with contumely when he was threatening Mrs.
+Macfadyen.  If he met the bairns coming from school, the Glen rang with
+the foolery.  When Willie Harley broke his leg, Carmichael brought his
+dog Jackie--I could tell things of that dog--and devised dramatic
+entertainments of such attraction that Jamie Soutar declared them no
+better than the theatre, and threatened Carmichael with a skep of honey
+as a mark of his indignation.  As for the old women of the Glen, he got
+round them to that extent that they would gossip with him by the hour
+over past days, and Betty Macfarlane was so carried by the minister's
+sympathy that she brought out from hidden places some finery of her
+youth, and Carmichael was found by Miss Carnegie arranging a faded
+Paisley shawl on Betty's shoulders.  And was it not this same gay Free
+Kirkman who trained an eleven to such perfection on a field of
+Drumsheugh's that they beat the second eleven of Muirtown gloriously?
+on which occasion Tammas Mitchell, by the keenness of his eye and the
+strength of his arm, made forty-four runs; and being congratulated by
+Drumtochty as he carried his bat, opened his mouth for the first time
+that day, saying, "Awa wi' ye."
+
+[Illustration: Would gossip with him by the hour.]
+
+So it came to pass that notwithstanding his unholy tendency to Biblical
+criticism and other theological pedantry, Drumtochty loved Carmichael
+because he was a man; and Dr. Davidson, lighting upon him in Hillocks'
+garden, with the family round him full of joy, would threaten him with
+a prosecution for poaching under the ecclesiastical Game Laws, and end
+by insisting upon him coming to dinner at the manse, when he might
+explain his conduct.  Drumtochty loved him for his very imperfections,
+and follows his career unto this day with undying interest, recalling
+his various escapades with huge delight, and declaring to strangers
+that even in his callow days they had discovered that Carmichael was a
+preacher.
+
+Carmichael had occasional fits of order, when he repented of his
+desultory ways, and began afresh with much diligence, writing out the
+names of the congregation with full details--he once got as far as
+Menzies before he lost the book--mapping the parish into districts, and
+planning an elaborate visitation.  It may have been an accident that
+the district he chose for experiment embraced Tochty Lodge--where the
+Carnegies had just settled--but it was natural that his first effort
+should be thorough.  There were exactly ten Free Kirk families from
+Tochty Lodge eastwards, and some of these still speak with feeling of
+the attention they received, which exceeded all they had ever known
+before or since.
+
+"It wesna that he sat sae lang as a 've heard o' him daein' in the
+heich Glen, but it wes the times he cam'," Mrs. Stirton used to
+expatiate, "maybe twice a week for a month.  He hed a wy o' comin'
+through Tochty Wood--the shade helpit him tae study, he said--an'
+jumpin' the dyke.  Sall, gin he dinna mak a roadie for himsel' through
+the field that year.  A' wudna say," she used to add in a casual tone,
+"but that he micht hae gi'en a cry at the Lodge, but he cudna dae less,
+passin' the door."
+
+Carmichael was astonished himself at the number of times he was obliged
+to see General Carnegie on business, of one kind or another.  Sometimes
+it was about the Flower Show, of which the General had become a patron;
+sometimes it was the Highland Games, when the General's help would be
+of so much use; sometimes it was the idea of repairing the old bridge;
+sometimes--and Carmichael blushed when it came to this--to get the
+General's opinion on a military question in the Bible.  The least he
+could do in laying such a tax on a good-natured man was to bring a book
+for his daughter's reading, or a curious flower he had picked up on the
+hill, or a story he had heard in his visiting.  Miss Carnegie was
+generally gracious, and would see him on his way if the day were fine,
+or show him some improvements in the "Pleasaunce," or accompany him to
+Janet's cottage to have a taste of that original woman's conversation
+together.  It came upon Carmichael at a time that he was,
+inadvertently, calling too frequently at the Lodge, and for a week he
+would keep to the main, road, or even pass the corner of the Lodge with
+an abstracted air--for he loathed the thought of being deflected from
+the path of duty by any personal attraction--and used to change the
+subject of conversation after Janet had spoken for half an hour on Kate.
+
+People were speculating in a guarded manner regarding the possibility
+of news, and Janet had quarrelled furiously with Donald for laughing
+such unworthy rumours to scorn, when the parish was almost convulsed by
+the historic scene in the Free Kirk, and all hope of a romantic
+alliance was blasted.  Archie Moncur, elder, and James Macfadyen,
+deacon, were counting the collection in the vestibule, and the
+congregation within were just singing the last verse of their first
+psalm, when General Carnegie and his daughter appeared at the door.
+
+"Has service begun?" whispered Kate, while her father reverently bared
+his head.  "I 'm so sorry we are late, but you will let us in, won't
+you, and we shall be as quiet as mice."
+
+"A 'll open the door," and Archie explained the geography of the
+situation, "an' ye 'll juist slip intae the manse pew; it's in the
+corner, wi' curtains roond it, an' naebody 'll see ye, naither minister
+nor people;" and so Carmichael went through the service, and had almost
+reached the end of his sermon before he knew that Kate was in the
+church.
+
+She was very conscious of him and keenly observant of every detail--his
+white silk hood thrown into relief by the black Geneva gown, his fair,
+flushed face touched with tenderness and reverence, a new accent of
+affection in his voice as one speaking to his charge, and especially
+she noted in this Free Kirkman a certain fervour and high hope, a
+flavour also of subtle spirituality, that were wanting in Dr. Davidson.
+His hair might have been better brushed, and his whiskers were
+distinctly ragged--but those things could be easily put right; then she
+tossed her head in contempt of herself.  It had come to a fine pass
+when a girl that had carried her heart untouched through Simla should
+be concerned about the appearance of a Highland minister.  The General
+was well acquainted with that proud motion, and began to regret that
+they had come.  It was Davidson's blame, who had sent them to hear a
+good sermon for once, as he said, and now Kate would only find material
+for raillery.  He tugged his moustache and wished that they were again
+in the open air.
+
+When the sermon came, the occupants of the manse pew composed
+themselves for fifteen minutes' patient endurance, after the well-bred
+fashion of their Church, each selecting a corner with a skill born of
+long experience.  They were not, however, to rest in peace and
+detachment of mind till the doxology (or its corresponding formula in
+the Scottish Kirk) summoned them back, for this was to be a quite
+memorable sermon for them and their fellow-hearers and all Drumtochty.
+
+Carmichael had been lecturing through Old Testament history, and having
+come to the drama of Elijah and Jezebel, had laid himself out for its
+full and picturesque treatment.  He was still at that age when right
+seems to be all on one side, and a particular cause can be traced down
+the centuries in all lands and under all conditions.  For the most part
+of two days he had wandered over the moor in the bright, cold November
+weather reconstructing the scene in Israel on Scottish lines, and he
+entered the pulpit that morning charged with the Epic of Puritanism.
+Acute critics, like Elspeth Macfadyen, could tell from Carmichael's
+walk down the church that he was in great spirits, and even ordinary
+people caught a note of triumph in his voice as he gave out the first
+Psalm.  For the first few sentences of his sermon he spoke quietly, as
+one reserving and restraining himself, and gave a historical
+introduction which allowed the General to revive some ancient memories
+of India without interruption.  But Kate caught the imperial tone of
+one who had a message to deliver and was already commanding people to
+listen.  She was conscious of a certain anxiety, and began to wish that
+she were in front and could see his face, instead of only the side of
+his head.  Then Carmichael threw back his hair with the air of one
+taking off his coat, and plunged the congregation into the midst of the
+battle, describing Elijah's forgetfulness of self, profound conviction
+of righteousness, high purpose for his nation and devotion to the cause
+of Jehovah, till Burnbrae and the Free Kirkmen straightened themselves
+visibly in their pews, and touching so skilfully on the Tyrian princess
+in her beauty, her culture, her bigotry, her wiles, her masterfulness,
+that several women--greatly delighting in the exposure of such a
+"trimmie"--nodded approval.  Kate had never given herself to the study
+of Old Testament history, and would have had some difficulty in
+identifying Elijah--there was a mare called Jezebel of vicious
+temper--but she caught the contagion of enthusiasm.  If the supreme
+success of a sermon be to stimulate the hearer's mind, then Carmichael
+ought to have closed at this point.  His people would have been all the
+week fighting battles for conscience sake, and resisting smooth,
+cunning temptation to the farthest limits of their lives and in
+unimaginable ways.  Kate herself, although a person quite unaffected by
+preaching, had also naturalised the sermon in her life with much
+practical and vivid detail.  Carmichael was Elijah, the prophet of the
+common people, with his simple ways and old-fashioned notions and love
+of hardness, only far more gentle and courteous and amusing than that
+uncompromising Jew; and she--why, she would be Jezebel just for the
+moment, who had come from . . . India into the Glen, and could bring
+Elijah to her feet if she chose, and make him do her will, and
+then . . .  The girls in the choir before the pulpit noticed the look
+on Kate's face, and wondered whether the Carnegies would join the Free
+Kirk.
+
+Carmichael had an instinct that he ought to fling over the remaining
+four pages of his sermon and close the service with a war Psalm, and he
+told me when I was staying with him last week that he sacrifices the
+last head of his sermon almost every Sunday in his city pulpit.  But he
+was only a lad in Drumtochty, and besides was full of a historical
+parallel, which after a scientific illustration is most irresistible to
+a young minister.  No one had ever seen it before, but of course Elijah
+was John Knox, and Jezebel was Queen Mary of Scots, and then Carmichael
+set to work afresh, with something less than conspicuous success.
+Scottish people are always ready for a eulogium on John Knox in church,
+or on Robert Burns out of church, but the Reformer is rather the object
+of patriotic respect and personal devotion.  Netherton snuffed in quite
+a leisurely way, and the women examined the bonnet of the manse
+housekeeper, while Knox stood in the breach for the liberties of
+Scotland, and when Carmichael began to meddle with Mary, he distinctly
+lost the sympathies of his audience and entered on dangerous ground.
+Scots allow themselves, at times, the rare luxury of being illogical,
+and one of the occasions is their fondness for Queen Mary.  An austere
+Puritan may prove that this young woman was French in her ways, an
+enemy to the Evangel, a born and practised flirt, and art and part in
+the murder of Darnley.  A Scot will not deny the evidence, and if he be
+thrust into the box he may bring in the prisoner guilty, but his heart
+is with the condemned, and he has a grudge against the prosecutor.  For
+he never forgets that Mary was of the royal blood and a thorough
+Stewart, that her face turned men's heads in every country she touched,
+that she had the courage of a man in her, that she was shamefully used,
+and if she did throw over that ill-conditioned lad, well . . .  "Puir
+lassie, she hed naebody tae guide her, but sall, she focht her battle
+weel," and out of this judgment none can drive an honest Scot.  "Yon
+wes a graund discoorse the day, gude wife," Jeems hazarded to Elspeth
+on the way home, "but a' thocht the minister wes a wee hard on Queen
+Mary; there 's nae doot she wes a papist, an' micht hae gien Knox a bit
+twist wi' the screws gin she cud hae gruppit him, but a' dinna like her
+misca'd."
+
+"A 've heard him wi' ma ain ears crackin' her up by the 'oor, an' a'
+canna mak' oot what set him against her the day; but he 's young,"
+remarked Elspeth, sagely, "an' wi' his age it's either saint or deevil,
+an' ae day the one an' the next day the ither; there 's nae medium.
+Noo, maist fouk are juist half an' between, an' Mary hed her faults.
+
+"Ma word, Jeems," continued Elspeth with much relish, "Mary wud sune
+hae settled the minister gin she hed been in the kirk the day."
+
+"Ay, ay," inquired Jeems, "noo what wud the hizzie hae dune?"
+
+"She wud juist hae sent for him an' lookit wi' her een, an' askit him
+what ill he hed at her, an' gin that wesna eneuch she wud hae pit her
+handkerchief tae her face."
+
+"Of coorse he cudna hae stude that; a' micht hae gien in masel',"
+admitted Jeems, "but Knox wes stiff."
+
+"Maister Carmichael is no a Knox, naither are ye, Jeems, an' it's a
+mercy for me ye arena.  Mary wud hae twistit Maister Carmichael roond
+her finger, but a 'm judgin' he 'll catch it as it is afore mony days,
+or ma name 's no Elspeth Macfadyen.  Did ye see Miss Carnegie rise an'
+gae oot afore he feenished?"
+
+"Div ye mean that, Elspeth?" and her husband was amazed at such
+penetration.  "Noo a' thocht it hed been the heat; a' never held wi'
+that stove; it draws up the air.  Hoo did ye jalouse yon?"
+
+"She wes fidgetin' in her seat when he yokit on Mary, an' the meenut he
+named her 'our Scottish Jezebel' the Miss rose an' opened the seat door
+that calm, a' knew she wes in a tantrum, and she gied him a look afore
+she closed the kirk door that wud hae brocht ony man tae his senses.
+
+"Jeems," went on Elspeth with solemnity, "a' coont this a doonricht
+calamity, for a' wes houpin' he wud hae pleased them the day, an' noo a
+'m sair afraid that the minister hes crackit his credit wi' the Lodge."
+
+"Div ye think, Elspeth, he saw her gang oot an' suspeckit the cause?"
+
+"It's maist michty tae hear ye ask sic a question, Jeems.  What gared
+him mak' a hash o' the baptism prayer, and return thanks that there wes
+a leevin' father, instead o' mither, and gie oot the 103rd Paraphrase?
+Tak' ma word for't, he 's wishin' by this time that he 'd lat puir Mary
+alane."
+
+It was just above Hillocks' farm that the General overtook Kate, who
+was still blazing.
+
+"Did you ever hear such vulgar abuse and . . . abominable language from
+a pulpit?  He 's simply a raging fanatic, and not one bit better than
+his Knox.  And I . . . we thought him quite different . . . and a
+gentleman.  I 'll never speak to him again.  Scottish Jezebel: I
+suppose he would call me Jezebel if it occurred to him."
+
+"Very likely he would," replied the General, dryly, "and I must say his
+talk about Queen Mary seemed rather bad taste.  But that's not the
+question, Kate, which is your conduct in leaving a place of worship in
+such an . . . unladylike fashion."
+
+"What?" for this was new talk from her father.
+
+"As no Carnegie ought to have done.  You have forgotten yourself and
+your house, and there is just one thing for you to do, and the sooner
+the better."
+
+"Father, I 'll never look at him again . . . and after that evening at
+Dr. Davidson's, and our talking . . . about Queen Mary, and . . . lots
+of things."
+
+"Whether you meet Mr. Carmichael again or not is your own affair, but
+this touches us both, and you . . . must write a letter of apology."
+
+"And if I don't?" said Kate, defiantly.
+
+"Then I shall write one myself for you.  A Carnegie must not insult any
+man, be he one faith or the other, and offer him no amends."
+
+So Donald handed in this letter at the Free Kirk Manse that evening,
+and left without an answer.
+
+
+TOCHTY LODGE.
+
+SIR,--Your violent and insolent attack on a martyred Queen caused me to
+lose self-control in your church to-day, and I was unable to sit longer
+under such language.
+
+It has been pointed out to me that I ought not to have left church as I
+did, and I hereby express regret.
+
+The books you were so good as to lend me I have sent back by the
+messenger.--Yours truly,
+
+CATHERINE CARNEGIE.
+
+
+When Carmichael called next day, Donald informed him with unconcealed
+satisfaction that Lord Hay was lunching with the family, and that the
+General and Miss Carnegie were going to Muirtown Castle to-morrow for a
+visit; but Janet had not lost hope.
+
+"Do not be taking this to heart, my dear, for I will be asking a
+question.  What will be making Miss Kate so very angry? it is not every
+man she would be minding, though he spoke against Queen Mary all the
+day.  When a woman does not care about a man she will not take the
+trouble to be angry.  That is what I am thinking; and it is not Lord
+Hay that has the way, oh no, though he be a proper man and good at
+shooting."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+LOVE SICKNESS.
+
+College friends settled in petty lowland towns, and meeting Carmichael
+on sacramental occasions, affected to pity him, inquiring curiously
+what were his means of conveyance after the railway ceased, what time a
+letter took to reach him, whether any foot ever crossed his door from
+October to May, whether the great event of the week was not the arrival
+of the bread cart.  Those were exasperating gibes from men who could
+not take a walk without coming on a coal pit, nor lift a book in their
+studies without soiling their hands, whose windows looked on a street
+and commanded the light of a grocer's shop instead of a sunset.  It ill
+became such miserables to be insolent, and Carmichael taught them
+humility when he began to sound the praises of Drumtochty; but he could
+not make townspeople understand the unutterable satisfaction of the
+country minister, who even from old age and great cities looks back
+with fond regret to his first parish on the slope of the Grampians.
+Some kindly host wrestles with him to stay a few days more in
+civilisation, and pledges him to run up whenever he wearies of his
+exile, and the ungrateful rustic can hardly conceal the joy of his
+escape.  He shudders on the way to the station at the drip of the dirty
+sleet and the rags of the shivering poor, and the restless faces of the
+men and the unceasing roar of the traffic.  Where he is going the white
+snow is falling gently on the road, a cart full of sweet-smelling roots
+is moving on velvet, the driver stops to exchange views with a farmer
+who has been feeding his sheep, within the humblest cottage the fire is
+burning clearly.  With every mile northwards the Glenman's heart lifts;
+and as he lands on his far-away little station, he draws a deep breath
+of the clean, wholesome air.  It is a long walk through the snow, but
+there is a kindly, couthy smell from the woods, and at sight of the
+squares of light in his home, weariness departs from a Drumtochty man.
+Carmichael used to say that a glimpse of Archie Moncur sitting with his
+sisters before the fire as he passed, and the wild turmoil of his dogs
+within the manse as the latch of the garden gate clicked, and the flood
+of light pouring out from the open door on the garden, where every
+branch was feathered with snow, and to come into his study, where the
+fire of pine logs was reflected from the familiar titles of his loved
+books, gave him a shock of joy such as he has never felt since, even in
+the days of his prosperity.
+
+[Illustration: The driver stops to exchange views.]
+
+"The city folk are generous with their wealth," he was saying to me
+only last week, when I was visiting him in his West End manse and we
+fell a-talking of the Glen, "and they have dealt kindly by me; they are
+also full of ideas, and they make an inspiring audience for a preacher.
+If any man has a message to deliver from the Eternal, then he had
+better leave the wilderness and come to the city, and if he has plans
+for the helping of his fellow men, let him come where he can get his
+work and his labourers.
+
+"No, I do not repent leaving the Glen, for the Divine Hand thrust me
+forth and has given me work to do, and I am not ungrateful to the
+friends I have made in the city; but God created me a countryman,
+and"--here Carmichael turned his back to me--"my heart goes back to
+Drumtochty, and the sight of you fills me with . . . longing.
+
+"Ah, how this desiderium, as the Rabbi would have said, comes over one
+with the seasons as they come and go.  In spring they send me the first
+snowdrops from the Glen, but it is a cruel kindness, for I want to be
+where they are growing in Clashiegar den.  When summer comes people
+praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have
+not seen Tochty woods in their glory.  Each autumn carries me to the
+harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel
+the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain.  And in winter I see the sun
+shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to
+paper in this dreary room.
+
+"What nonsense this is," pulling himself together; "yes, that is the
+very chair you sat in, and this is the table we stuck between us with
+our humble flask of Moselle of a winter's night . . . let's go to bed;
+we 'll have no more good talk to-night."
+
+When he had left me, I flung open my window in search of air, for it
+seemed as if the city were choking me.  A lamp was flaring across the
+street, two cabs rattled past with revellers singing a music-hall song,
+a heavy odour from many drains floated in, the multitude of houses
+oppressed one as with a weight.  How sweet and pure it was now at the
+pool above Tochty mill, where the trout were lying below the stones and
+the ash boughs dipping into the water.
+
+Carmichael once, however, lost all love of the Glen, and that was after
+Kate flung herself out of the Free Kirk and went on a visit to Muirtown
+Castle.  He was completely disenchanted and saw everything at its
+poorest.  Why did they build the manse so low that an able-bodied man
+could touch the ceiling of the lower rooms with an effort and the upper
+rooms easily?  What possessed his predecessor to put such an impossible
+paper on the study and to stuff the room with book-shelves?  A row of
+Puritan divines offended him--a wooden, obsolete theology--but he also
+pitched a defence of Queen Mary into a cupboard--she had done enough
+mischief already.  The garden looked squalid and mean, without flowers,
+with black patches peeping through the thin covering of snow, with a
+row of winter greens opposite the southern window.  He had never
+noticed the Glen so narrow and bare before, nor how grey and unlovely
+were the houses.  Why had not the people better manners and some
+brightness? they were not always attending funerals and making
+bargains.  What an occupation for an educated man to spend two hours in
+a cabin of a vestry with a dozen labouring men, considering how two
+pounds could be added to the Sustentation Fund, or preaching on Sunday
+to a handful of people who showed no more animation than stone gods
+except when the men took snuff audibly.  Carmichael was playing the
+spoiled child--not being at all a mature or perfect character, then or
+now--and was ready to hit out at anybody.  His bearing was for the
+first and only time in his life supercilious, and his sermons were a
+vicious attack on the doctrines most dear to the best of his people.
+His elders knew not what had come over him, although Elspeth Macfadyen
+was mysteriously apologetic, and in moments of sanity he despised
+himself.  One day he came to a good resolution suddenly, and went down
+to see Rabbi Saunderson--the very thought of whose gentle, patient,
+selfless life was a rebuke and a tonic.
+
+When two tramps held conference on the road, and one indicated to the
+other visibly that any gentleman in temporary distress would be treated
+after a Christian fashion at a neighbouring house, Carmichael, who had
+been walking in a dream since he passed the lodge, knew instantly that
+he must be near the Free Kirk manse of Kilbogie.  The means of
+communication between the members of the nomadic profession is almost
+perfect in its frequency and accuracy, and Saunderson's manse was a
+hedge-side word.  Not only did all the regular travellers by the north
+road call on their going up in spring and their coming down in autumn,
+but habitués of the east coast route were attracted and made a circuit
+to embrace so hospitable a home, and even country vagrants made their
+way from Dunleith and down through Glen Urtach to pay their respects to
+the Rabbi.  They had particular directions to avoid Barbara--expressed
+forcibly on five different posts in the vicinity and enforced in
+picturesque language, of an evening--and they were therefore careful to
+waylay the Rabbi on the road, or enter his study boldly from the front.
+The humbler members of the profession contented themselves with
+explaining that they had once been prosperous tradesmen, and were now
+walking to Muirtown in search of work--receiving their alms, in
+silence, with diffidence and shame; but those in a higher walk came to
+consult the Rabbi on Bible difficulties, which were threatening to
+shake their faith, and departed much relieved--with a new view of Lot's
+wife, as well as a suit of clothes the Rabbi had only worn three times.
+
+[Illustration: Two tramps held conference.]
+
+"You have done kindly by me in calling"--the vagabond had finished his
+story and was standing, a very abject figure, among the books--"and in
+giving me the message from your friend.  I am truly thankful that he is
+now labouring--in iron, did you say? and I hope he may be a cunning
+artificer.
+
+"You will not set it down to carelessness that I cannot quite recall
+the face of your friend, for, indeed, it is my privilege to see many
+travellers, and there are times when I may have been a minister to them
+on their journeys, as I would be to you also if there be anything in
+which I can serve you.  It grieves me to say that I have no clothing
+that I might offer you; it happens that a very worthy man passed here a
+few days ago most insufficiently clad and . . . but I should not have
+alluded to that; my other garments, save what I wear, are . . . kept in
+a place of . . . safety by my excellent housekeeper, and she makes
+their custody a point of conscience; you might put the matter before
+her. . . .  Assuredly it would be difficult, and I crave your pardon
+for putting you in an . . . embarrassing position; it is my misfortune
+to have to-day neither silver nor gold," catching sight of Carmichael
+in the passage, "this is a Providence.  May I borrow from you, John,
+some suitable sum for our brother here who is passing through
+adversity?"
+
+"Do not be angry with me, John"--after the tramp had departed, with
+five shillings in hand and much triumph over Carmichael on his
+face--"nor speak bitterly of our fellow men.  Verily theirs is a hard
+lot who have no place to lay their head, and who journey in weariness
+from city to city.  John, I was once a stranger and a wayfarer,
+wandering over the length and breadth of the land.  Nor had I a friend
+on earth till my feet were led to the Mains, where my heart was greatly
+refreshed, and now God has surrounded me with young men of whose
+kindness I am not worthy, wherefore it becometh me to show mercy unto
+others," and the Rabbi looked at Carmichael with such sweetness, that
+the lad's sullenness began to yield, although he made no sign.
+
+"Moreover," and the Rabbi's voice took a lower tone, "as often as I
+look on one of those men of the highways, there cometh to me a vision
+of Him who was an outcast of the people, and albeit some may be as
+Judas, peradventure one might beg alms of me, a poor sinful man, some
+day, and lo it might be . . . the Lord Himself in a saint," and the
+Rabbi bowed his head and stood awhile much moved.
+
+"Rabbi," after a pause, during which Carmichael's face had changed,
+"you are incorrigible.  For years we have been trying to make you a
+really good and wise man, both by example and precept, and you are
+distinctly worse than when we began--more lazy, miserly, and
+uncharitable.  It is very disheartening.
+
+"Can you receive another tramp and give him a bed, for I am in low
+spirits, and so, like every other person in trouble, I come to you, you
+dear old saint, and already I feel a better man."
+
+"Receive you, John?  It is doubtless selfish, but it is not given to
+you to know how I weary to see your faces, and we shall have much
+converse together--there are some points I would like your opinion
+on--but first of all, after a slight refreshment, we must go to Mains:
+behold the aid to memory I have designed"--and the Rabbi pointed to a
+large square of paper hung above Chrysostom, with "Farewell, George
+Pitillo, 3 o'clock."  "He is the son's son of my benefactor, and he
+leaves his father's house this day to go into a strange land across the
+sea: I had a service last night at Mains, and expounded the departure
+of Abraham, but only slightly, being somewhat affected through the
+weakness of the flesh.  There was a covenant made between the young man
+and myself, that I should meet him at the crossing of the roads to-day,
+and it is in my mind to leave a parable with him against the power of
+this present world."
+
+Then the Rabbi fell into a meditation till the dog-cart came up, Mains
+and his wife in the front and George alone in the back, making a brave
+show of indifference.
+
+"George," said the Rabbi, looking across the field and speaking as to
+himself, "we shall not meet again in this world, and in a short space
+they will bury me in Kilbogie kirkyard, but it will not be in me to lie
+still for thinking of the people I have loved.  So it will come to pass
+that I may rise--you have ears to understand, George---and I will
+inquire of him that taketh charge of the dead about many and how it
+fares with them."
+
+"And George Pitillo, what of him, Andrew?"
+
+"'Oh, it's a peety you didna live langer, Mr. Saunderson, for George
+hes risen in the warld and made a great fortune.'"
+
+"How does it go with his soul, Andrew?"
+
+"'Well, you see, Mister Saunderson, George hes hed many things to think
+about, and he maybe hasna hed time for releegion yet, but nae doot he
+'ll be turnin' his mind that wy soon.'"
+
+"Poor George, that I baptised and admitted to the sacrament and . . .
+loved: exchanged his soul for the world."
+
+The sun was setting fast, and the landscape--bare stubble fields,
+leafless trees, still water, long, empty road--was of a blood-red
+colour fearsome to behold, so that no one spake, and the horse chafing
+his bit made the only sound.
+
+Then the Rabbi began again.
+
+"And George Pitillo--tell me, Andrew?"
+
+"'Weel, ye see, Mister Saunderson, ye wud be sorry for him, for you and
+he were aye chief; he's keepit a gude name an' workit hard, but hesna
+made muckle o' this warld.'"
+
+"And his soul, Andrew?"
+
+"'Oo, that's a' richt; gin we a' hed as gude a chance for the next
+warld as George Pitillo we micht be satisfied.'"
+
+"That is enough for his old friend; hap me over again, Andrew, and I'll
+rest in peace till the trumpet sound."
+
+Carmichael turned aside, but he heard something desperately like a sob
+from the back of the dog-cart, and the Rabbi saying, "God be with you,
+George, and as your father's father received me in the day of my sore
+discouragement, so may the Lord God of Israel open a door for you in
+every land whithersoever you go, and bring you in at last through the
+gates into the city."  The Rabbi watched George till the dog-cart faded
+away into the dusk of the winter's day, and they settled for the night
+in their places among the books before the Rabbi spoke.
+
+It was with a wistful tenderness that he turned to Carmichael and
+touched him slightly with his hand, as was a fashion with the Rabbi.
+
+"You will not think me indifferent to your welfare because I have not
+inquired about your affairs, for indeed this could not be, but the
+going forth of this lad has tried my heart.  Is there aught, John, that
+it becometh you to tell me, and wherein my years can be of any avail?"
+
+"It is not about doctrine I wished to speak to you, Rabbi, although I
+am troubled thus also, but about . . . you remember our talk."
+
+"About the maid, surely; I cannot forget her, and indeed often think of
+her since the day you brought me to her house and made me known unto
+her, which was much courtesy to one who is fitter for a book-room than
+a woman's company.
+
+"She is fair of face and hath a pleasant manner, and surely beauty and
+a winsome way are from God; there seemed also a certain contempt of
+baseness and a strength of will which are excellent.  Perhaps my
+judgment is not even because Miss Carnegie was gracious to me, and you
+know, John, it is not in me to resist kindness, but this is how she
+seems to me.  Has there been trouble between you?"
+
+"Do not misunderstand me, Rabbi; I have not spoken one word of love to
+. . . Miss Carnegie, nor she to me; but I love her, and I thought that
+perhaps she saw that I loved her.  But now it looks as if . . . what I
+hoped is never to be," and Carmichael told the Queen Mary affair.
+
+"Is it not marvellous," mused the Rabbi, looking into the fire, "how
+one woman who was indeed at the time little more than a girl did carry
+men, many of them wise and clever, away as with a flood, and still
+divideth scholars and even . . . friends?
+
+"It was not fitting that Miss Carnegie should have left God's house in
+heat of temper, and it seemeth to us that she hath a wrong reading of
+history, but it is surely good that she hath her convictions, and
+holdeth them fast like a brave maid.
+
+"Is it not so, John, that friends and doubtless also . . . lovers have
+been divided by conscience and have been on opposite sides in the great
+conflict, and doth not this show how much of conscience there is among
+men?
+
+"It may be this dispute will not divide you--being now, as it were,
+more an argument of the schools than a matter of principle, but if it
+should appear that you are far apart on the greater matters of faith,
+then . . . you will have a heavy cross to carry.  But it is my mind
+that the heart of the maiden is right, and that I may some day see her
+. . . in your home, whereat my eyes would be glad."
+
+The Rabbi was so taken up with the matter that he barely showed
+Carmichael a fine copy of John of Damascus he had secured from London,
+and went out of his course at worship to read, as well as to expound
+with much feeling, the story of Ruth the Moabitess, showing
+conclusively that she had in her a high spirit, and that she was
+designed of God to be a strength to the house of David.  He was also
+very cheerful in the morning, and bade Carmichael good-bye at Tochty
+woods with encouraging words.  He also agreed to assist his boy at the
+Drumtochty sacrament.
+
+It was evident that the Rabbi's mind was much set on this visit, but
+Carmichael did not for one moment depend upon his remembering the day,
+and so Burnbrae started early on the Saturday with his dog-cart to
+bring Saunderson up and deposit him without fail in the Free Kirk manse
+of Drumtochty.  Six times that day did the minister leave his "action"
+sermon and take his way to the guest room, carrying such works as might
+not be quite unsuitable for the old scholar's perusal, and arranging a
+lamp of easy management, that the night hours might not be lost.  It
+was late in the afternoon before the Rabbi was delivered at the manse,
+and Burnbrae gave explanations next day at the sacramental dinner.
+
+"It wes just ten when a' got tae the manse o' Kilbogie, an' his
+hoosekeeper didna ken whar her maister wes; he micht be in Kildrummie
+by that time, she said, or half wy tae Muirtown.  So a' set oot an'
+ransackit the parish till a' got him, an' gin he wesna sittin' in a
+bothie takin' brose wi' the plowmen an' expoundin' Scripture a' the
+time.
+
+"He startit on the ancient martyrs afore we were half a mile on the
+road, and he gied ae testimony aifter anither, an' he wesna within
+sicht o' the Reformation when we cam tae the hooses; a 'll no deny that
+a' let the mare walk bits o' the road, for a' cud hae heard him a'
+nicht; ma bluid 's warmer yet, freends."
+
+The Rabbi arrived in great spirits, and refused to taste meat till he
+had stated the burden of his sermon for the morrow.
+
+"If the Lord hath opened our ears the servant must declare what has
+been given him, but I prayed that the message sent through me to your
+flock, John, might be love.  It hath pleased the Great Shepherd that I
+should lead the sheep by strange paths, but I desired that it be
+otherwise when I came for the first time to Drumtochty.
+
+"Two days did I spend in the woods, for the stillness of winter among
+the trees leaveth the mind disengaged for the Divine word, and the
+first day my soul was heavy as I returned, for this only was laid upon
+'vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction.'  And, John, albeit God would
+doubtless have given me strength according to His will, yet I was loath
+to bear this awful truth to the people of your charge.
+
+"Next day the sun was shining pleasantly in the wood and it came to me
+that clouds had gone from the face of God, and as I wandered among the
+trees a squirrel sat on a branch within reach of my hand and did not
+flee.  Then I heard a voice, 'I have loved thee with an everlasting
+love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.'
+
+"It was, in an instant, my hope that this might be God's word by me,
+but I knew not it was so till the Evangel opened up on all sides, and I
+was led into the outgoings of the eternal love after so moving a
+fashion that I dared to think that grace might be effectual even with
+me . . . with me.
+
+"God opened my mouth on Sabbath on this text unto my own flock, and the
+word was not void.  It is little that can be said on sovereign love in
+two hours and it may be a few minutes; yet even this may be more than
+your people are minded to bear.  So I shall pretermit certain notes on
+doctrine; for you will doubtless have given much instruction on the
+purposes of God, and very likely may be touching on that mystery in
+your action sermon."
+
+During the evening the Rabbi was very genial--tasting Sarah's viands
+with relish, and comparing her to Rebecca, who made savoury meat,
+urging Carmichael to smoke without scruple, and allowing himself to
+snuff three times, examining the bookshelves with keen appreciation,
+and finally departing with three volumes of modern divinity under his
+arm, to reinforce the selection in his room, "lest his eyes should be
+held waking in the night watches."  He was much overcome by the care
+that had been taken for his comfort, and at the door of his room blest
+his boy: "May the Lord give you the sleep of His beloved, and
+strengthen you to declare all His truth on the morrow."  Carmichael sat
+by his study fire for a while and went to bed much cheered, nor did he
+dream that there was to be a second catastrophe in the Free Kirk of
+Drumtochty which would be far sadder than the first, and leave in one
+heart life-long regret.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE FEAR OF GOD.
+
+It was the way of the Free Kirk that the assisting minister at the
+Sacrament should sit behind the Communion Table during the sermon, and
+the congregation, without giving the faintest sign of observation,
+could estimate its effect on his face.  When Doctor Dowbiggin composed
+himself to listen as became a Church leader of substantial build--his
+hands folded before him and his eyes fixed on the far window--and was
+so arrested by the opening passage of Cunningham's sermon on
+Justification by Faith that he visibly started, and afterward sat
+sideways with his ears cocked, Drumtochty, while doubtful whether any
+Muirtown man could appreciate the subtlety of their minister, had a
+higher idea of the Doctor; and when the Free Kirk minister of
+Kildrummie--a stout man and given to agricultural pursuits--went fast
+asleep under a masterly discussion of the priesthood of Melchisedek,
+Drumtochty's opinion of the intellectual condition of Kildrummie was
+confirmed beyond argument.
+
+During his ministry of more than twenty years the Rabbi had never
+preached at Drumtochty--being fearful that he might injure the minister
+who invited him, or might be so restricted in time as to lead astray by
+ill-balanced statements--and as the keenest curiosity would never have
+induced any man to go from the Glen to worship in another parish, the
+Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie was still unjudged in Drumtochty.  They
+were not sorry to have the opportunity at last, for they had suffered
+not a little at the hands of Kilbogie in past years, and the coming
+event disturbed the flow of business at Muirtown market.
+
+"Ye 're tae hae the Doctor at laist," Mains said to Netherton--letting
+the luck-penny on a transaction in seed-corn stand over--"an' a 'm
+jidgin' the time 's no been lost.  He's plainer an' easier tae follow
+then he wes at the affgo.  Ma word"--contemplating the exercise before
+the Glen--"but ye 'll aye get eneuch here and there tae cairry hame."
+Which shows what a man the Rabbi was, that on the strength of his
+possession a parish like Kilbogie could speak after this fashion to
+Drumtochty.
+
+"He 'll hae a fair trial, Mains"--Netherton's tone was distinctly
+severe--"an' mony a trial he's hed in his day, they say: wes't three
+an' twenty kirks he preached in, afore ye took him?  But mind ye,
+length 's nae standard in Drumtochty; na, na, it's no hoo muckle wind a
+man hes, but what like is the stuff that comes.  It's bushels doon bye,
+but it's wecht up bye."
+
+Any prejudice against the Rabbi, created by the boasting of a foolish
+parish not worthy of him, was reduced by his venerable appearance
+before the pulpit, and quite dispelled by his unfeigned delight in
+Carmichael's conduct of the "preliminaries."  Twice he nodded approval
+to the reading of the hundredth Psalm, and although he stood with
+covered face during the prayer, he emerged full of sympathy.  As his
+boy read the fifty-third of Isaiah the old man was moved well-nigh to
+tears, and on the giving out of the text from the parable of the
+Prodigal Son, the Rabbi closed his eyes with great expectation, as one
+about to be fed with the finest of the wheat.
+
+Carmichael has kept the sermon unto this day, and as often as he finds
+himself growing hard or supercilious, reads it from beginning to end.
+It is his hair shirt, to be worn from time to time next his soul for
+the wrongness in it and the mischief it did.  He cannot understand how
+he could have said such things on a Sacrament morning and in the
+presence of the Rabbi, but indeed they were inevitable.  When two tides
+meet there is ever a cruel commotion, and ships are apt to be dashed on
+the rocks, and Carmichael's mind was in a "jabble" that day.  The new
+culture, with its wider views of God and man, was fighting with the
+robust Calvinism in which every Scot is saturated, and the result was
+neither peace nor charity.  Personally the lad was kindly and
+good-natured, intellectually he had become arrogant, intolerant, acrid,
+flinging out at old-fashioned views, giving quite unnecessary
+challenges, arguing with imaginary antagonists.  It has ever seemed to
+me, although I suppose that history is against me, that if it be laid
+on any one to advocate a new view that will startle people, he ought of
+all men to be conciliatory and persuasive; but Carmichael was, at least
+in this time of fermentation, very exasperating and pugnacious, and so
+he drove the Rabbi to the only hard action of his life, wherein the old
+man suffered most, and which may be said to have led to his death.
+
+Carmichael, like the Rabbi, had intended to preach that morning on the
+love of God, and thought he was doing so with some power.  What he did
+was to take the Fatherhood of God and use it as a stick to beat
+Pharisees with, and under Pharisees he let it be seen that he included
+every person who still believed in the inflexible action of the moral
+laws and the austere majesty of God.  Many good things he no doubt
+said, but each had an edge, and it cut deeply into people of the old
+school.  Had he seen the Rabbi, it would not have been possible for him
+to continue, but he only was conscious of Lachlan Campbell, with whom
+he had then a feud, and who, he imagined, had come to criticise him.
+So he went on his rasping way that Sacrament morning, as when one
+harrows the spring earth with iron teeth, exciting himself with every
+sentence to fresh crudities of thought and extravagances of opposition.
+But it only flashed on him that he had spoken foolishly when he came
+down from the pulpit, and found the Rabbi a shrunken figure in his
+chair before the Holy Table.
+
+Discerning people, like Elspeth Macfadyen, saw the whole tragedy from
+beginning to end, and felt the pity of it keenly.  For a while the
+Rabbi waited with fond confidence--for was not he to hear the
+best-loved of his boys--and he caught eagerly at a gracious expression,
+as if it had fallen from one of the fathers.  Anything in the line of
+faith would have pleased the Rabbi that day, who was as a little child
+and full of charity, in spite of his fierce doctrines.  By-and-by the
+light died away from his eyes as when a cloud comes over the face of
+the sun and the Glen grows cold and dreary.  He opened his eyes and was
+amazed--looking at the people and questioning them what had happened to
+their minister.  Suddenly he flushed as a person struck by a friend,
+and then, as one blow followed another, he covered his face with both
+hands, sinking lower and lower in his chair, till even that decorous
+people were almost shaken in their attention.
+
+When Carmichael gave him the cup in the Sacrament the Rabbi's hand
+shook and he spilled some drops of the wine upon his beard, which all
+that day showed like blood on the silvery whiteness.  Afterwards he
+spake in his turn to the communicants, and distinguished the true
+people of God from the multitude--to whom he held out no hope--by so
+many and stringent marks, that Donald Menzies refused the Sacrament
+with a lamentable groan.  And when the Sacrament was over and the time
+came for Carmichael to shake hands with the assisting minister in the
+vestry, the Rabbi had vanished, and he had no speech with him till they
+went through the garden together--very bleak it seemed in the winter
+dusk--unto the sermon that closed the services of the day.
+
+"God's hand is heavy in anger on us both this day, John," and
+Carmichael was arrested by the awe and sorrow in the Rabbi's voice,
+"else . . . you had not spoken as you did this forenoon, nor would
+necessity be laid on me to speak . . . as I must this night.
+
+"His ways are all goodness and truth, but they are oftentimes
+encompassed with darkness, and the burden He has laid on me is . . .
+almost more than I can bear; it will be heavy for you also.
+
+"You will drink the wine of astonishment this night, and it will be
+strange if you do not . . . turn from the hand that pours it out, but
+you will not refuse the truth or . . . hate the preacher," and at the
+vestry door the Rabbi looked wistfully at Carmichael.
+
+During the interval the lad had been ill at ease, suspecting from the
+Rabbi's manner at the Table, and the solemnity of his address, that he
+disapproved of the action sermon, but he did not for a moment imagine
+that the situation was serious.  It is one of the disabilities of
+good-natured and emotional people, without much deepness of earth, to
+belittle the convictions and resolutions of strong natures, and to
+suppose that they can be talked away by a few pleasant, coaxing words.
+
+The Rabbi had often yielded to Carmichael and his other boys in the
+ordinary affairs of life--in meat and drink and clothing, even unto the
+continuance of his snuffing.  He had been most manageable and
+pliable--as a child in their hands--and so Carmichael was quite
+confident that he could make matters right with the old man about a
+question of doctrine as easily as about the duty of a midday meal.
+Certain bright and superficial people will only learn by some solitary
+experience that faith is reserved in friendship, and that the most
+heroic souls are those which count all things loss--even the smile of
+those they love--for the eternal.  For a moment Carmichael was shaken
+as if a new Rabbi were before him; then he remembered the study of
+Kilbogie and all things that had happened therein, and his spirits rose.
+
+"How dare you suggest such wickedness, Rabbi, that any of us should
+ever criticise or complain of anything you say?  Whatever you give us
+will be right, and do us good, and in the evening you will tell me all
+I said wrong."
+
+Saunderson looked at Carmichael for ten seconds as one who has not been
+understood, and sighed.  Then he went down the kirk after the beadle,
+and the people marked how he walked like a man who was afraid he might
+fall, and, turning a corner, he supported himself on the end of a pew.
+As he crept up the pulpit stairs Elspeth gave James a look, and,
+although well accustomed to the slowness of his understanding, was
+amazed that he did not catch the point.  Even a man might have seen
+that this was not the same minister that came in to the Sacrament with
+hope in his very step.
+
+"A 'm no here tae say 'that a' kent what wes comin''"--Elspeth, like
+all experts, was strictly truthful--"for the like o' that wes never
+heard in Drumtochty, and noo that Doctor Saunderson is awa, will never
+be heard again in Scotland.  A' jaloused that vials wud be opened an'
+a' wesna wrang, but ma certes"--and that remarkable woman left you to
+understand that no words in human speech could even hint at the
+contents of the vials.
+
+When the Rabbi gave out his text, "Vessels of wrath," in a low,
+awestruck voice, Carmichael began to be afraid, but after a little he
+chid himself for foolishness.  During half an hour the Rabbi traced the
+doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty through Holy Scripture with a
+characteristic wealth of allusion to Fathers ancient and reforming, and
+once or twice he paused as if he would have taken up certain matters at
+greater length, but restrained himself, simply asserting the Pauline
+character of St. Augustine's thinking, and exposing the looseness of
+Clement of Alexandria with a wave of the hand as one hurrying on to his
+destination.
+
+"Dear old Rabbi"--Carmichael congratulated himself in his pew--"what
+need he have made so many apologies for his subject?  He is going to
+enjoy himself, and he is sure to say something beautiful before he is
+done."  But he was distinctly conscious all the same of a wish that the
+Rabbi were done and all . . . well, uncertainty over.  For there was a
+note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi's voice, and he had not
+let the Fathers go so lightly unless under severe constraint.  What was
+it?  Surely he would not attack their minister in face of his
+people. . . .  The Rabbi do that, who was in all his ways a gentleman?
+Yet . . . and then the Rabbi abruptly quitted historical exposition and
+announced that he would speak on four heads.  Carmichael, from his
+corner behind the curtains, saw the old man twice open his mouth as if
+to speak, and when at last he began he was quivering visibly, and he
+had grasped the outer corners of the desk with such intensity that the
+tassels which hung therefrom--one of the minor glories of the Free
+Kirk--were held in the palm of his hand, the long red tags escaping
+from between his white wasted fingers.  A pulpit lamp came between
+Carmichael and the Rabbi's face, but he could see the straining hand,
+which did not relax till it was lifted in the last awful appeal, and
+the white and red had a gruesome fascination.  It seemed as if one had
+clutched a cluster of full, rich, tender grapes and was pressing them
+in an agony till their life ran out in streams of blood, and dripped
+upon the heads of the choir sitting beneath, in their fresh, hopeful
+youth.  And it also came to Carmichael with pathetic conviction even
+then that every one was about to suffer, but the Rabbi more than them
+all together.  While the preacher was strengthening his heart for the
+work before him, Carmichael's eye was attracted by the landscape that
+he could see through the opposite window.  The ground sloped upwards
+from the kirk to a pine-wood that fringed the great moor, and it was
+covered with snow on which the moon was beginning to shed her faint,
+weird light.  Within, the light from the upright lamps was falling on
+the ruddy, contented faces of men and women and little children, but
+without it was one cold, merciless whiteness, like unto the justice of
+God, with black shadows of judgment.
+
+"This is the message which I have to deliver unto you in the name of
+the Lord, and even as Jonah was sent to Nineveh after a strange
+discipline with a word of mercy, so am I constrained against my will to
+carry a word of searching and trembling.
+
+"First"--and between the heads the Rabbi paused as one whose breath had
+failed him--"every man belongs absolutely to God by his creation.
+
+"Second.  The purpose of God about each man precedes his creation.
+
+"Third.  Some are destined to Salvation, and some to Damnation.
+
+"Fourth"--here the hard breathing became a sob--"each man's lot is unto
+the glory of God."
+
+It was not only skilled theologians like Lachlan Campbell and Burnbrae,
+but even mere amateurs, who understood that they were that night to be
+conducted to the farthest limit of Calvinism, and that whoever fell
+behind through the hardness of the way, their guide would not flinch.
+
+As the Rabbi gave the people a brief space wherein to grasp his heads
+in their significance, Carmichael remembered a vivid incident in the
+Presbytery of Muirtown, when an English evangelist had addressed that
+reverend and austere court with exhilarating confidence--explaining the
+extreme simplicity of the Christian faith, and showing how a minister
+ought to preach.  Various good men were delighted, and asked many
+questions of the evangelist--who had kept a baby-linen shop for twenty
+years, and was unspoiled by the slightest trace of theology--but the
+Rabbi arose and demolished his "teaching," convicting him of heresy at
+every turn, till there was not left one stone upon another.
+
+"But surely fear belongs to the Old Testament dispensation," said the
+unabashed little man to the Rabbi afterwards.  "'Rejoice,' you know, my
+friend, 'and again I say rejoice.'"
+
+"If it be the will of God that such a man as I should ever stand on the
+sea of glass mingled with fire, then this tongue will be lifted with
+the best, but so long as my feet are still in the fearful pit it
+becometh me to bow my head."
+
+"Then you don't believe in assurance?" but already the evangelist was
+quailing before the Rabbi.
+
+"Verily there is no man that hath not heard of that precious gift, and
+none who does not covet it greatly, but there be two degrees of
+assurance"--here the Rabbi looked sternly at the happy, rotund little
+figure--"and it is with the first you must begin, and what you need to
+get is assurance of your damnation."
+
+One of the boys read an account of this incident--thinly veiled--in a
+reported address of the evangelist, in which the Rabbi--being, as it
+was inferred, beaten in scriptural argument--was very penitent and
+begged his teacher's pardon with streaming tears.  What really happened
+was different, and so absolutely conclusive that Doctor Dowbiggin gave
+it as his opinion "that a valuable lesson had been read to unauthorised
+teachers of religion."
+
+Carmichael recognised the same note in the sermon and saw another man
+than he knew, as the Rabbi, in a low voice, without heat or
+declamation, with frequent pauses and laboured breathing, as of one
+toiling up a hill, argued the absolute supremacy of God and the utter
+helplessness of man.  One hand ever pressed the grapes, but with the
+other the old man wiped the perspiration that rolled in beads down his
+face.  A painful stillness fell on the people as they felt themselves
+caught in the meshes of this inexorable net and dragged ever nearer to
+the abyss.  Carmichael, who had been leaning forward in his place, tore
+himself away from the preacher with an effort, and moved where he could
+see the congregation.  Campbell was drinking in every word as one for
+the first time in his life perfectly satisfied.  Menzies was huddled
+into a heap in the top of his pew as one justly blasted by the anger of
+the Eternal.  Men were white beneath the tan, and it was evident that
+some of the women would soon fall a-weeping.  Children had crept close
+to their mothers under a vague sense of danger, and a girl in the choir
+watched the preacher with dilated eyeballs, like an animal fascinated
+by terror.
+
+"It is as a sword piercing the heart to receive this truth, but it is a
+truth and must be believed.  There are hundreds of thousands in the
+past who were born and lived and died and were damned for the glory of
+God.  There are hundreds of thousands in this day who have been born
+and are living and shall die and be damned for the glory of God.  There
+are hundreds of thousands in the future who shall be born and shall
+live and shall die and shall be damned for the glory of God.  All
+according to the will of God, and none dare say nay nor change the
+purpose of the Eternal."  For some time the oil in the lamps had been
+failing--since the Rabbi had been speaking for nigh two hours--and as
+he came to an end of this passage the light began to flicker and die.
+First a lamp at the end of Burnbrae's pew went out and then another in
+the front.  The preacher made as though he would have spoken, but was
+silent, and the congregation watched four lamps sink into darkness at
+intervals of half a minute.  There only remained the two pulpit lamps,
+and in their light the people saw the Rabbi lift his right hand for the
+first time.
+
+"Shall . . . not . . . the . . . Judge . . . of all the earth . . .
+do . . . right?"  The two lamps went out together and a great sigh rose
+from the people.  At the back of the kirk a child wailed and somewhere
+in the front a woman's voice--it was never proved to be Elspeth
+Macfadyen--said audibly, "God have mercy upon us."  The Rabbi had sunk
+back into the seat and buried his face in his hands, and through the
+window over his head the moonlight was pouring into the church like
+unto the far-off radiance from the White Throne.
+
+When Carmichael led the Rabbi into the manse he could feel the old man
+trembling from head to foot, and he would touch neither meat nor drink,
+nor would he speak for a space.
+
+"Are you there, John?"--and he put out his hand to Carmichael, who had
+placed him in the big study chair, and was sitting beside him in
+silence.
+
+"I dare not withdraw nor change any word that I spake in the name of
+the Lord this day, but . . . it is my infirmity . . . I wish I had
+never been born."
+
+"It was awful," said Carmichael, and the Rabbi's head again fell on his
+breast.
+
+"John,"--and Saunderson looked up,--"I would give ten thousand worlds
+to stand in the shoes of that good man who conveyed me from Kilbogie
+yesterday, and with whom I had very pleasant fellowship concerning the
+patience of the saints.
+
+"It becometh not any human being to judge his neighbour, but it seemed
+to me from many signs that he was within the election of God, and even
+as we spoke of Polycarp and the martyrs who have overcome by the blood
+of the Lamb, it came unto me with much power, 'Lo, here is one beside
+you whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and who shall
+enter through the gates into the city;' and grace was given me to
+rejoice in his joy, but I . . ."--and Carmichael could have wept for
+the despair in the Rabbi's voice.
+
+"Dear Rabbi!"--for once the confidence of youth was smitten at the
+sight of a spiritual conflict beyond its depth--"you are surely . . .
+depreciating yourself . . .  Burnbrae is a good man, but compared with
+you . . . is not this like to the depression of Elijah?"  Carmichael
+knew, however, he was not fit for such work, and had better have held
+his peace.
+
+"It may be that I understand the letter of Holy Scripture better than
+some of God's children, although I be but a babe even in this poor
+knowledge, but such gifts are only as the small dust of the balance.
+He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.
+
+"John," said the Rabbi suddenly, and with strong feeling, "was it your
+thought this night as I declared the sovereignty of God that I judged
+myself of the elect, and was speaking as one himself hidden for ever in
+the secret place of God?"
+
+"I . . . did not know," stammered Carmichael, whose utter horror at the
+unrelenting sermon had only been tempered by his love for the preacher.
+
+"You did me wrong, John, for then had I not dared to speak at all after
+that fashion; it is not for a vessel of mercy filled unto overflowing
+with the love of God to exalt himself above the vessels . . . for whom
+there is no mercy.  But he may plead with them who are in like case
+with himself to . . . acknowledge the Divine Justice."
+
+Then the pathos of the situation overcame Carmichael, and he went over
+to the bookcase and leant his head against certain volumes, because
+they were weighty and would not yield.  Next day he noticed that one of
+them was a Latin Calvin that had travelled over Europe in learned
+company, and the other a battered copy of Jonathan Edwards that had
+come from the house of an Ayrshire farmer.
+
+"Forgive me that I have troubled you with the concerns of my soul,
+John"--the Rabbi could only stand with an effort--"they ought to be
+between a man and his God.  There is another work laid to my hand for
+which there is no power in me now.  During the night I shall ask
+whether the cup may not pass from me, but if not, the will of God be
+done."
+
+Carmichael slept but little, and every time he woke the thought was
+heavy upon him that on the other side of a narrow wall the holiest man
+he knew was wrestling in darkness of soul, and that he had added to the
+bitterness of the agony.
+
+[Illustration: Wrestling in darkness of soul.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND.
+
+Winter has certain mornings which redeem weeks of misconduct, when the
+hoar frost during the night has re-silvered every branch and braced the
+snow upon the ground, and the sun rises in ruddy strength and drives
+out of sight every cloud and mist, and moves all day through an expanse
+of unbroken blue, and is reflected from the dazzling whiteness of the
+earth as from a mirror.  Such a sight calls a man from sleep with
+authority, and makes his blood tingle, and puts new heart in him, and
+banishes the troubles of the night.  Other mornings winter joins in the
+conspiracy of principalities and powers to daunt and crush the human
+soul.  No sun is to be seen, and the grey atmosphere casts down the
+heart, the wind moans and whistles in fitful gusts, the black clouds
+hang low in threatening masses, now and again a flake of snow drifts in
+the wind.  A storm is near at hand, not the thunder-shower of summer,
+with warm rain and the kindly sun in ambush, but dark and blinding
+snow, through which even a gamekeeper cannot see six yards, and in
+which weary travellers lie down to rest and die.
+
+The melancholy of this kind of day had fallen on Saunderson, whose face
+was ashen, and who held Carmichael's hand with such anxious affection
+that it was impossible to inquire how he had slept, and it would have
+been a banalité to remark upon the weather.  After the Rabbi had been
+compelled to swallow a cup of milk by way of breakfast, it was evident
+that he was ready for speech.
+
+"What is it, Rabbi?" as soon as they were again settled in the study.
+"If you did not . . . like my sermon, tell me at once.  You know that I
+am one of your boys, and you ought to . . . help me."  Perhaps it was
+inseparable from his youth, with its buoyancy and self-satisfaction,
+and his training in a college whose members only knew by rumour of the
+existence of other places of theological learning, that Carmichael had
+at that moment a pleasing sense of humility and charity.  Had it been a
+matter of scholastic lore, of course neither he nor more than six men
+in Scotland could have met the Rabbi in the gate.  With regard to
+modern thought, Carmichael knew that the good Rabbi had not read _Ecce
+Homo_, and was hardly, well . . . up to date.  He would not for the
+world hint such a thing to the dear old man, nor even argue with him;
+but it was flattering to remember that the attack could be merely one
+of blunderbusses, in which the modern thinker would at last intervene
+and save the ancient scholar from humiliation.
+
+"Well, Rabbi?" and Carmichael tried to make it easy.
+
+"Before I say what is on my heart, John, you will grant an old man who
+loves you one favour.  So far as in you lies you will bear with me if
+that which I have to say, and still more that which my conscience will
+compel me to do, is hard to flesh and blood."
+
+"Did n't we settle that last night in the vestry?" and Carmichael was
+impatient; "is it that you do not agree with the doctrine of the Divine
+Fatherhood?  We younger men are resolved to base Christian doctrine on
+the actual Scriptures, and to ignore mere tradition."
+
+"An excellent rule, my dear friend," cried the Rabbi, wonderfully
+quickened by the challenge, "and with your permission and for our
+mutual edification we shall briefly review all passages bearing on the
+subject in hand--using the original, as will doubtless be your wish,
+and you correcting my poor recollection."
+
+About an hour afterwards, and when the Rabbi was only entering into the
+heart of the matter, Carmichael made the bitter discovery--without the
+Rabbi having even hinted at such a thing--that his pet sermon was a
+mass of boyish crudities, and this reverse of circumstances was some
+excuse for his pettishness.
+
+"It does not seem to me that it is worth our time to haggle about the
+usage of Greek words or to count texts: I ground my position on the
+general meaning of the Gospels and the sense of things," and Carmichael
+stood on the hearthrug in a very superior attitude.
+
+"Let that pass then, John, and forgive me if I appeared to battle about
+words, as certain scholars of the olden time were fain to do, for in
+truth it is rather about the hard duty before me than any imperfection
+in your teaching I would speak," and the Rabbi glanced nervously at the
+young minister.
+
+"We are both Presbyters of Christ's Church, ordained after the order of
+primitive times, and there are laid on us certain heavy charges and
+responsibilities from which we may not shrink, as we shall answer to
+the Lord at the great day."
+
+Carmichael's humiliation was lost in perplexity, and he sat down,
+wondering what the Rabbi intended.
+
+"If any Presbyter should see his brother fall into one of those faults
+of private life that do beset us all in our present weakness, then he
+doth well and kindly to point it out unto his brother; and if his
+brother should depart from the faith as they talk together by the way,
+then it is a Presbyter's part to convince him of his error and restore
+him."
+
+The Rabbi cast an imploring glance, but Carmichael had still no
+understanding.
+
+"But if one Presbyter should teach heresy to his flock in the hearing
+of another . . . even though it break the other's heart, is not the
+path of duty fenced up on either side, verily a straight, narrow way,
+and hard for the feet to tread?"
+
+"You have spoken to me, Rabbi, and . . . cleared yourself"--Carmichael
+was still somewhat sore--"and I 'll promise not to offend you again in
+an action sermon."
+
+"Albeit you intend it not so, yet are you making it harder for me to
+speak. . . .  See you not . . . that I . . . that necessity is laid on
+me to declare this matter to my brother Presbyters in court
+assembled . . . but not in hearing of the people?"  Then there was a
+stillness in the room, and the Rabbi, although he had closed his eyes,
+was conscious of the amazement on the young man's face.
+
+"Do you mean to say," speaking very slowly, as one taken utterly aback,
+"that our Rabbi would come to my . . . to the Sacrament and hear me
+preach, and . . . report me for heresy to the Presbytery?  Rabbi, I
+know we don't agree about some things, and perhaps I was a little . . .
+annoyed a few minutes ago because you . . . know far more than I do,
+but that is nothing.  For you to prosecute one of your boys and be the
+witness yourself. . . .  Rabbi, you can't mean it. . . .  Say it's a
+mistake."
+
+The old man only gave a deep sigh.
+
+"If it were Dowbiggin or . . . any man except you, I would n't care one
+straw, rather enjoy the debate, but you whom we have loved and looked
+up to and boasted about, why, it's like . . . a father turning against
+his sons."
+
+The Rabbi made no sign.
+
+"You live too much alone, Rabbi," and Carmichael began again as the
+sense of the tragedy grew on him, "and nurse your conscience till it
+gets over tender; no other man would dream of . . . prosecuting a . . .
+fellow minister in such circumstances.  You have spoken to me like a
+father, surely that is enough," and in his honest heat the young fellow
+knelt down by the Rabbi's chair and took his hand.
+
+A tear rolled down the Rabbi's cheek, and he looked fondly at the lad.
+
+"Your words pierce me as sharp swords, John; spare me, for I can do
+none otherwise; all night I wrestled for release, but in vain."
+
+Carmichael had a sudden revulsion of feeling, such as befalls emotional
+and ill-disciplined natures when they are disappointed and mortified.
+
+"Very good, Doctor Saunderson"--Carmichael rose awkwardly and stood on
+the hearthrug again, an elbow on the mantelpiece--"you must do as you
+please and as you think right.  I am sorry that I . . . pressed you so
+far, but it was on grounds of our . . . friendship.
+
+"Perhaps you will tell me as soon as you can what you propose to do,
+and when you will bring . . . this matter before the Presbytery.  My
+sermon was fully written and . . . is at your disposal."
+
+While this cold rain beat on the Rabbi's head he moved not, but at its
+close he looked at Carmichael with the appeal of a dumb animal in his
+eyes.
+
+"The first meeting of Presbytery is on Monday, but you would no doubt
+consider that too soon; is there anything about dates in the order of
+procedure for heresy?" and Carmichael made as though he would go over
+to the shelves for a law book.
+
+"John," cried the Rabbi--his voice full of tears--rising and following
+the foolish lad, "is this all you have in your heart to say unto me?
+Surely, as I stand before you, it is not my desire to do such a thing,
+for I would rather cut off my right hand.
+
+"God hath not been pleased to give me many friends, and He only knows
+how you and the others have comforted my heart.  I lie not, John, but
+speak the truth, that there is nothing unto life itself I would not
+give for your good, who have been as the apple of my eye unto me."
+
+Carmichael hardened himself, torn between a savage sense of
+satisfaction that the Rabbi was suffering for his foolishness and the
+inclination of his better self to respond to the old man's love.
+
+"If there be a breach between us, it will not be for you as it must be
+for me.  You have many friends, and may God add unto them good men and
+faithful, but I shall lose my one earthly joy and consolation, when
+your feet are no longer heard on my threshold and your face no longer
+brings light to my room.  And, John, even this thing which I am
+constrained to do is yet of love, as . . . you shall confess one day."
+
+Carmichael's pride alone resisted, and it was melting fast.  Had he
+even looked at the dear face, he must have given way, but he kept his
+shoulder to the Rabbi, and at that moment the sound of wheels passing
+the corner of the manse gave him an ungracious way of escape.
+
+"That is Burnbrae's dog-cart . . . Doctor Saunderson, and I think he
+will not wish to keep his horse standing in the snow, so unless you
+will stay all night, as it's going to drift. . . .  Then perhaps it
+would be better. . . .  Can I assist you in packing?"  How formal it
+all sounded, and he allowed the Rabbi to go upstairs alone, with the
+result that various things of the old man's are in Carmichael's house
+unto this day.
+
+Another chance was given the lad when the Rabbi would have bidden him
+good-bye at the door, beseeching that he should not come out into the
+drift, and still another when Burnbrae, being concerned about his
+passenger's appearance, who seemed ill-fitted to face a storm, wrapt
+him in a plaid; and he had one more when the old man leant out of the
+dog-cart and took Carmichael's hand in both of his, but only said, "God
+bless you for all you 've been to me, and forgive me for all wherein I
+have failed you."  And they did not meet again till that
+never-to-be-forgotten sederunt of the Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown,
+when the minister of Kilbogie accused the minister of Drumtochty of
+teaching the Linlathen heresy of the Fatherhood of God in a sermon
+before the Sacrament.
+
+Among all the institutions of the North a Presbytery is the most
+characteristic, and affords a standing illustration of the
+contradictions of a superbly logical people.  It is so anti-clerical a
+court that for every clergyman there must be a layman--country
+ministers promising to bring in their elder for great occasions, and
+instructing him audibly how to vote--and so fiercely clerical that if
+the most pious and intelligent elder dared to administer a sacrament he
+would be at once tried and censured for sacrilege.  So careful is a
+Presbytery to prevent the beginnings of Papacy that it insists upon
+each of its members occupying the chair in turn, and dismisses him
+again into private life as soon as he has mastered his duties, but so
+imbued is it with the idea of authority that whatever decision may be
+given by some lad of twenty-five in the chair--duly instructed,
+however, by the clerk below--will be rigidly obeyed.  When a Presbytery
+has nothing else to do, it dearly loves to pass a general condemnation
+on sacerdotalism, in which the tyranny of prelates, and the foolishness
+of vestments will be fully exposed, but a Presbytery wields a power at
+which a bishop's hair would stand on end, and Doctor Dowbiggin once
+made Carmichael leave the Communion Table and go into the vestry to put
+on his bands.
+
+When a Presbytery is in its lighter moods, it gives itself to points of
+order with a skill and relish beyond the Southern imagination.  It did
+not matter how harmless, even infantile, might be the proposal placed
+before the court by such a man as MacWheep of Pitscowrie, he has hardly
+got past an apology for his presumption in venturing to speak at all,
+before a member of Presbytery--who had reduced his congregation to an
+irreducible minimum by the woodenness of his preaching--inquires
+whether the speech of "our esteemed brother is not _ultra vires_" or
+something else as awful.  MacWheep at once sits down with the air of
+one taken red-handed in arson, and the court debates the point till
+every authority has taken his fill, when the clerk submits to the
+Moderator, with a fine blend of deference and infallibility, that Mr.
+MacWheep is perfectly within his rights; and then, as that estimable
+person has, by this time, lost any thread he ever possessed, the
+Presbytery passes to the next business--with the high spirit of men
+returning from a holiday.  Carmichael used, indeed, to relate how in a
+great stress of business someone moved that the Presbytery should
+adjourn for dinner, and the court argued for seventy minutes, with many
+precedents, whether such a motion--touching as it did the standing
+orders--could even be discussed, and with an unnecessary prodigality of
+testimony he used to give perorations which improved with every telling.
+
+The love of law diffused through the Presbytery became incarnate in the
+clerk, who was one of the most finished specimens of his class in the
+Scottish Kirk.  His sedate appearance, bald, polished head, fringed
+with pure white hair, shrewd face, with neatly cut side whiskers, his
+suggestion of unerring accuracy and inexhaustible memory, his attitude
+for exposition,--holding his glasses in his left hand and enforcing his
+decision with the little finger of the right hand--carried conviction
+even to the most disorderly.  Ecclesiastical radicals, boiling over
+with new schemes, and boasting to admiring circles of MacWheeps that
+they would not be brow-beaten by red tape officials, became
+ungrammatical before that firm gaze, and ended in abject surrender.
+Self-contained and self-sufficing, the clerk took no part in debate,
+save at critical moments to lay down the law, but wrote his minutes
+unmoved through torrents of speech on every subject, from the
+Sustentation Fund to the Union between England and Scotland, and even
+under the picturesque eloquence of foreign deputies, whose names he
+invariably requested should be handed to him, written legibly on a
+sheet of paper.  On two occasions only he ceased from writing: when Dr.
+Dowbiggin discussed a method of procedure--then he watched him over his
+spectacles in hope of a nice point; or when some enthusiastic brother
+would urge the Presbytery to issue an injunction on the sin of Sabbath
+walking--then the clerk would abandon his pen in visible despair, and
+sitting sideways on his chair and supporting his head by that same
+little finger, would face the Presbytery with an expression of reverent
+curiosity on his face why the Almighty was pleased to create such a
+man.  His preaching was distinguished for orderliness, and was much
+sought after for Fast days.  It turned largely on the use of
+prepositions and the scope of conjunctions, so that the clerk could
+prove the doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice from "for," and Retribution
+from "as" in the Lord's prayer, emphasising and confirming everything
+by that wonderful finger, which seemed to be designed by Providence for
+delicate distinctions, just as another man's fist served for popular
+declamation.  His pulpit masterpiece was a lecture on the Council of
+Jerusalem, in which its whole deliberations were reviewed by the rules
+of the Free Kirk Book of Procedure, and a searching and edifying
+discourse concluded with two lessons.  First: That no ecclesiastical
+body can conduct its proceedings without officials.  Second: That such
+men ought to be accepted as a special gift of Providence.
+
+[Illustration: His attitude for exposition.]
+
+The general opinion among good people was that the clerk's preaching
+was rather for upbuilding than arousing, but it is still remembered by
+the survivors of the old Presbytery that when MacWheep organised a
+conference on "The state of religion in our congregations," and it was
+meandering in strange directions, the clerk, who utilised such seasons
+for the writing of letters, rose amid a keen revival of interest--it
+was supposed that he had detected an irregularity in the
+proceedings--and offered his contribution.  "It did not become him to
+boast," he said, "but he had seen marvellous things in his day: under
+his unworthy ministry three beadles had been converted to
+Christianity," and this experience was so final that the conference
+immediately closed.
+
+Times there were, however, when the Presbytery rose to its height, and
+was invested with an undeniable spiritual dignity.  Its members, taken
+one by one, consisted of farmers, shepherds, tradesmen, and one or two
+professional men, with some twenty ministers, only two or three of whom
+were known beyond their parishes.  Yet those men had no doubt that as
+soon as they were constituted in the name of Christ, they held their
+authority from the Son of God and Saviour of the world, and they bore
+themselves in spiritual matters as His servants.  No kindly feeling of
+neighbourliness or any fear of man could hinder them from inquiring
+into the religious condition of a parish or dealing faithfully with an
+erring minister.  They had power to ordain, and laid hands on the bent
+head of some young probationer with much solemnity; they had also power
+to take away the orders they had given, and he had been hardened indeed
+beyond hope who could be present and not tremble when the Moderator,
+standing in his place, with the Presbytery around, and speaking in the
+name of the Head of the Church, deposed an unworthy brother from the
+holy ministry.  MacWheep was a "cratur," and much given to twaddle, but
+when it was his duty once to rebuke a fellow-minister for quarrelling
+with his people, he was delivered from himself, and spake with such
+grave wisdom as he has never shown before or since.
+
+When the Presbytery assembled to receive a statement from Doctor
+Saunderson "_re_ error in doctrine by a brother Presbyter," even a
+stranger might have noticed that its members were weighted with a sense
+of responsibility, and although a discussion arose on the attempt of a
+desultory member to introduce a deputy charged with the subject of the
+lost ten tribes, yet it was promptly squelched by the clerk, who
+intimated, with much gravity, that the court had met _in hunc
+effectum_, viz. to hear Doctor Saunderson, and that the court could
+not, in consistence with law, take up any other business, not
+even--here Carmichael professed to detect a flicker of the clerkly
+eyelids--the disappearance of the ten tribes.
+
+It was the last time that the Rabbi ever spoke in public, and it is now
+agreed that the deliverance was a fit memorial of the most learned
+scholar that has been ever known in those parts.  He began by showing
+that Christian doctrine has taken various shapes, some more and some
+less in accordance with the deposit of truth given by Christ and the
+holy Apostles, and especially that the doctrine of Grace had been
+differently conceived by two eminent theologians, Calvin and Arminius,
+and his exposition was so lucid that the clerk gave it as his opinion
+afterwards, that the two systems were understood by certain members of
+the court for the first time that day.  Afterwards the Rabbi vindicated
+and glorified Calvinism from the Scriptures of the Old and New
+Testament, from the Fathers, from the Reformation Divines, from the
+later creeds, till the brain of the Presbytery reeled through the
+wealth of allusion and quotation, all in the tongues of the learned.
+Then he dealt with the theology of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, and showed
+how it was undermining the very foundations of Calvinism; yet the Rabbi
+spake so tenderly of our Scottish Maurice that the Presbytery knew not
+whether it ought to condemn Erskine as a heretic or love him as a
+saint.  Having thus brought the court face to face with the issues
+involved, the Rabbi gave a sketch of a certain sermon he had heard
+while assisting "a learned and much-beloved brother at the Sacrament,"
+and Carmichael was amazed at the transfiguration of this very youthful
+performance, which now figured as a profound and edifying discourse,
+for whose excellent qualities the speaker had not adequate words.  This
+fine discourse was, however, to a certain degree marred, the Rabbi
+suggested, by an unfortunate, although no doubt temporary, leaning to
+the teaching of Mr. Erskine, whose beautiful piety, which was even to
+himself in his worldliness and unprofitableness a salutary rebuke, had
+exercised its just fascination upon his much more spiritual brother.
+Finally the Rabbi left the matter in the hands of the Presbytery,
+declaring that he had cleared his conscience, and that the minister was
+one--here he was painfully overcome--dear to him as a son, and to whose
+many labours and singular graces he could bear full testimony, the Rev.
+John Carmichael, of Drumtochty.  The Presbytery was slow and pedantic,
+but was not insensible to a spiritual situation, and there was a murmur
+of sympathy when the Rabbi sat down--much exhausted, and never having
+allowed himself to look once at Carmichael.
+
+Then arose a self-made man, who considered orthodoxy and capital to be
+bound up together, and especially identified any departure from
+sovereignty with that pestilent form of Socialism which demanded equal
+chances for every man.  He was only a plain layman, he said, and
+perhaps he ought not to speak in the presence of so many reverend
+gentlemen, but he was very grateful to Doctor Saunderson for his
+honourable and straightforward conduct.  It would be better for the
+Church if there were more like him, and he would just like to ask Mr.
+Carmichael one or two questions.  Did he sign the Confession?--that was
+one; and had he kept it?--that was two; and the last was, When did he
+propose to go?  He knew something about building contracts, and he had
+heard of a penalty when a contract was broken.  There was just one
+thing more he would like to say--if there was less loose theology in
+the pulpit there would be more money in the plate.  The shame of the
+Rabbi during this harangue was pitiable to behold.
+
+Then a stalwart arose on the other side, and a young gentleman who had
+just escaped from a college debating society wished to know what
+century we were living in, warned the last speaker that the progress of
+theological science would not be hindered by mercenary threats, advised
+Doctor Saunderson to read a certain German, called Ritschl,--as if he
+had been speaking to a babe in arms,--and was refreshing himself with a
+Latin quotation, when the Rabbi, in utter absence of mind, corrected a
+false quantity aloud.
+
+"Moderator," the old man apologised in much confusion, "I wot not what
+I did, and I pray my reverend brother, whose interesting and
+instructive address I have interrupted by this unmannerliness, to grant
+me his pardon, for my tongue simply obeyed my ear."  Which untoward
+incident brought the modern to an end, as by a stroke of ironical fate.
+It seemed to the clerk that little good to any one concerned was to
+come out of this debate, and he signalled to Doctor Dowbiggin, with
+whom he had dined the night before, when they concocted a motion over
+their wine.  Whereupon that astute man explained to the court that he
+did not desire to curtail the valuable discussion, from which he
+personally had derived much profit, but he had ventured to draw up a
+motion, simply for the guidance of the House--it was said by the
+Rabbi's boys that the Doctor's success as an ecclesiastic was largely
+due to the skilful use of such phrases--and then he read: "Whereas the
+Church is set in all her courts for the defence of the truth, whereas
+it is reported that various erroneous doctrines are being promulgated
+in books and other public prints, whereas it has been stated that one
+of the ministers of this Presbytery has used words that might be
+supposed to give sanction to a certain view which appears to conflict
+with statements contained in the standards of the Church, the
+Presbytery of Muirtown declares first of all, its unshaken adherence to
+the said standards; secondly, deplores the existence in any quarter of
+notions contradictory or subversive of said standards; thirdly, thanks
+Doctor Saunderson for the vigilance he has shown in the cause of sound
+doctrine; fourthly, calls upon all ministers within the bounds to have
+a care that they create no offence or misunderstanding by their
+teaching, and finally enjoins all parties concerned to cultivate peace
+and charity."
+
+This motion was seconded by the clerk and carried
+unanimously,--Carmichael being compelled to silence by the two wise men
+for his own sake and theirs,--and was declared to be a conspicuous
+victory both by the self-made man and the modern, which was another
+tribute to the ecclesiastical gifts of Doctor Dowbiggin and the clerk
+of the Presbytery of Muirtown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
+
+The Rabbi had been careful to send an abstract of his speech to
+Carmichael, with a letter enough to melt the heart even of a
+self-sufficient young clerical; and Carmichael had considered how he
+should bear himself at the Presbytery.  His intention had been to meet
+the Rabbi with public cordiality and escort him to a seat, so that all
+men should see that he was too magnanimous to be offended by this
+latest eccentricity of their friend.  This calculated plan was upset by
+the Rabbi coming in late and taking the first seat that offered, and
+when he would have gone afterwards to thank him for his generosity the
+Rabbi had disappeared.  It was evident that the old man's love was as
+deep as ever, but that he was much hurt, and would not risk another
+repulse.  Very likely he had walked in from Kilbogie, perhaps without
+breakfast, and had now started to return to his cheerless manse.  It
+was a wetting spring rain, and he remembered that the Rabbi had no
+coat.  A fit of remorse overtook Carmichael, and he scoured the streets
+of Muirtown to find the Rabbi, imagining deeds of attention--how he
+would capture him unawares mooning along some side street hopelessly
+astray; how he would accuse him of characteristic cunning and deep
+plotting, how he would carry him by force to the Kilspindie Arms and
+insist upon their dining in state; how the Rabbi would wish to
+discharge the account and find twopence in his pockets--having given
+all his silver to an ex-Presbyterian minister stranded in Muirtown
+through peculiar circumstances; how he would speak gravely to the Rabbi
+on the lack of common honesty, and threaten a real prosecution, when
+the charge would be "obtaining a dinner on false pretences," how they
+would journey to Kildrummie in high content, and--the engine having
+whistled for a dog-cart--they would drive to Drumtochty manse, the sun
+shining through the rain as they entered the garden; how he would
+compass the Rabbi with observances, and the old man would sit again in
+the big chair full of joy and peace.  Ah, the kindly jests that have
+not come off in life, the gracious deeds that never were done, the
+reparations that were too late!  When Carmichael reached the station
+the Rabbi was already half way to Kilbogie, trudging along wet and
+weary and very sad, because, although he had obeyed his conscience at a
+cost, it seemed to him as if he had simply alienated the boy whom God
+had given him as a son in his old age, for even the guileless Rabbi
+suspected that the ecclesiastics considered his action foolishness and
+of no service to the Church of God.  Barbara's language on his arrival
+was vituperative to a degree, she gave him food grudgingly, and when,
+in the early morning, he fell asleep over an open Father, he was
+repeating Carmichael's name, and the thick old paper was soaked with
+tears.
+
+His nemesis seized Carmichael so soon as he reached the Dunleith train
+in the shape of the Free Kirk minister of Kildrummie, who had purchased
+six pounds of prize seed potatoes, and was carrying the treasure home
+in a paper bag.  This bag had done after its kind, and as the
+distinguished agriculturist had not seen his feet for years, and could
+only have stooped at the risk of apoplexy, he watched the dispersion of
+his potatoes with dismay, and hailed the arrival of Carmichael with
+exclamations of thankfulness.  It is wonderful over what an area six
+pounds of (prize) potatoes can deploy on a railway platform, and how
+the feet of passengers will carry them unto far distances.  Some might
+never have been restored to the bag had it not been for Kildrummie's
+comprehensive eye and the physical skill with which he guided
+Carmichael, till even prodigals that had strayed over to the
+neighbourhood of the Aberdeen express were restored to the extemporised
+fold in the minister's top-coat pockets.  Carmichael had knelt on that
+very platform six months or so before, but then he stooped in the
+service of two most agreeable dogs and under the approving eyes of Miss
+Carnegie; that was a different experience from hunting after single
+potatoes on all fours among the feet of unsympathetic passengers, and
+being prodded to duty by the umbrella of an obese Free Kirk minister.
+As a reward for this service of the aged, he was obliged to travel to
+Kildrummie with his neighbour--in whom for the native humour that was
+in him he had often rejoiced, but whose company was not congenial that
+day--and Kildrummie laid himself out for a pleasant talk.  After the
+roots had been secured and their pedigree stated, Kildrummie fell back
+on the proceedings of Presbytery, expressing much admiration for the
+guidance of Doctor Dowbiggin and denouncing Saunderson as "fair
+dottle," in proof of which judgment Kildrummie adduced the fact that
+the Rabbi had allowed a very happily situated pigsty to sink into ruin.
+Kildrummie, still in search of agreeable themes to pass the time,
+mentioned a pleasant tale he had gathered at the seed shop.
+
+"Yir neebur upbye, the General's dochter, is cairryin' on an awfu' rig
+the noo at the Castle"--Kildrummie fell into dialect in private life,
+often with much richness--"an' the sough o' her ongaeins hes come the
+length o' Muirtown.  The place is foo' o' men--tae say naethin' o'
+weemin; but it's little she hes tae dae wi' them or them wi'
+her--officers frae Edinburgh an' writin' men frae London, as weel as
+half a dozen coonty birkies."
+
+"Well?" said Carmichael, despising himself for his curiosity.
+
+"She hes a wy, there 's nae doot o' that, an' gin the trimmie hesna
+turned the heads o' half the men in the Castle, till they say she hes
+the pick of twa lords, five honourables, and a poet.  But the lassie
+kens what's what; it's Lord Hay she 's settin' her cap for, an' as sure
+as ye 're sittin' there, Drum, she 'll hae him.
+
+"Ma word"--and Kildrummie pursued his way--"it 'll be a match, the
+dochter o' a puir Hielant laird, wi' naethin' but his half pay and a
+few pounds frae a fairm or twa.  She 's a clever ane; French songs,
+dancin', shootin', ridin', actin', there's nae deevilry that's beyond
+her.  They say upbye that she's been a bonnie handfu' tae her
+father--General though he be--an' a' peety her man."
+
+"They say a lot of . . . lies, and I don't see what call a minister has
+to slander . . . ," and then Carmichael saw the folly of quarrelling
+with a veteran gossip over a young woman that would have nothing to say
+to him.  What two Free Kirk ministers or their people thought of her
+would never affect Miss Carnegie.
+
+"Truth's nae slander," and Kildrummie watched Carmichael with relish;
+"a' thocht ye wud hae got a taste o' her in the Glen.  Didna a' heer
+frae Piggie Walker that ye ca'd her Jezebel frae yir ain pulpit, an'
+that ma lady whuppit oot o' the kirk in the middle o' the sermon?"
+
+"I did nothing of the kind, and Walker is a . . ."
+
+"Piggie 's no very particular at a time," admitted Kildrummie; "maybe
+it's a makup the story aboot Miss Carnegie an' yirsel'.
+
+"Accordin' to the wratch," for Carmichael would deign no reply, "she
+wes threatenin' tae mak a fule o' the Free Kirk minister o' Drumtochty
+juist for practice, but a' said, 'Na, na, Piggie, Maister Carmichael is
+ower quiet and sensible a lad.  He kens as weel as onybody that a
+Carnegie wud never dae for a minister's wife.  Gin ye said a Bailie's
+dochter frae Muirtown 'at hes some money comin' tae her and kens the
+principles o' the Free Kirk.'
+
+"Noo a' can speak frae experience, having been terrible fortunate wi'
+a' ma wives. . . .  Ye 'll come up tae tea; we killed a pig yesterday,
+and . . .  Weel, weel, a wilfu' man maun hae his wy," and Carmichael,
+as he made his way up the hill, felt that the hand of Providence was
+heavy upon him, and that any highmindedness was being severely
+chastened.
+
+Two days Carmichael tramped the moors, returning each evening wet,
+weary, hungry, to sleep ten hours without turning, and on the morning
+of the third day he came down in such heart that Sarah wondered whether
+he could have received a letter by special messenger; and he
+congratulated himself, as he walked round his garden, that he had
+overcome by sheer will-power the first real infatuation of his life.
+He was so lifted above all sentiment as to review his temporary folly
+from the bare, serene heights of common-sense.  Miss Carnegie was
+certainly not an heiress, and she was a young woman of very decided
+character, but her blood was better than the Hays', and she was . . .
+attractive--yes, attractive.  Most likely she was engaged to Lord Hay,
+or if he did not please her--she was . . . whimsical and . . .
+self-willed--there was Lord Invermay's son.  Fancy Kate . . . Miss
+Carnegie in a Free Kirk manse--Kildrummie was a very . . . homely old
+man, but he touched the point there--receiving Doctor Dowbiggin with
+becoming ceremony and hearing him on the payment of probationers, or
+taking tea at Kildrummie Manse--where he had, however, feasted royally
+many a time after the Presbytery, but. . . .  This daughter of a
+Jacobite house, and brought up amid the romance of war, settling down
+in the narrowest circle of Scottish life--as soon imagine an eagle
+domesticated among barn-door poultry.  This image amused Carmichael so
+much that he could have laughed aloud, but . . . the village might have
+heard him.  He only stretched himself like one awaking, and felt so
+strong that he resolved to drop in on Janet to see how it fared with
+the old woman and . . . to have Miss Carnegie's engagement confirmed.
+The Carnegies might return any day from the South, and it would be well
+that he should know how to meet them.
+
+"You will be hearing that they hef come back to the Lodge yesterday
+morning, and it iss myself that will be glad to see Miss Kate again;
+and very pretty iss she looking, with peautiful dresses and bonnets,
+for I hef seen them all, maybe twelve or ten.
+
+"Oh yes, my dear, Donald will be talking about her marriage to Lord
+Kilspindie's son, who iss a very handsome young man and good at the
+shooting; and he will be blowing that they will live at the Lodge in
+great state, with many gillies and a piper.
+
+"No, it iss not Janet Macpherson, my dear, that will be believing
+Donald Cameron, or any Cameron--although I am not saying that the
+Camerons are not men of their hands--for Donald will be always making
+great stories and telling me wonderful things.  He wass a brave man in
+the battle, and iss very clever at the doctrine too, and will be strong
+against human himes (hymns), but he iss a most awful liar iss Donald
+Cameron, and you must not be believing a word that comes out of his
+mouth.
+
+"She will be asking many questions in her room as soon as Donald had
+brought up her boxes and the door was shut.  Some will be about the
+Glen, and some about the garden, and some will be about people--whether
+you ever will be visiting me, and whether you asked for her after the
+day she left the kirk.  But I will say, 'No; Mr. Carmichael does not
+speak about anything but the religion when he comes to my cottage.'
+
+"That iss nothing.  I will be saying more, that I am hearing that the
+minister iss to be married to a fery rich young lady in Muirtown who
+hass been courting him for two years, and that her father will be
+giving the minister twenty thousand pounds the day they are married.
+And I will say she iss very beautiful, with blue eyes and gold hair,
+and that her temper iss so sweet they are calling her the Angel of
+Muirtown.
+
+"Toot, toot, my dear, you are not to be speaking about lies, for that
+iss not a pretty word among friends, and you will not be meddling with
+me, for you will be better at the preaching and the singing than
+dealing with women.  It iss not good to be making yourself too common,
+and Miss Kate will be thinking the more of you if you be holding your
+head high and letting her see that you are not a poor lowland body, but
+a Farquharson by your mother's side, and maybe of the chief's blood,
+though twenty or fifteen times removed.
+
+"She will be very pleased to hear such good news of you, and be saying
+that it iss a mercy you are getting somebody to dress you properly.
+But her temper will not be at all good, and I did not ask her about
+Lord Hay, and she said nothing to me, nor about any other lord.  It iss
+not often I hef seen as great a liar as Donald Cameron.
+
+"Last evening Miss Kate will come down before dinner and talk about
+many things, and then she will say at the door, 'Donald tells me that
+Mister Carmichael does not believe in the Bible, and that his minister,
+Doctor Saunderson, has cast him off, and that he has been punished by
+his Bishop or somebody at Muirtown.'
+
+"'Donald will be knowing more doctrine and telling more lies every
+month,' I said to her.  'Doctor Saunderson--who is a very fine preacher
+and can put the fear of God upon the people most wonderful--and our
+minister had a little feud, and they will fight it out before some
+chiefs at Muirtown like gentlemen, and now they are good friends again.'
+
+"Miss Kate had gone off for a long walk, and I am not saying that she
+will be calling at Kilbogie Manse before she comes back.  She is very
+fond of Doctor Saunderson, and maybe he will be telling her of the
+feud.  It iss more than an hour through the woods to Kilbogie,"
+concluded Janet, "but you will be having a glass of milk first."
+
+Kate reviewed her reasons for the expedition to Kilbogie, and settled
+they were the pleasures of a walk through Tochty woods when the spring
+flowers were in their glory, and a visit to one of the dearest
+curiosities she had ever seen.  It was within the bounds of possibility
+that Doctor Saunderson might refer to his friend, but on her part she
+would certainly not refer to the Free Church minister of Drumtochty.
+Her reception by that conscientious professor Barbara could not be
+called encouraging.
+
+"Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him, for he's in his bed, and gin he
+disna mend faster than he wes daein' the last time a' gied him a cry,
+he 's no like to be in the pulpit on Sabbath.  A' wes juist thinkin' he
+wudna be the waur o' a doctor."
+
+[Illustration: "Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him.]
+
+"Do you mean to say that Doctor Saunderson is lying ill and no one
+nursing him?" and Kate eyed the housekeeper in a very unappreciative
+fashion.
+
+"Gin he wants a nurse she 'll hae tae be brocht frae Muirtown
+Infirmary, for a 've eneuch withoot ony fyke (delicate work) o' that
+kind.  For twal year hev a' been hoosekeeper in this manse, an' gin it
+hedna been for peety a' wad hae flung up the place.
+
+"Ye never cud tell when he wud come in, or when he wud gae oot, or what
+he wud be wantin' next.  A' the waufies in the countryside come here,
+and the best in the hoose is no gude eneuch for them.  He's been an
+awfu' handfu' tae me, an' noo a'coont him clean dottle.  But we maun
+juist bear oor burdens," concluded Barbara piously, and proposed to
+close the door.
+
+"Your master will not want a nurse a minute longer; show me his room at
+once," and Kate was so commanding that Barbara's courage began to fail.
+
+"Who may ye be," raising her voice to rally her heart, "'at wud take
+chairge o' a strainger in his ain hoose an' no sae muckle as ask leave?"
+
+"I am Miss Carnegie, of Tochty Lodge; will you stand out of my way?"
+and Kate swept past Barbara and went upstairs.
+
+"Weel, a' declare," as soon as she had recovered, "of a' the impudent
+hizzies," but Barbara did not follow the intruder upstairs.
+
+Kate had seen various curious hospitals in her day, and had nursed many
+sick men,--like the brave girl she was,--but the Rabbi's room was
+something quite new.  His favourite books had been gathering there for
+years, and now lined two walls and overhung the bed after a very
+perilous fashion, and had dispossessed the looking-glass,--which had
+become a nomad and was at present resting insecurely on John Owen,--and
+stood in banks round the bed.  During his few days of illness the Rabbi
+had accumulated so many volumes round him that he lay in a kind of
+tunnel, arched over, as it were, with literature.  He had been reading
+Calvin's _Commentary on the Psalms_, in Latin, and it still lay open at
+the 88th, the saddest of all songs in the Psalter; but as he grew
+weaker the heavy folio had slid forward, and he seemed to be feeling
+for it.  Although Kate spoke to him by name, he did not know any one
+was in the room.  "Lord, why castest Thou off my soul? . . .  I suffer
+Thy terror, I am distracted . . . fierce wrath goeth over me . . .
+lover and friend hast Thou put far from me . . . friend far from me."
+
+His head fell on his breast, his breath was short and rapid, and he
+coughed every few seconds.
+
+"My friend far from me . . ."
+
+At the sorrow in his voice, and the thing which he said, the tears came
+to Kate's eyes, and she went forward and spoke to him very gently.  "Do
+you know me, Dr. Saunderson, Miss Carnegie?"
+
+"Not Saunderson . . . Magor Missabib."
+
+"Rabbi, Rabbi"--so much she knew; and now Kate stroked the bent white
+head.  "Your friend, Mister Carmichael . . ."
+
+"Yes, yes"--he now looked up, and spoke eagerly--"John Carmichael, of
+Drumtochty . . . my friend in my old age . . . and others . . . my
+boys . . . but John has left me . . . he would not speak to me . . .  I
+am alone now . . . he did not understand . . . mine acquaintance into
+darkness . . . here we see in a glass darkly . . ." (he turned aside to
+expound the Greek word for darkly), "but some day . . . face to face."
+And twice he said it, with an indescribable sweetness, "face to face."
+
+Kate hurriedly removed the books from the bed, and wrapt round his
+shoulders the old grey plaid that had eked out his covering at night,
+and then she went downstairs.
+
+"Bring," she said to Barbara, "hot water, soap, towels, and a sponge to
+Doctor Saunderson's bedroom, immediately."
+
+"And gin a' dinna?" inquired Barbara aggressively.
+
+"I 'll shoot you where you stand."
+
+Barbara shows to her cronies how Miss Carnegie drew a pistol from her
+pocket at this point and held it to her head, and how at every turn the
+pistol was again in evidence; sometimes a dagger is thrown in, but that
+is only late in the evening when Barbara is under the influence of
+tonics.  Kate herself admits that if she had had her little revolver
+with her she might have been tempted to outline the housekeeper's face
+on the wall, and she still thinks her threat an inspiration.
+
+"Now," said Kate, when Barbara had brought her commands in with
+incredible celerity, "bring up some fresh milk and three glasses of
+whisky."
+
+"Whisky!"  Barbara could hardly compass the unfamiliar word.  "The
+Doctor never hed sic a thing in the hoose, although mony a time, puir
+man . . ."  Discipline was softening even that austere spirit.
+
+"No, but you have, for you are blowing a full gale just now; bring up
+your private bottle, or I 'll go down for it."
+
+"There's enough," holding the bottle to the light, "to do till evening;
+go to the next farm and send a man on horseback to tell Mr. Carmichael
+of Drumtochty, that Doctor Saunderson is dying, and another for Dr.
+Manley of Muirtown."
+
+Very tenderly did Kate sponge the Rabbi's face and hands, and then she
+dressed his hair, till at length he came to himself.
+
+"This ministry is . . . grateful to me, Barbara . . . my strength has
+gone from me . . . but my eyes fail me. . . .  Of a verity you are
+not . . ."
+
+"I am Kate Carnegie, whom you were so kind to at Tochty.  Will you let
+me be your nurse?  I learned in India, and know what to do."  It was
+only wounded soldiers who knew how--soft her voice could be, and hands.
+
+"It is I that . . . should be serving you . . . the first time you have
+come to the manse . . . no woman has ever done me . . . such kindness
+before. . . ."  He followed her as she tried to bring some order out of
+chads, and knew not that he spoke aloud.  "A gracious maid . . . above
+rubies."
+
+His breathing was growing worse, in spite of many wise things she did
+for him--Doctor Manley, who paid no compliments, but was a strength
+unto every country doctor in Perthshire, praises Kate unto this
+day--and the Rabbi did not care to speak.  So she sat down by his side
+and read to him from the _Pilgrim's Progress_--holding his hand all the
+time--and the passage he desired was the story of Mr. Fearing.
+
+"This I took very great notice of, that the valley of the shadow of
+Death was as quiet while he went through it as ever I knew it before or
+since.  I suppose these enemies here had now a special check from our
+Lord and a command not to meddle until Mr. Fearing was passed over
+it. . . .  Here also I took notice of what was very remarkable: the
+water of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my
+life.  So he went over at last, not much above wet-shod.  When he was
+going up to the gate. . . ."
+
+The Rabbi listened for an instant.
+
+"It is John's step . . . he hath a sound of his own . . . my only
+earthly desire is fulfilled."
+
+"Rabbi," cried Carmichael, and half kneeling, he threw one arm round
+the old man, "say that you forgive me.  I looked for you everywhere on
+Monday, but you could not be found."
+
+"Did you think, John, that I . . . my will was to do you an injury
+or . . . vex your soul?  Many trials in my life . . . all God's
+will . . . but this hardest . . . when I lost you . . . nothing left
+here . . . but you . . .--my breath is bad, a little chill--. . .
+understand. . . ."
+
+"I always did, and I never respected you more; it was my foolish pride
+that made me call you Doctor Saunderson in the study; but my love was
+the same, and now you will let me stay and wait on you."
+
+The old man smiled sadly, and laid his hand on his boy's head.
+
+"I cannot let you. . . .  Go, John, my son."
+
+"Go and leave you, Rabbi!"  Carmichael tried to laugh.  "Not till you
+are ready to appear at the Presbytery again.  We 'll send Barbara away
+for a holiday, and Sarah will take her place,--you remember that
+cream,--and we shall have a royal time, a meal every four hours, Rabbi,
+and the Fathers in between," and Carmichael, springing to his feet and
+turning round to hide his tears, came face to face with Miss Carnegie,
+who had been unable to escape from the room.
+
+"I happened to call"--Kate was quite calm--"and found Doctor Saunderson
+in bed; so I stayed till some friend should come; you must have met the
+messenger I sent for you."
+
+"Yes, a mile from the manse; I was on my way . . .  Janet said . . .
+but I . . . did not remember anything when I saw the Rabbi."
+
+"Will you take a little milk again . . . Rabbi?" and at her bidding and
+the name he made a brave effort to swallow, but he was plainly sinking.
+
+"No more," he whispered; "thank you . . . for service . . . to a lonely
+man; may God bless you . . . both. . . ."  He signed for her hand,
+which he kept to the end.
+
+"Satisfied . . . read, John . . . the woman from coasts of--of--"
+
+"I know, Rabbi," and kneeling on the other side of the bed, he read the
+story slowly of a Tyrian woman's faith.
+
+"It is not meet to take the children's meat and cast it to dogs."
+
+"Dogs"--they heard the Rabbi appropriate his name--"outside . . . the
+covenant."
+
+"And she said, Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
+from their master's table."
+
+"Lord, I believe . . . help Thou mine . . . unbelief."
+
+He then fell into an agony of soul, during which Carmichael could hear:
+"Though . . . He slay . . . me . . . yet will I trust . . . trust . . .
+in Him."  He drew two or three long breaths and was still.  After a
+little he was heard again with a new note--"He that believeth . . . in
+Him . . . shall not be confounded," and again "A bruised reed . . .
+shall He not . . ."  Then he opened his eyes and raised his head--but
+he saw neither Kate nor Carmichael, for the Rabbi had done with earthly
+friends and earthly trials--and he, who had walked in darkness and seen
+no light, said in a clear voice full of joy, "My Lord, and my God."
+
+It was Kate that closed his eyes and laid the old scholar's head on the
+pillow, and then she left the room, casting one swift glance of pity at
+Carmichael, who was weeping bitterly and crying between the sobs,
+"Rabbi, Rabbi."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH.
+
+Doctor Davidson allowed himself, in later years, the pleasant luxury of
+an after luncheon nap, and then it was his habit--weather
+permitting--to go out and meet Posty, who adhered so closely to his
+time-table--notwithstanding certain wayside rests--that the Doctor's
+dog knew his hour of arrival, and saw that his master was on the road
+in time.  It was a fine April morning when the news of the great
+disaster came, and the Doctor felt the stirring of spring in his blood.
+On the first hint from Skye he sprang from his chair, declaring it was
+a sin to be in the house on such a day, and went out in such haste that
+he had to return for his hat.  As he went up the walk, the Doctor
+plucked some early lilies and placed them in his coat; he threw so many
+stones that Skye forgot his habit of body and ecclesiastical position;
+and he was altogether so youthful and frolicsome that John was
+seriously alarmed, and afterwards remarked to Rebecca that he was not
+unprepared for calamity.
+
+"The best o's tempts Providence at a time, and when a man like the
+Doctor tries tae rin aifter his dog jidgment canna be far off.  A 'm no
+sayin'," John concluded, with characteristic modesty, "that onybody cud
+tell what was coming, but a' jaloused there wud be tribble."
+
+The Doctor met Posty in the avenue, the finest bit on our main road,
+where the road has wide margins of grass on either side, and the two
+rows of tall ancient trees arch their branches overhead.  Some day in
+the past it had been part of the approach to the house of Tochty, and
+under this long green arch the Jacobite cavaliers rode away after black
+John Carnegie's burial.  No one could stand beneath those stately trees
+without thinking of the former days, when men fought not for money and
+an easy life, but for loyalty and love, and in this place the minister
+of Drumtochty received his evil tidings like a brave gentleman who does
+not lose heart while honour is left.  During his years in the Glen he
+had carried himself well, with dignity and charity, in peace and
+kindliness, so that now when he is dead and gone--the last of his
+family--he still remains to many of us a type of the country clergyman
+that is no longer found in Scotland, but is greatly missed.  It seemed,
+however, to many of us--I have heard both Drumsheugh and Burnbrae say
+this, each in his own way--that it needed adversity to bring out the
+greatness of the Doctor, just as frost gives the last touch of ripeness
+to certain fruits.
+
+"Fower letters the day, Doctor, ane frae Dunleith, ane frae Glasgie,
+another frae Edinburgh, and the fourth no clean stampit, so a' can say
+naethin' aboot it.  Twa circulars an' the _Caledonian_ maks up the hale
+hypothic."
+
+Posty buckled and adjusted his bag, and made as though he was going,
+but he loitered to give opportunity fur any questions the Doctor might
+wish to ask on foreign affairs.  For Posty was not merely the carrier
+of letters to the Glen, but a scout who was sent down to collect
+information regarding the affairs of the outer world.  He was an
+introduction to and running commentary on the weekly paper.  By-and-by,
+when the labour of the day was done, and the Glen was full of sweet,
+soft light from the sides of Ben Urtach, a farmer would make for his
+favourite seat beside the white rose-tree in the garden, and take his
+first dip into the _Muirtown Advertiser_.  It was a full and satisfying
+paper, with its agricultural advertisements, its roups, reported with
+an accuracy of detail that condescended on a solitary stirk, its local
+intelligence, its facetious anecdotes.  Through this familiar country
+the good man found his own way at a rate which allowed him to complete
+the survey in six days.  Foreign telegrams, however, and political
+intelligence, as well as the turmoil of the great cities, were strange
+to him, and here he greatly valued Posty's laconic hints, who, visiting
+the frontier, was supposed to be in communication with those centres.
+"Posty says that the Afghans are no makin' muckle o' the war," and
+Hillocks would sally forth to enjoy Sir Frederick Roberts' great march,
+line by line, afterwards enlarging thereon with much unction, and
+laying up a store of allusion that would last for many days.
+
+Persons raised to the height of a daily newspaper like the minister
+might be supposed independent of Posty's précis, but even Doctor
+Davidson, with that day's _Caledonian_ in his hand, still availed
+himself of the spoken word.
+
+"Well, Posty, any news this morning?"
+
+"Naethin', Doctor, worth mentionin', except the failure o' a company
+Glasgie wy; it's been rotten, a' wes hearin', for a while, an' noo it's
+fair stramash.  They say it 'll no be lichtsome for weedows an' mony
+decent fouk in Scotland."
+
+"That's bad news, Posty.  There 's too many of those swindling concerns
+in the country.  People ought to take care where they place their
+savings, and keep to old-established institutions.  We 're pretty
+hard-headed up here, and I 'll wager that nobody in the Glen has lost a
+penny in any of those new-fangled companies."
+
+"The auld fouk in Drumtochty pit their siller in a pock and hode it
+ablow their beds, an', ma certes, that bank didna break;" and Posty
+went along the avenue, his very back suggestive of a past, cautious,
+unenterprising, safe and honest.
+
+The Doctor glanced at the envelopes and thrust the letters into his
+pocket.  His good nature was touched at the thought of another
+financial disaster, by which many hard-working people would lose their
+little savings, and all the more that he had some of his private means
+invested in a Glasgow bank--one of those tried and powerful
+institutions which was indifferent to every crisis in trade.  Already
+he anticipated an appeal, and considered what he would give, for it did
+not matter whether it was a coalpit explosion in Lanarkshire or a loss
+of fishing-boats in the Moray Firth, if widows needed help the Doctor's
+guinea was on its way within four-and-twenty hours.  Some forms of
+religious philanthropy had very little hold on the Doctor's
+sympathy--one of the religious prints mentioned him freely as a
+Unitarian, because he had spoken unkindly of the Jewish mission--but in
+the matter of widows and orphans he was a specialist.
+
+"Widows, Posty said; poor things! and very likely bairns.  Well, well,
+we 'll see what can be done out of Daisy's fund."
+
+Very unlikely people have their whims, and it was his humour to assign
+one fourth of his income to his little sister, who was to have kept
+house for him, and "never to leave you, Sandie," and out of this fund
+the Doctor did his public charities.  "In memory of a little maid,"
+appeared in various subscription lists; but the reference thereof was
+only known after the Doctor's death.
+
+"The Western Counties Bank did not open its doors yesterday, and it was
+officially announced at the head-office, Glasgow, that the bank had
+stopped.  It is impossible as yet to forecast the debts, but they are
+known to be enormous, and as the bank is not limited, it is feared that
+the consequences to the shareholders will be very serious.  This
+failure was quite unexpected, the Western Counties Bank having been
+looked on as a prosperous and stable concern."
+
+He read the paragraph twice word by word--it did not take long--he
+folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket, and he stood in
+the spot for five minutes to take in the meaning in its length and
+breadth.  A pleasant spring sun was shining upon him through a break in
+the leafy arch, a handful of primroses were blooming at his feet, a
+lark was singing in the neighbouring field.  Sometimes the Doctor used
+to speculate how he would have liked being a poor man, and he concluded
+that he would have disliked it very much.  He had never been rich, and
+he was not given to extravagance, but he was accustomed to easy
+circumstances, and he pitied some of his old friends who had seen it
+their duty to secede at the Disruption, and had to practise many little
+economies, who travelled third class and had to walk from the station,
+and could not offer their friends a glass of wine.  This was the way he
+must live now, and Daisy's fund would have to be closed, which seemed
+to him the sweetest pleasure of his life.
+
+"And Jack!  Would to God I had never mentioned this wretched bank to
+him.  Poor Jack, with the few hundreds he had saved for Kit!"
+
+For some five minutes more the Doctor stood in the place; then he
+straightened himself as one who, come what may, would play the man, and
+when he passed Janet's cottage, on his way to the Lodge, that honest
+admirer of able-bodied, good-looking men came out and followed him with
+her eyes for the sight of his firm unbroken carriage.
+
+"Miss Kate will be grieving very much about Doctor Saunderson's death,"
+Donald explained at the Lodge, "and she went down this forenoon with
+the General to put flowers on his grave; but they will be coming back
+every minute," and the Doctor met them at the Beeches.
+
+[Illustration: "To put flowers on his grave."]
+
+"May I have as fair hands to decorate my grave, Miss Catherine
+Carnegie," and the Doctor bowed gallantly; "but of one thing I am sure,
+I have done nothing to deserve it.  Saunderson was a scholar of the
+ancient kind, and a very fine spirit."
+
+"Don't you think," said Kate, "that he was . . . like À Kempis, I mean,
+and George Herbert, a kind of . . . saint?"
+
+"Altogether one, I should say.  I don't think he would have known port
+wine from sherry, or an _entrée_ from a mutton chop; beside a man like
+that what worldly fellows you and I are, Jack, and mine is the greater
+shame."
+
+"I'll have no comparisons, Padre"--Kate was a little puzzled by the
+tone in the Doctor's voice; "he was so good that I loved him; but there
+are some points in the General and you, quite nice points, and for the
+sake of them you shall have afternoon tea in my room," where the Doctor
+and the General fell on former days and were wonderful company.
+
+"It's not really about the road I wish to talk to you," and the Doctor
+closed the door of the General's den, "but about . . . a terrible
+calamity that has befallen you and me, Jack, and I am to blame."
+
+"What is it?" and Carnegie sat erect; "does it touch our name or . . .
+Kate?"
+
+"Neither, thank God," said Davidson.
+
+"Then it cannot be so very bad.  Let us have it at once," and the
+General lighted a cheroot.
+
+"Our bank has failed, and we shall have to give up everything to pay
+the debt, and . . . Jack, it was I advised you to buy the shares."  The
+Doctor rose and went to the window.
+
+"For God's sake don't do that, Sandie.  Why, man, you gave me the best
+advice you knew, and there 's an end of it.  It's the fortune of war,
+and we must take it without whining.  I know whom you are thinking
+about, and I am . . . a bit sorry for Kate, for she ought to have lots
+of things--more dresses and trinkets, you know.  But Davidson, she 'll
+be the bravest of the three."
+
+"You are right there, Jack.  Kate is of the true grit, but . . . Tochty
+Lodge."
+
+"Yes, it will hit us pretty hard to see the old place sold, if it comes
+to that, when I hoped to end my days here . . . but, man, it's our
+fate.  Bit by bit we 've lost Drumtochty, till there were just the
+woods and the two farms left, and soon we 'll be out of the
+place--nothing left but our graves.
+
+"Sandie, this is bad form, and . . . you 'll not hear this talk again;
+we 'll get a billet somewhere, and wherever it be, there 'll be a bed
+and a crust for you, old man;" and at the door the two held one
+another's hands for a second; that was all.
+
+"So this was what you two conspirators were talking about downstairs,
+as if I could not be trusted.  Did you think that I would faint, or
+perhaps weep?  The padre deserves a good scolding, and as for you--"
+Then Kate went over and cast an arm round her father's neck, whose face
+was quivering.
+
+"It is rather a disappointment to leave the Lodge when we were getting
+it to our mind; but we 'll have a jolly little home somewhere, and I
+'ll get a chance of earning something.  Dancing now--I think that I
+might be able to teach some girls how to waltz.  Then my French is
+really intelligible, and most colloquial; besides revolver shooting.
+Dad, we are on our way to a fortune, and at the worst you 'll have your
+curry and cheroots, and I 'll have a well-fitting dress.  Voilà, mon
+père."
+
+When the two Drumtochty men arrived next forenoon at the hall in
+Glasgow, where the shareholders had been summoned to receive
+particulars of their ruin, the dreary place was filled with a crowd
+representative of every class in the community except the highest,
+whose wealth is in land, and the lowest, whose possessions are on their
+backs.  There were city merchants, who could not conceal their chagrin
+that they had been befooled; countrymen, who seemed utterly dazed, as
+if the course of the seasons had been reversed; prosperous tradesmen,
+who were aggressive in appearance and wanted to take it out of
+somebody; widows, who could hardly restrain their tears, seeing before
+them nothing but starvation; clergymen, who were thinking of their boys
+taken from school and college.  For a while the victims were silent,
+and watched with hungry eyes the platform door, and there was an eager
+rustle when some clerk came out and laid a bundle of papers on the
+table.  This incident seemed to excite the meeting and set tongues
+loose.  People began to talk to their neighbours explaining how they
+came to be connected with the bank, as if this were now a crime.  One
+had inherited the shares and had never had resolution to sell them;
+another had been deceived by a friend and bought them; a third had
+taken over two shares for a bad debt.  A minister thought that he must
+have been summoned by mistake, for he was simply a trustee on an estate
+which had shares, but he was plainly nervous about his position.  An
+Ayrshire Bailie had only had his shares for six months, and he put it,
+to his circle, with municipal eloquence, whether he could be held
+responsible for frauds of years' standing.  No one argued with him, and
+indeed you might say anything you pleased, for each was so much taken
+up with his own case that he only listened to you that he might
+establish a claim in turn on your attention.  Here and there a noisy
+and confident personage got a larger audience by professing to have
+private information.  A second-rate stockbroker assured quite a
+congregation that the assets of the bank included an estate in
+Australia, which would more than pay the whole debt, and advised them
+to see that it was not flung away; and a Government pensioner mentioned
+casually in his neighbourhood, on the authority of one of the managers,
+that there was not that day a solvent bank in Scotland.  The different
+conversations rise to a babel, various speakers enforce their views on
+the floor with umbrellas, one enthusiast exhorts his brother
+unfortunates from a chair, when suddenly there is a hush, and then in a
+painful silence the shareholders hang on the lips of the accountant,
+from whom they learn that things could not be worse, that the richest
+shareholder may be ruined, and that ordinary people will lose their
+last penny.
+
+Speech again breaks forth, but now it is despairing, fierce,
+vindictive.  One speaker storms against Government which allows public
+institutions to defraud the public, and refers to himself as the widow
+and orphan, and another assails the directorate with bitter invective
+as liars and thieves, and insists on knowing whether they are to be
+punished.  The game having now been unearthed, the pack follow in full
+cry.  The tradesman tells with much gusto how one director asked the
+detectives for leave to have family prayers before he was removed, and
+then declares his conviction that when a man takes to praying you had
+better look after your watch.  Ayrshire wished to inform the accountant
+and the authorities that the directors had conveyed to their wives and
+friends enormous sums which ought to be seized without delay.  The air
+grew thick with upbraidings, complaints, cries for vengeance, till the
+place reeked with sordid passions.  Through all this ignoble storm the
+Drumtochty men sat silent, amazed, disgusted, till at last the Doctor
+rose, and such authority was in his very appearance that with his first
+words he obtained a hearing.
+
+"Mr. Accountant," he said, "and gentlemen, it appears to me as if under
+a natural provocation and suffering we are in danger of forgetting our
+due dignity and self-respect.  We have been, as is supposed, the
+subjects of fraud on the part of those whom we trusted; that is a
+matter which the law will decide, and, if necessary, punish.  If we
+have been betrayed, then the directors are in worse case than the
+shareholders, for we are not disgraced.  The duty before us is plain,
+and must be discharged to our utmost ability.  It is to go home and
+gather together our last penny for the payment of our debts, in order
+that at any rate those who have trusted us may not be disappointed.
+Gentlemen, it is evident that we have lost our means; let us show to
+Scotland that there is something which cannot be taken from us by any
+fraud, and that we have retained our courage and our honour."
+
+It was the General who led the applause so that the roof of the hall
+rang, but it is just to Ayrshire and the rest to say that they came to
+themselves--all men of the old Scottish breed--and followed close after
+with a mighty shout.
+
+The sound of that speech went through Scotland and awoke the spirit of
+honest men in many places, so that the Doctor, travelling next day to
+Muirtown, third class, with the General, and wedged in among a set of
+cattle dealers, was so abashed by their remarks as they read the
+_Caledonian_ that the General let out the secret.
+
+"Yir hand, sir," said the chief among them, a mighty man at the Falkirk
+Tryst; "gin it bena a leeberty, ilka ane o's hes a sair fecht tae keep
+straicht in oor wy o' business, but ye 've gien 's a lift the day," and
+so they must needs all have a grip of the Doctor's hand, who took snuff
+with prodigality, while the General complained of the smoke from the
+engine.
+
+Nor were their trials over, for on Muirtown platform--it being
+Friday--all kinds of Perthshire men were gathered, and were so proud of
+our Doctor that before he got shelter in the Dunleith train his hand
+was sore, and the men that grasped it were of all kinds, from Lord
+Kilspindie--who, having missed him at the Manse, had come to catch him
+at the station--"Best sermon you ever preached, Davidson,"--to an
+Athole farmer--"I am an elder in the Free Kirk, but it iss this man
+that will be honouring you."
+
+It was a fine instance of the unfailing tact of Peter Bruce that,
+seeing the carriage out of which the two came, and taking in the
+situation, he made no offer of the first class, but straightway dusted
+out a third with his handkerchief, and escorted them to it cap in hand.
+Drumtochty restrained itself with an effort in foreign parts--for
+Kildrummie was exceptionally strong at the Junction--but it waited at
+the terminus till the outer world had gone up the road.  Then their own
+folk took the two in hand, and these were the guard of honour who
+escorted the Minister and the General to where our Kate was waiting
+with the dog-cart, each carrying some morsel of luggage--Drumsheugh,
+Burnbrae, Hillocks, Netherton, Jamie Soutar, and Archie Moncur.  Kate
+drove gloriously through Kildrummie as if they had come from a triumph,
+and let it be said to the credit of that despised town, that, the news
+having come, every hat was lifted, but that which lasted till they got
+home, and till long afterwards, was the handshake of the Drumtochty men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL.
+
+When the General and Kate were loitering over breakfast the morning
+after the ovation, they heard the sound of a horse's feet on the
+gravel, and Donald came in with more his usual importance.
+
+"It iss a messenger from Muirtown Castle, and he iss waiting to know
+whether there will be any answer."  And Donald put one letter before
+the father and another before the daughter, both showing the Hay crest.
+Kate's face whitened as she recognised the handwriting on her envelope,
+and she went over to the window seat of a turret in the corner of the
+room, while the General opened his letter, standing on a tiger-skin,
+with his back to the fireplace in the great hall.  This is what he read:
+
+
+MY DEAR CARNEGIE,--When men have fought together in the trenches before
+Sebastopol, as their ancestors have ridden side by side with Prince
+Charlie, I hope you will agree with me they need not stand on ceremony.
+If I seem guilty of any indiscretion in what I am going to say, then
+you will pardon me for "Auld Lang Syne."
+
+You have one daughter and I have one son, and so I do not need to tell
+you that he is very dear to me, and that I have often thought of his
+marriage, on which not only his own happiness so much depends, but also
+the future of our house and name.  Very likely you have had some such
+thoughts about Kate, with this difference, that you would rather keep
+so winsome a girl with you, while I want even so good a son as Hay to
+be married whenever he can meet with one whom he loves, and who is
+worthy of him.
+
+Hay never gave me an hour's anxiety, and has no entanglements of any
+kind, but on the subject of marriage I could make no impression.  "Time
+enough," he would say, or "The other person has not turned up," and I
+was getting uneasy, for you and I are not so young as once we were.
+You may fancy my satisfaction, therefore, when George came down from
+Drumtochty last August and told me he had found the "other person," and
+that she was my old friend Jack Carnegie's daughter.  Of course I urged
+him to make sure of himself, but now he has had ample opportunities
+during your two visits, and he is quite determined that his wife is to
+be Kate or nobody.
+
+It goes without saying that the Countess and I heartily approve Hay's
+choice and are charmed with Kate, who is as bonnie as she is
+high-spirited.  She sustains the old traditions of her family, who were
+ever strong and true, and she has a clever tongue, which neither you
+nor I have, Jack, nor Hay either, good fellow though he be, and that is
+not a bad thing for a woman nowadays.  They would make a handsome pair,
+as they ought, with such good-looking fathers, eh?
+
+Well, I am coming to my point, for in those circumstances I want your
+help.  What Miss Carnegie thinks of Hay we don't know, and unless I 'm
+much mistaken she will decide for herself, but is it too much to ask
+you--if you can--to say a word for him?  You are quite right to think
+that no man is worthy of Kate, but she is bound to marry some day--I
+can't conceive how you have kept her so long--and I am certain Hay will
+make a good husband, and he is simply devoted to her.  If she refuses
+him, I am afraid he will not marry, and then--well, grant I'm selfish,
+but it would be a calamity to us.
+
+Don't you think that it looks like an arrangement of Providence to
+unite two families that have shared common dangers and common faith in
+the past, and to establish a Carnegie once more as lady of Drumtochty?
+Now that is all, and it's a long screed, but the matter lies near my
+heart, and we shall wait the answers from you both with anxiety.
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+KILSPINDIE.
+
+
+Kate's letter was much shorter, and was written in big schoolboy hand
+with great care.
+
+
+DEAR MISS CARNEGIE,--They say that a woman always knows when a man
+loves her, and if so you will not be astonished at this letter.  From
+that day I saw you in Drumtochty Kirk I have loved you, and every week
+I love you more.  My mother is the only other woman I have ever cared
+for, and that is different.  Will you be my wife?  I often wanted to
+ask you when you were with us in November and last month, but my heart
+failed me.  Can you love me a little, enough to say yes?  I am not
+clever, and I am afraid I shall never do anything to make you proud of
+me, but you will have all my heart, and I 'll do my best to make you
+happy.
+
+I am, yours very sincerely,
+
+HAY.
+
+
+Carnegie could see Kate's face from his place, who was looking out of
+the window with a kindly expression, and her father, who was of a
+simple mind, and knew little of women, was encouraged by such visible
+friendliness.  He was about to go over, when her face changed.  She
+dropped the letter on the seat, and became very thoughtful, knitting
+her brows and resting her chin on her hand.  In a little, something
+stung her--like a person recalling an injury--and she flushed with
+anger, drumming with her fingers on the sill of the window.  Then anger
+gave place to sadness, as if she had resolved to do something that was
+inevitable, but less than the best.  Kate glanced in her father's
+direction, and read Lord Hay's letter again; then she seemed to have
+made up her mind.
+
+"Father," as she joined him on the skin beneath those loyal Carnegies
+on the wall, "there is Lord Hay's letter, and he is a . . . worthy
+gentleman.  Perhaps I did not give him so much encouragement as he
+took, but that does not matter.  This is a . . . serious decision, and
+ought not to be made on the spur of the moment.  Will you let the
+messenger go with a note to say that an answer will be sent on Monday?
+You might write to Lord Kilspindie."
+
+She was still standing in the place when he returned, and had been
+studying the proud, determined face of Black John's mother, who had not
+spared her only son for the good cause.
+
+"Did you ever hear of any Carnegie, dad, who married beneath her,
+or . . . loved one on the other side?"
+
+"Never," said her father.  "Our women all married into loyal families
+of their own rank, which is best for comfort; but why do you ask?  Hay
+is a . . ."
+
+"Yes, I know; it was only . . . curiosity made me ask, and I suppose
+some of our women must have made sacrifices for their . . . cause?"
+
+"Far more than the men ever did, for, see you, a man is just shot, and
+all is over, and before he falls he 's had some good fighting, but his
+wife suffers all her days, when he is living and when he is dead.  Yet
+our women were the first to send their men to the field.  Heavens! what
+women do suffer--they ought to have their reward."
+
+"They have," said Kate, with emphasis, "if they help those whom they
+love. . . .  Father, would you be quite satisfied with Lord Hay for a
+son-in-law, and . . . would you let us live with you here as much as we
+could?"
+
+"Kate, if you are to marry--and I knew it must come some day--I have
+not seen a more honest man; but you are forgetting that Tochty Lodge
+will soon be out of our hands; I 'll have to get a bungalow somewhere,
+not too far away from Muirtown, I hope."
+
+"If I marry Lord Hay, Tochty Lodge will not be sold, and you will never
+be disturbed, dad.  We shall not be separated more than we can help,"
+and Kate caressed the General.
+
+"Do you mean, lassie," said the General, with a sudden suspicion,
+lilting her face till he saw her eyes, "that you are going to accept
+Hay in order to keep the old home?  You must not do this, for it would
+not . . . don't you see that I . . . could not accept this at your
+hands?"
+
+"You cannot prevent your daughter marrying Lord Hay if your daughter so
+decides, but as yet she is in doubt, very great doubt, and so I am
+going for a long walk on the big moor, and you . . . well, why not take
+lunch with the Padre at the manse?"
+
+"Hay is a straight young fellow, and Kate would supply what he wants--a
+dash of go, you know"--so the General was summing up the situation to
+his old friend; "but my girl is not to marry Hay or any other man for
+my sake, and that is what she thinks of doing."
+
+"Did it ever occur to you, Carnegie, that Kate had a . . . well, kindly
+feeling for any other man?"
+
+"Plenty of fellows tried their luck: first subalterns, then
+aides-de-camp, and at last commissioners; it was no easy affair to be
+her father," and Carnegie gave Davidson a comic look.  "I used to scold
+her, but upon my word I don't know she was to blame, and I am certain
+she did not care for one of them; in fact, she laughed at them all
+till--well, in fact, I had to interfere."
+
+"And since you came to the Lodge"--the Doctor spoke with
+meaning--"besides Lord Hay?"
+
+"Why, there is just yourself"--the Doctor nodded with much
+appreciation--"and that Free Kirkman. . . .  Davidson, do you mean
+that--oh, nonsense, man; she was quite angry one day when I suggested a
+parson.  Kate has always said that was the last man she would marry."
+
+"That is an evidence she will."
+
+The General stared at the oracle, and went on:
+
+"She has made his life miserable at the Lodge with her tongue; she
+delighted in teasing him.  Your idea is quite absurd."
+
+"Carnegie, did you ever hear the classical couplet--
+
+  "Scarting and biting
+  Mak Scots fouk's 'ooing;"
+
+and although I admit the description applies in the first instance to
+milkmaids, yet there is a fair share of national character in the
+Carnegies."
+
+"Do you really think that Kate is in . . . has, well, a, eh, tenderness
+to Carmichael? it would never have occurred to me."
+
+"How would you look on Carmichael as a suitor?"
+
+"Well, if Kate is to marry--and mind you I always prepared myself for
+that--I would of course prefer Hay, not because he is a lord, or rich,
+or any snobbery of that kind--you know me better than that, Sandie--but
+because he 's . . . you know . . . belongs to our own set.
+
+"Don't you think there is something in that?" and the General tried to
+explain his honest mind, in which lived no unworthy or uncharitable
+thought.  "I have not one word to say against Carmichael; he 's
+good-looking, and monstrous clever, and he has always made himself very
+agreeable, very, and the people swear by him in the Glen; but . . . you
+must understand what I mean, Davidson," and the General was in despair.
+
+"You mean that though he 's a first-rate young fellow for a clergyman,
+he does not belong to your world--has a different set of friends, has
+different habits of living, has a different way of thinking and
+speaking--is, in fact, an outsider."
+
+"That's it--just what I was 'ettling' after--lucky fellows we Scots
+with such words," and the General was immensely delighted to be
+delivered of his idea in an inoffensive form.
+
+"It is my own belief, Carnegie--and you can laugh at me afterwards if I
+be wrong--that this will be the end of it, however.  Yes, putting it
+plainly, that Kate is in love with Carmichael, as he is certainly with
+her; and you will have to make the best of the situation."
+
+"You don't like the idea any more than I do, Davidson?"
+
+"Speaking in perfect confidence and frankness, I do not.  I look at the
+matter this way"--the Doctor stood on the hearth-rug in a judicial
+attitude, pulling down his waistcoat with his two hands, his legs
+apart, and his eye-glass on his nose--"Carmichael has been brought up
+among . . . plain, respectable people, and theological books, and
+church courts, and Free Kirk society, all of which is excellent,
+but . . . secluded"--the Doctor liked the word, which gave his mind
+without offence--"secluded.  Kate is a Carnegie, was educated in
+France, has travelled in India, and has lived in the most exciting
+circumstances.  She loves soldiers, war, gaiety, sport, besides many
+other . . . eh, good things, and is a . . . lovely girl.  Love laughs
+at rules, but if you ask me my candid opinion, the marriage would not
+be . . . in fact, congruous.  If it is to be, it must be, and God bless
+them both, say I, and so will everybody say; but it will be an
+experiment, a distinct and . . . interesting experiment."
+
+"Kate is not to marry any one for my sake, to save Tochty, but I do
+wish she had fancied Lord Hay," said the General, ruefully.
+
+"The Free Kirk folk in the depths of their hearts consider me a worldly
+old clergyman, and perhaps I am, for, Jack, I would dearly like to see
+our Kate Viscountess Hay, and to think that one day, when we three old
+fellows are gone, she would be Countess of Kilspindie."  That was the
+first conference of the day on Kate's love affairs, and this is how it
+ended.
+
+Meanwhile the young woman herself had gone up the road to the high Glen
+and made her way over dykes and through fields to Whinny Knowe, which
+she had often visited since the August Sacrament.  Whinny came out from
+the kitchen door in corduroy trousers, much stained with soil, and grey
+shirt--wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after a hearty
+dinner--and went to the barn for his midday sleep before he went again
+to the sowing.  Marget met her at the garden gate, dressed in her
+week-day clothes and fresh from a morning's churning, but ever refined
+and spiritual, as one whose soul is shining through the veil of common
+circumstances.
+
+"It's a benison tae see ye on this bricht day, Miss Carnegie, an' ye
+'ll come tae the garden-seat, for the spring flooers are bloomin'
+bonnie and sweet the noo, an' fillin' 's a' wi' hope.
+
+"Gin there be ony sun shinin'," as she spread a plaid, "the heat fa's
+here, an' save when the snow is heavy on the Glen, there 's aye some
+blossoms here tae mind us o' oor Father's love an' the world that isna
+seen."
+
+"Marget," began Kate, not with a blush, but rather a richening of
+colour, "you have been awfully good to me, and have helped me in lots
+of ways, far more than you could dream of.  Do you know you 've made me
+almost good at times, with just enough badness to keep me still myself,
+as when I flounced out from the Free Kirk."
+
+[Illustration: "You have been awfully good to me."]
+
+Marget only smiled deprecation and affection, for her heart went out to
+this motherless, undisciplined girl, whom she respected, like a true
+Scot, because, although Kate had made her a friend, she was still a
+Carnegie; whom she loved, because, although Kate might be very
+provoking, she was honest to the core.
+
+"To-day," Kate resumed, after a pause, and speaking with an unusual
+nervousness, "I want your advice on a serious matter, which I must
+decide, and which . . . concerns other people as well as myself.  In
+fact, I would like to ask a question," and she paused to frame her case.
+
+It was a just testimony to Marget Howe that Kate never thought of
+pledging her to secrecy, for there are people whom to suspect of
+dishonour is a sin.
+
+"Suppose that a man . . . loved a woman, and that he was honourable,
+brave, gentle, true, in fact . . . a gentleman, and made her a proposal
+of marriage."
+
+Marget was looking before her with calm, attentive face, never once
+glancing at Kate to supplement what was told.
+
+"If . . . the girl accepted him, she would have a high position, and be
+rich, so that she could . . . save her . . . family from ruin, and
+keep . . . them in the house they loved."
+
+Marget listened with earnest intelligence.
+
+"She respects this man, and is grateful to him.  She is certain that he
+would be . . . kind to her, and give her everything she wanted.  And
+she thinks that he . . . would be happy."
+
+Marget waited for the end.
+
+"But she does not love him--that is all."
+
+As the tale was being told in, brief, clear, slow sentences, Marget's
+eyes became luminous, and her lips opened as one ready to speak from an
+inner knowledge.
+
+"Ye hev let me see a piece o' life, an' it is sacred, for naethin' on
+earth is sae near God as luve, an' a 'll no deny that ma woman's heart
+is wi' that honest gentleman, an' a' the mair gin he dinna win his
+prize.
+
+"But a man often comes tae his heicht through disappointment, and a
+woman, she hes tae learn that there is that which she hes the richt tae
+give for gratitude or friendship's sake, and that which can only be
+bestowed by the hand o' luve.
+
+"It will maybe help ye gin a' tell ye anither tale, an' though it be o'
+humble life, yet oor hearts are the same in the castle and the cottar's
+hoose, wi' the same cup o' sorrow tae drink an' the same croon o' joy
+tae wear, an' the same dividin' o' roads for oor trial.
+
+"There wes a man showed a wumman muckle kindness, and to her fouk also,
+an' he wes simple an' honest, an' for what he hed done an' because
+there wes nae evil in him she married him."
+
+"And what has happened?"  Kate, being half Highland, had less patience
+than Marget.
+
+"He hes been a gude man tae her through the dark an' through the licht,
+an' she hes tried tae repay him as a puir imperfect wumman can, an' her
+hert is warm to him, but there hes aye been ae thing wantin'--an' it
+hes been that wife's cross a' her life--there wes nae ither man, but
+her husband wesna, isna, canna be her ain a'thegither an' for ever--for
+the want o' luve--that luve o' luve that maks marriage."
+
+Her voice was laden with feeling, and it was plain that she had given
+of her own and deepest for the guiding of another.
+
+"Marget, I can never be grateful enough to you for what you have shown
+me this day."  As she passed Whinny with his bag of seed, he apologised
+for his wife.
+
+"A 'm dootin', Miss Carnegie, the gude-wife hes keepit ye ower lang in
+the gairden haiverin' awa' aboot the flooers an' her ither trokes.  But
+she 's michty prood for a' that aboot yir comin' up tae veesit us."
+
+Such was the second conference on Kate's affairs on that day.
+
+No place could be more thoroughly cleansed from vulgar curiosity than
+our Glen, or have a finer contempt for "clatters," but the atmosphere
+was electrical in the diffusion of information.  What happened at
+Burnbrae was known at the foot of Glen Urtach by evening, and the visit
+of spiritual consolation which Milton, in the days of his Pharisaism,
+paid to Jamie Soutar on his deathbed was the joy of every fireside in
+Drumtochty within twenty-four hours.  Perhaps it was not, therefore,
+remarkable that the arrival of Lord Kilspindie's groom at Tochty Lodge
+post haste with two letters on Saturday morning--one for the General
+from his Lordship, and one from his son for Miss Kate--should have been
+rightly interpreted, and the news spread with such rapidity that
+Hillocks--a man not distinguished above his fellows for tact--was able
+to inform Carmichael in the early afternoon that the marriage between
+the young lord and the "Miss" at Tochty was now practically arranged.
+
+"It's been aff and on a' winter, an' the second veesit tae the Castle
+settled it, but a 'm hearin' it wes the loss o' the Lodge brocht the
+fast offer this mornin'.  She 's an able wumman, an' cairried her gear
+tae the best market.  Ma certes," and Hillocks contemplated Kate's
+achievement with sympathetic admiration, "but she 'll set her place
+weel, an' haud her ain wi' the Duchess o' Athole."
+
+Carmichael ought perhaps to have taken his beating like a man, and said
+nothing to any one, but instead thereof he betook himself for
+consolation to Marget, a better counsellor in a crisis than Janet, with
+all her Celtic wiles, and Marget set him in the very seat where Kate
+had put her case.
+
+"It has, I suppose, been all a dream, and now I have awaked, but it
+was . . . a pleasant dream, and one finds the morning light a little
+chill.  One must just learn to forget, and be as if one had never . . .
+dreamed," but Carmichael looked at Marget wistfully.
+
+"Ye canna be the same again, for a' coont, gin ony man loves a wumman
+wi' a leal hert, whether she answer or no, or whether she even kens, he
+'s been the gainer, an' the harvest will be his for ever.
+
+"It hes seemed to me that nae luve is proved an' crooned for eternity
+onless the man hes forgotten himsel' an' is willin' tae live alane gin
+the wumman he luves sees prosperity.  He only is the perfect lover, and
+for him God hes the best gifts.
+
+"Yes, a 've seen it wi' ma ain eyes,"--for indeed this seemed to
+Carmichael an impossible height of self-abnegation,--"a man who loved
+an' served a wumman wi' his best an' at a great cost, an' yet for whom
+there cud be no reward but his ain luve."  Marget's face grew so
+beautiful as she told of the constancy of this unknown, unrewarded
+lover that Carmichael left without further speech, but with a purer
+vision of love than had ever before visited his soul.  Marget watched
+him go down the same path by which Kate went, and she said to herself,
+"Whether or no he win is in the will of God, but already luve hes given
+his blessin' tae man and maid."
+
+Kate did not go to kirk on Sunday, but lived all day in the woods, and
+in the evening she kissed her father and laid this answer in his
+hands:--
+
+
+DEAR LORD HAY,--You have done me the greatest honour any woman can
+receive at your hands, and for two days I have thought of nothing else.
+If it were enough that your wife should like and respect you, then I
+would at once accept you as my betrothed, but as it is plain to me that
+no woman ought to marry any one unless she also loves him, I am obliged
+to refuse one of the truest men I have ever met, for whom I have a very
+kindly place in my heart, and whose happiness I shall always
+desire.--Believe me, yours sincerely,
+
+KATE CARNEGIE.
+
+
+"You could do nothing else, Kit, and you have done right to close the
+matter . . . but I 'm sorry for Hay."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+LOVE IS LORD.
+
+It could not be said with a steady face that the proceedings of the
+Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown increased the gaiety of nations, and
+there might be persons--far left to themselves, of course--who would
+describe its members as wearisome ecclesiastics.  Carmichael himself,
+in a mood of gay irresponsibility, had once sketched a meeting of this
+reverend court, in which the names were skilfully adapted, after the
+ancient fashion, to represent character, and the incidents, if not
+_vero_, were certainly ben trovato, and had the article ready for
+transmission to _Ferrier's Journal_.  'A Sederunt' did not, however,
+add to the miseries of a most courteous editor, for Jenkins, having
+come up for an all-night conference, and having heard the article with
+unfeigned delight, pointed out that, if it were accepted, which
+Carmichael's experience did not certify, the writer would be run down
+within fourteen days, and that, so unreasonable a thing is human
+nature, some of the Presbytery might be less than pleased with their
+own likenesses.  "It 's in the waste-paper basket," Carmichael said
+next morning, which, as the author was twenty-five years of age, and
+not conspicuously modest, is a conclusive testimonial to the goodness
+of one Presbytery, and its hold on the affection of its members.
+
+Scots take their pleasures sadly, and no one can imagine from what arid
+soil they may not draw their nutriment, but it was not for motions of
+ponderous ambiguity and pragmatical points of order, that the minister
+of Kincairney rose before daybreak on a winter's morning, and worked
+his way to the nearest station, with the stars still overhead, and the
+snow below his feet, so that when the clerk made a sign to the
+Moderator punctually at one minute past eleven to "constitute the
+Presbytery," he might not be missing from his place.  It was the
+longing of a lonely man, across whose front door no visitor had come
+for weeks, for friendly company; of a weary minister, discouraged by
+narrow circumstances, monotonous routine, unexpected disappointments
+among his people, for a word of good cheer.  A cynical stranger might
+discover various stupidities, peculiarities, provincialisms in the
+Presbytery--he knew himself who had a temper, and who was a trifle
+sensitive about his rights--but this middle-aged, hard-working,
+simple-living man saw twenty faithful brethren--the elders did not
+count in this connection, for they did not understand--who stood beside
+him on occasion at the Holy Table, and gave him advice in his
+perplexities, and would bury him with honest regret when he died, and
+fight like wild cats that his widow and children should have their due.
+His toilsome journey was forgotten when Doctor Dowbiggin, in an
+interstice of motions, came across the floor and sat down beside him,
+and whispered confidentially, "Well, how are things going on at
+Kincairney?"--Dowbiggin really deserved his leadership--or when the
+clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, would pass his snuff-box
+across to him without a word, for the clerk had a way of handing his
+box, which, being interpreted, ran as follows:--"You suppose that I am
+lifted above all ordinary affairs in my clerkly isolation, and that I
+do not know what a solid work you are doing for God and man in the
+obscure parish of Kincairney, but you are wrong.  You have a very warm
+corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box."  And the said
+minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn
+of the road by his wife--sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter
+of a century's toiling and preaching--would enlarge on Doctor
+Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when
+they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him--incredible to
+our cynic--and say, "You see, Tom, more people than I know what a good
+work you are doing," and Tom would start his twenty-first lecture on
+the Ephesians next morning with new spirit.  Such is the power of
+comradeship, such is the thirst for sympathy; and indeed there is no
+dog either so big or so little that it does not appreciate a pat, and
+go down the street afterwards with better heart.
+
+The Presbytery had always a tender regard for the Free Kirk of
+Drumtochty, and happened to treat Carmichael with much favour.  When
+the "call" to him was signed at once by every member of the
+congregation, the clerk--who had been obliged to summon Donald Menzies
+from Gaelic by the intimation that Drumtochty was by the law of the
+Church "uni-lingual, and that all proceedings must be conducted in the
+English language"--arose and declared that "such unanimous attention to
+their ecclesiastical duties was unexampled in his experience;" and when
+at Carmichael's ordination a certain certificate was wanting, the
+clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the
+court should anticipate its arrival, dealing with the matter
+"proleptically," and the court saw in the very word another proof of
+the clerk's masterly official genius.  It was he also--expressing the
+mind of the Presbytery--who proposed that the Court should send
+Carmichael as a commissioner to the General Assembly in the first year
+of his ministry, and took occasion to remark that Mr. Carmichael,
+according to "reliable information at his disposal," was rendering
+important service to the Free Church in his sphere at Drumtochty.
+Carmichael was very happy in those days, and was so petted by his
+ecclesiastical superiors that he never missed a meeting of court, where
+he either sat in a demure silence, which commended him greatly to the
+old men, or conversed with his friends on a back bench about general
+affairs.
+
+It gave him, therefore, a shock to sit with his brethren in the month
+of June--when the walk through the woods had been a joy, and Muirtown
+lay at her fairest, and the sunshine filled the court-room, and every
+man had a summer air, and Doctor Dowbiggin actually wore a rose in his
+coat--and to discover that he himself was sick of his old friends, of
+his work, of his people, of himself.  The reasons were obvious.  Was it
+not a sin that thirty Christian men should be cooped up in a room
+passing schedules when the summer was young and fresh upon the land?
+Could any one of the Rabbi's boys sit in that room and see his
+accustomed place--a corner next the wall on a back seat--empty, and not
+be cast down?  Besides, does not a minister's year begin in September
+and end in July, and before it closes is not the minister at his
+lowest, having given away himself for eleven months?  "One begins to
+weary for a rest," he whispered to Kincairney, and that worthy man
+explained that he and his wife had been planning their triennial
+holiday, and hoped to have a fortnight in Carnoustie.  Carmichael
+realised his hypocrisy in that instant, for he knew perfectly that he
+had lost touch with life because of a hopeless love, and a proud face
+he had not seen a year ago.  He flung himself out of the court with
+such impatience that the clerk stayed his hand in the midst of the
+sacred words _pro re nata_, and Kincairney mentioned to his wife in the
+evening that Carmichael had never got over Doctor Saunderson's death.
+
+Carmichael wandered up one of the meadows which are the glory of
+Muirtown, and sat down by the queen of Scottish rivers, which runs deep
+and swift, clean and bright, from Loch Tay to the sea, between wooded
+banks and overhanging trees, past cornfields and ancient castles; a
+river for him who swims, or rows, or fishes, or dreams, in which, if
+such were to be his fate, a man might ask to be drowned.  Opposite him
+began the woods of Muirtown Castle, and he tried to be glad that
+Kate . . . Miss Carnegie would one day be their mistress: the formal
+announcement of her engagement, he had heard, was to be made next week,
+on Lord Kilspindie's birthday.  A distant whistle came on the clear air
+from Muirtown station, where . . . and all this turmoil of hope and
+fear, love and despair, had been packed into a few months.  There is a
+bend in the river where he sits, and the salmon fishers have dropped
+their nets, and are now dragging them to the bank.  With a thrill of
+sympathy Carmichael watched the fish struggling in the meshes, and his
+heart leapt when, through some mishandling, one escaped with a flash of
+silver and plunged into the river.  He had also been caught quite
+suddenly in the joyous current of his life and held in bonds.  Why
+should he not make a bold plunge for freedom, which he could never have
+with the Lodge at his doors, with the Castle only twelve miles away?
+He had been asked in his student days to go to the north-west of Canada
+and take charge of a parish fifty miles square.  The idea had for a
+little fired his imagination, and then faded before other ambitions.
+It revived with power on the banks of that joyful, forceful river, and
+he saw himself beginning life again on the open prairie lands--riding,
+camping, shooting, preaching--a free man and an apostle to the Scottish
+Dispersion.
+
+With this bracing resolution, that seemed a call of God to deliver him
+from bondage, came a longing to visit Kilbogie Manse and the Rabbi's
+grave.  It was a journey of expiation, for Carmichael followed the road
+the Rabbi walked with the hand of death upon him after that lamentable
+Presbytery, and he marked the hills where the old man must have stood
+and fought for breath.  He could see Mains, where he had gone with
+Doctor Saunderson to the exposition, and he passed the spot where the
+Rabbi had taken farewell of George Pitillo in a figure.  What learning,
+and simplicity, and unselfishness, and honesty, and affection were
+mingled in the character of the Rabbi!  What skill, and courage, and
+tenderness, and self-sacrifice, and humility there had been also in
+William MacLure, who had just died!  Carmichael dwelt on the likeness
+and unlikeness of the two men, who had each loved the highest he knew
+and served his generation according to the will of God, till he found
+himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with
+the Rabbi in his long vigils.  It was a singular means of grace to have
+known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and
+impressionable.  A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael.  He lifted
+his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship
+he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any
+intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see
+the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way.  The district was full of the
+Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any
+moment--buried in a book and proceeding steadily in the wrong
+direction.  The Rabbi surely was not dead, and Carmichael drifted into
+that dear world of romance where what we desire comes to pass, and
+facts count for nothing.  This was how the Idyll went.  From the moment
+of the reconciliation the Rabbi's disease began to abate in a quite
+unheard of fashion--love wrought a miracle--and with Kate's nursing and
+his he speedily recovered.  Things came right between Kate and himself
+as they shared their task of love, and so . . . of course--it took
+place last month--and now he was going to carry off the Rabbi, who
+somehow had not come to the Presbytery, to Drumtochty, where his bride
+would meet them both beneath the laburnum arch at the gate.  He would
+be cunning as he approached the door of Kilbogie Manse, and walk on the
+grass border lest the Rabbi, poring over some Father, should hear the
+crunch of the gravel--he did know his footstep--and so he would take
+the old man by surprise.  Alas! he need not take such care, for the
+walk was now as the border with grass, and the gate was lying open, and
+the dead house stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and knew him
+not.  The key was in the door, and he crossed the threshold once
+more--no need to beware of parcels on the floor now--and turned to the
+familiar room.  The shelves had been taken down, but he could trace
+their lines on the ancient discoloured paper that was now revealed for
+the first time; there, where a new shutter was resting against the
+wall, used to stand the "seat of the fathers," and exactly in the midst
+of that heap of straw the Rabbi had his chair. . . .
+
+"Ye 've come tae see hoo we 're getting on wi' the repairs"--it was the
+joiner of Kilbogie; "it's no a licht job, for there 's nae doot the
+hoose hes been awfu' negleckit.  The Doctor wes a terrible scholar, but
+he wudna hae kent that the slates were aff the roof till the drap cam
+intae his bed.
+
+"Ou aye, the manse is tae be papered an' pented for the new minister;
+a' cud show ye the papers; juist as ye please; they're verra tasty an'
+showy.  He's tae be married at once, a 'm hearin', an' this is tae be
+the drawin'-room; he wes here ten days syne--the day after he wes
+eleckit: they 're aye in a hurry when they 're engaged--an' seleckit a
+sma' room upstairs for his study; he didna think he wud need as lairge
+a room for bukes, an' he thocht the auld study wud dae fine for
+pairties.
+
+"There 's juist ae room feenished, an' ye micht like tae see the paper
+on 't; it's a yellow rose on a licht blue grund; a 'm jidgin' it wes
+the Doctor's ain room.  Weel, it's a gude lang wy tae Drumtochty, an'
+ye 'll no be wantin' tae pit aff time, a' daresay."
+
+It was a terrible douche of prose, and Carmichael was still shivering
+when he reached the kindly shade of Tochty woods.  He had seen the
+successful candidate at the Presbytery arranging about his "trial
+discourses" with the clerk--who regarded him dubiously--and he had
+heard some story about his being a "popular hand," and bewitching the
+young people with a sermon on the "good fight," with four heads "the
+soldier," "the battle-field," "the battle," and "the crown"--each with
+an illustration, an anecdote, and a verse of poetry.  Carmichael
+recognised the type, and already saw the new minister of Kilbogie, smug
+and self-satisfied, handing round cream and sugar in the Rabbi's old
+study, while his wife, a stout young woman in gay clothing, pours tea
+from a pot of florid design, and bearing a blazing marriage
+inscription.  There would be a _soirée_ in the kirk, where the Rabbi
+had opened the mysteries of God, and his successor would explain how
+unworthy he felt to follow Doctor Saunderson, and how he was going to
+reorganise the congregation, and there would be many jocose allusions
+to his coming marriage; but Carmichael would by that time have left the
+district.
+
+No one can walk a mile in Tochty woods, where there are little glades
+of mossy turf, and banks of violets and geraniums, and gentle creatures
+on ground and branch, and cool shade from the summer sun, and the sound
+of running water by your side, without being sweetened and comforted.
+Bitter thoughts and cynical criticisms, as well as vain regrets and
+peevish complaints, fell away from Carmichael's soul, and gave place to
+a gentle melancholy.  He came to the heart of the wood, where was the
+lovers' grave, and the place seemed to invite his company.  A sense of
+the tears of things came over him, and he sat down by the river-side to
+meditate.  It was two hundred years and more since the lassies died,
+who were never wedded, and for him there was not even to be love.  The
+ages were linked together by a long tragedy of disappointment and
+vanity, but the Tochty ran now as in the former days.  What was any
+human life but a drop in the river that flowed without ceasing to the
+unknown sea?  What could any one do but yield himself to necessity, and
+summon his courage to endure?  Then at the singing of a bird his mood
+lightened and was changed, as if he had heard the Evangel.  God was
+over all, and life was immortal, and he could not be wrong who did the
+will of God.  After a day of conflict, peace came to his soul, and in
+the soft light of the setting sun he rose to go home.
+
+[Illustration: "He sat down by the river-side to meditate."]
+
+"Miss Carnegie . . . I did not know you were here . . .  I thought you
+were in London," and Carmichael stood before Kate in great confusion.
+
+"Nor did I see you behind that tree"--Kate herself was startled.  "Yes,
+the General and I have been visiting some old friends, and only came
+home an hour ago.
+
+"Do you know"--Kate was herself again--"the first thing I do on arrival
+is to make a pilgrimage to this place.  Half an hour here banishes the
+dust of a day's journey and of . . .
+
+"Besides, I don't know whether you have heard"--Kate spoke
+hurriedly--"that it is now settled that I . . . we will be leaving the
+Lodge soon, and one wants to have as much as possible of the old place
+in the time remaining."
+
+She gave him this opportunity in kindness, as it seemed, and he
+reproached himself because he did not offer his congratulations.
+
+"You will, I . . . the people hope, come often here, Miss Carnegie, and
+not cast off Drumtochty, although the Lodge be not your home.  You will
+always have a place in the hearts of the Glen.  Marjorie will never be
+grateful enough for your readings," which was bravely said.
+
+"Do you think that I can ever forget the Glen and my . . . friends
+here?  Not while I live; the Carnegies have their own faults, but
+ingratitude is not one.  Nor the dear Rabbi's grave."  Then there was
+silence, which Carmichael found very trying--they had been so near that
+day in Kilbogie Manse, with only the Rabbi, who loved them both,
+between; but now, although they stood face to face, there was a gulf
+dividing them.
+
+"It may not be easy for me to visit Drumtochty often, for you know
+there has been a change . . . in our circumstances, and one must suit
+oneself to it."
+
+Carmichael flushed uneasily, and Kate supposed that he was sympathising
+with their losses.
+
+"I hope to be a busy woman soon, with lots of work, and I shall use
+every one of my little scraps of knowledge.  How do you think I shall
+acquit myself in my new role?"
+
+It was a little hard on Carmichael, who was thinking of a countess,
+while Kate meant a governess.
+
+"You need not ask me how I think you will do as . . . in any position,
+and I . . . wish you every success, and . . . (with a visible effort)
+happiness."
+
+He spoke so stiffly that Kate sought about for reasons, and could only
+remember their quarrel and imagine he retained a grudge--which she
+thought was rather ungenerous.
+
+"It occurs to me that one man ought to be thankful when we depart, for
+then he will be able to call Queen Mary names every Sunday without a
+misguided Jacobite girl dropping in to create a disturbance."
+
+"Drumtochty will have to form its own opinion of poor Mary without my
+aid," and Carmichael smiled sadly in pardon of the past, "for it is
+likely, although no one knows this in the Glen, that I shall soon be
+far away."
+
+"Leaving Drumtochty?  What will Marjorie do without you, and Dr.
+Davidson, and . . . all the people?"  Then, remembering Janet's gossip,
+and her voice freezing, "I suppose you have got a better or more
+convenient living.  The Glen is certainly rather inaccessible."
+
+"Have I done anything, Miss Carnegie, to justify you in thinking that I
+would leave the Glen, which has been so good to me, for . . . worldly
+reasons?  There is enough to support an unmarried man, and I am not
+likely to . . . to marry," said Carmichael, bitterly; "but there are
+times when it is better for a man to change his whole surroundings and
+make a new life."
+
+It was clear that the Bailie's daughter was a romance of Janet's Celtic
+imagination, and Kate's manner softened.
+
+"The Rabbi's death and . . . your difference of opinion--something
+about doctrine, was n't it? we were from home--must have been a great
+trial, and, as there was no opportunity before, let me say how much we
+sympathised with you and . . . thought of you.
+
+"Do you think, however, Mr. Carmichael"--she spoke with hesitation, but
+much kindness--"that you ought to fling up your work here on that
+account?  Would not the Rabbi himself have wished you to stick to your
+post? . . . and all your friends would like to think you had been . . .
+brave."
+
+"You are cruel, Miss Carnegie; you try me beyond what I can endure,
+although I shall be ashamed to-night for what I am to say.  Do you not
+know or guess that it is your . . . on account of you, I mean, that I
+must leave Drumtochty?"
+
+"On account of me?"  Kate looked at him in unaffected amazement.
+
+"Are you blind, or is it that you could not suspect me of such
+presumption?  Had you no idea that night in Dr. Davidson's
+drawing-room?  Have you never seen that I . . .  Kate--I will say it
+once to your face as I say it every hour to myself--you won my heart in
+an instant on Muirtown Station, and will hold it till I die.
+
+"Do not speak till I be done, and then order me from your presence as I
+deserve, I know that it is unworthy of a gentleman, and . . . a
+minister of Christ to say such things to the betrothed of another man;
+only one minute more"--for Kate had started as if in anger--"I know
+also that if I were stronger I could go on living as before, and meet
+you from time to time when you came from the Castle with your husband,
+and never allow myself to think of Lady Hay as I felt to Miss Carnegie.
+But I am afraid of myself, and . . . this is the last time we shall
+meet, Miss Carnegie.  Forgive me for my love, and believe that one man
+will ever remember and . . . pray for you."
+
+Carmichael bowed low, the last sunshine of the evening playing on his
+fair hair, and turned to go.
+
+"One word, if you please," said Kate, and they looked into one
+another's eyes, the blue and brown, seeing many things that cannot be
+written.  "You may be forgiven for . . . loving me, because you could
+not help that"--this with a very roguish look, our Kate all over--"and
+I suppose you must be forgiven for listening to foolish gossip, since
+people will tell lies"--this with a stamp of the foot, our Kate
+again--"but I shall never forgive you if you leave me, never"--this was
+a new Kate, like to the opening of a flower.
+
+"Why?  Tell me plainly," and in the silence Carmichael heard a trout
+leap in the river.
+
+"Because I love you."
+
+The Tochty water sang a pleasant song, and the sun set gloriously
+behind Ben Urtach.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS***
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+<body>
+<h1 align="center">The Project Gutenberg eBook, Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers, by Ian
+Maclaren</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers</p>
+<p>Author: Ian Maclaren</p>
+<p>Release Date: January 19, 2007  [eBook #20399]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS***</p>
+<br><br><center><h3>E-text prepared by Al Haines</h3></center><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+KATE CARNEGIE
+</H1>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+AND
+</H3>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+THOSE MINISTERS.
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+BY
+</H4>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IAN MACLAREN.
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H4 ALIGN="center">
+TORONTO:
+<BR>
+FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY,
+<BR>
+140-142 Yonge Street.
+<BR>
+1896.
+</H4>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H5 ALIGN="center">
+Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada,
+<BR>
+in the year 1896, by HODDER &amp; STOUGHTON,
+<BR>
+at the Department of Agriculture.
+</H5>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TO
+<BR>
+A CERTAIN BROTHERHOOD
+<BR><BR>
+Faithful in Criticism
+<BR>
+Loyal in Affection
+<BR>
+Tender in Trouble
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+CONTENTS.
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<CENTER>
+
+<TABLE WIDTH="80%">
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">CHAPTER</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">&nbsp;</TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">I.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap01">PANDEMONIUM</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">II.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap02">PEACE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">III.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap03">A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap04">A SECRET CHAMBER</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">V.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap05">CONCERNING BESOMS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap06">A PLEASAUNCE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap07">A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">VIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap08">A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">IX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap09">A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">X.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap10">A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap11">IN THE GLOAMING</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap12">KILBOGIE MANSE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap13">PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap14">A MODERATE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap15">JOINT POTENTATES</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap16">DRIED ROSE LEAVES</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap17">SMOULDERING FIRES</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XVIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap18">LOVE SICKNESS</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XIX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap19">THE FEAR OF GOD</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XX.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap20">THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXI.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap21">LIGHT AT EVENTIDE</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap22">WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIII.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap23">MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+<TR>
+<TD ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top">XXIV.&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD>
+<TD ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top">
+<A HREF="#chap24">LOVE IS LORD</A></TD>
+</TR>
+
+</TABLE>
+
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<H2 ALIGN="center">
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+</H2>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-010">
+Carmichael had taken his Turn
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-023">
+"Many a Ploy we had together"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-029">
+Peter was standing in his Favourite Attitude
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-038">
+"I am the General's Daughter"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-042">
+Janet Macpherson was waiting in the Deep Doorway
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-050">
+"It's a Difficult Key to turn"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-059">
+Kate in her Favourite Position
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-072">
+One Gardener who&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. works for Love's Sake
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-079">
+Among the Great Trees
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-096">
+"Mr. Carmichael, you have much Cause for Thankfulness"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-108">
+Carmichael sang a Solo
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-121">
+"Here iss your Silver Piece"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-128">
+"I should call it a Deliberate&mdash;"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-146">
+"She had an Unfortunate Tendency to meddle with my Books"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-153">
+Mother Church cast her Spell over his Imagination
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-166">
+"Ye'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-171">
+A Tall, Bony, Forbidding Woman
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-179">
+Gathering her Berry Harvest
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-188">
+He was a Mere Wisp of a Man
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-204">
+"Will you let me walk with you for a Little?"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-210">
+"Private Capaucity"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-215">
+Standing with a Half-Dried Dish in her Hand
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-226">
+The Old Man escorted her Ladyship
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-241">
+Would gossip with him by the Hour
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-254">
+The Driver stops to exchange Views
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-257">
+Two Tramps held Conference
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-280">
+Wrestling in Darkness of Soul
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-292">
+His Attitude for Exposition
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-309">
+"Ay, he's in, but ye canna see him"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-322">
+"To put Flowers on his Grave"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-338">
+"You have been awfully Good to me"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<H3>
+<A HREF="#img-353">
+"He sat down by the River-side to meditate"
+</A>
+</H3>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap01"></A>
+<H1 ALIGN="center">
+KATE CARNEGIE.
+</H1>
+
+<BR>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER I.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+PANDEMONIUM.
+</H3>
+
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-001.jpg" ALT="dropcap-i" BORDER="0" WIDTH="212" HEIGHT="269">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+t was the morning before the Twelfth, years ago, and nothing like unto
+Muirtown Station could have been found in all the travelling world.
+For Muirtown, as everybody knows, is the centre which receives the
+southern immigrants in autumn, and distributes them, with all their
+belongings of servants, horses, dogs, and luggage, over the north
+country from Athole to Sutherland.  All night, express trains, whose
+ordinary formation had been reinforced by horse boxes, carriage trucks,
+saloons and luggage vans, drawn by two engines, and pushed up inclines
+by a third, had been careering along the three iron trunk roads that
+run from London to the North.  Four hours ago they had forced the
+border, that used to be more jealously guarded, and had begun to
+converge on their terminus.  Passengers, awakened by the caller air and
+looking out still half asleep, miss the undisciplined hedgerows and
+many-shaped patches of pasture, the warm brick homesteads and shaded
+ponds of the south.  Square fields cultivated up to a foot of the stone
+dykes or wire-fencing, the strong grey-stone farm-houses, the
+swift-running burns, and the never-distant hills, brace the mind.
+Local passengers come in with deliberation, whose austere faces condemn
+the luxurious disorder of night travel, and challenge the defence of
+Arminian doctrine.  A voice shouts "Carstairs Junction," with a command
+of the letter <I>r</I>, which is the bequest of an unconquerable past, and
+inspires one with the hope of some day hearing a freeborn Scot say
+"Auchterarder."  The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat
+holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn,
+between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the
+foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile
+plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul
+counts the ten hours' dust and heat but a slight price for the sight of
+the Scottish Rhine flowing deep, clear, and swift by the foot of its
+wooded hills, and the "Fair City" in the heart of her meadows.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you see the last wreath of mist floating off the summit of the
+hill, and the silver sheen of the river against the green of the woods?
+Quick, dad," and the General, accustomed to obey, stood up beside Kate
+for the brief glimpse between the tunnel and a prison.  Yet they had
+seen the snows of the Himalayas, and the great river that runs through
+the plains of India.  But it is so with Scottish folk that they may
+have lived opposite the Jungfrau at Mürren, and walked among the big
+trees of the Yosemite Valley, and watched the blood-red afterglow on
+the Pyramids, and yet will value a sunset behind the Cuchullin hills,
+and the Pass of the Trossachs, and the mist shot through with light on
+the sides of Ben Nevis, and the Tay at Dunkeld&mdash;just above the
+bridge&mdash;better guerdon for their eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, lassie"&mdash;the other people had left at Stirling, and the General
+fell back upon the past&mdash;"there 's just one bonnier river, and that's
+the Tochty at a bend below the Lodge, as we shall see it, please God,
+this evening."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tickets," broke in a voice with authority.  "This is no the station,
+an' ye 'll hae to wait till the first diveesion o' yir train is
+emptied.  Kildrummie?  Ye change, of coorse, but yir branch 'll hae a
+lang wait the day.  It 'll be an awfu' fecht wi' the Hielant train.
+Muirtown platform 'll be worth seein'; it 'll juist be michty," and the
+collector departed, smacking his lips in prospect of the fray.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Upon my word," said the General, taken aback for a moment by the easy
+manners of his countryman, but rejoicing in every new assurance of
+home, "our people are no blate."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is n't it delicious to be where character has not been worn smooth by
+centuries of oppression, but where each man is himself?  Conversation
+has salt here, and tastes in the mouth.  We 've just heard two men
+speak this morning, and each face is bitten into my memory.  Now our
+turn has come," and the train wound itself in at last.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porters, averaging six feet and with stentorian voices, were driving
+back the mixed multitude in order to afford foothold for the new
+arrivals on that marvellous landing place, which in those days served
+for all the trains which came in and all that went out, both north and
+south.  One man tears open the door of a first with commanding gesture.
+"A' change and hurry up.  Na, na," rejecting the offer of a private
+engagement; "we hev nae time for that trade the day.  Ye maun cairry
+yir bags yersels; the dogs and boxes 'll tak us a' oor time."  He
+unlocks an under compartment and drags out a pair of pointers, who fawn
+upon him obsequiously in gratitude for their release.  "Doon wi' ye,"
+as one to whom duty denies the ordinary courtesies of life, and he
+fastens them to the base of an iron pillar.  Deserted immediately by
+their deliverer, the pointers made overtures to two elderly ladies,
+standing bewildered in the crush, to be repulsed with umbrellas, and
+then sit down upon their tails in despair.  Their forlorn condition,
+left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a
+slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their
+voices in melodious concert, to the scandal of the two females, who
+cannot escape the neighbourhood, and regard the pointers with horror.
+Distant friends, also in bonds and distress of mind, feel comforted and
+join cheerfully, while a large black retriever, who had foolishly
+attempted to obstruct a luggage barrow with his tail, breaks in with a
+high solo.  Two collies, their tempers irritated by obstacles as they
+follow their masters, who had been taking their morning in the
+second-class refreshment room, fall out by the way, and obtain as by
+magic a clear space in which to settle details; while a fox-terrier,
+escaping from his anxious mistress, has mounted a pile of boxes and
+gives a general challenge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Porters fling open packed luggage vans with a swing, setting free a
+cataract of portmanteaus, boxes, hampers, baskets, which pours across
+the platform for yards, led by a frolicsome black leather valise, whose
+anxious owner has fought her adventurous way to the van for the purpose
+of explaining to a phlegmatic Scot that he would know it by a broken
+strap, and must lift it out gently, for it contained breakables.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It can gang itsel, that ane," as the afflicted woman followed its
+reckless progress with a wail.  "Sall, if they were a' as clever on
+their feet as yon box there wud be less tribble," and with two
+assistants he falls upon the congested mass within.  They perform
+prodigies of strength, handling huge trunks that ought to have filled
+some woman with repentance as if they were Gladstone bags, and light
+weights as if they were paper parcels.  With unerring scent they detect
+the latest label among the remains of past history, and the air
+resounds with "Hielant train," "Aiberdeen fast," "Aiberdeen slow,"
+"Muirtown"&mdash;this with indifference&mdash;and at a time "Dunleith," and once
+"Kildrummie," with much contempt.  By this time stacks of baggage of
+varying size have been erected, the largest of which is a pyramid in
+shape, with a very uncertain apex.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Male passengers&mdash;heads of families and new to Muirtown&mdash;hover anxiously
+round the outskirts, and goaded on by female commands, rush into the
+heart of the fray for the purpose of claiming a piece of luggage, which
+turns out to be some other person's, and retire hastily after a
+fair-sized portmanteau descends on their toes, and the sharp edge of a
+trunk takes them in the small of the back.  Footmen with gloves and
+superior airs make gentlemanly efforts to collect the family luggage,
+and are rewarded by having some hopelessly vulgar tin boxes, heavily
+roped, deposited among its initialled glory.  One elderly female who
+had been wise to choose some other day to revisit her native town,
+discovers her basket flung up against a pillar, like wreckage from a
+storm, and settles herself down upon it with a sigh of relief.  She
+remains unmoved amid the turmoil, save when a passing gun-case tips her
+bonnet to one side, giving her a very rakish air, and a good-natured
+retriever on a neighbouring box is so much taken with her appearance
+that he offers her a friendly caress.  Restless people&mdash;who remember
+that their train ought to have left half an hour ago, and cannot
+realise that all bonds are loosed on the eleventh&mdash;fasten on any man in
+a uniform, and suffer many rebuffs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's nae use asking me," answers a guard, coming off duty and
+pushing his way through the crowd as one accustomed to such spectacles;
+"a 'm juist in frae Carlisle; get haud o' a porter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Cupar Angus?"&mdash;this from the porter&mdash;"that's the Aiberdeen slow; it's
+no made up yet, and little chance o't till the express an' the Hielant
+be aff.  Whar 'll it start frae?" breaking away; "forrit, a' tell ye,
+forrit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Fathers of families, left on guard and misled by a sudden movement
+"forrit," rush to the waiting-room and bring out, for the third time,
+the whole expedition, to escort them back again with shame.  Barrows
+with towering piles of luggage are pushed through the human mass by two
+porters, who allow their engine to make its own way with much
+confidence, condescending only at a time to shout, "A' say, hey, oot o'
+there," and treating any testy complaint with the silent contempt of a
+drayman for a costermonger.  Old hands, who have fed at their leisure
+in callous indifference to all alarms, lounge about in great content,
+and a group of sheep farmers, having endeavoured in vain, after one
+tasting, to settle the merits of a new dip, take a glance in the
+"Hielant" quarter, and adjourn the conference once more to the
+refreshment-room.  Groups of sportsmen discuss the prospects of
+to-morrow in detail, and tell stories of ancient twelfths, while
+chieftains from London, in full Highland dress, are painfully conscious
+of the whiteness of their legs.  A handful of preposterous people who
+persist in going south when the world has its face northwards, threaten
+to complain to headquarters if they are not sent away, and an official
+with a loud voice and a subtle gift of humour intimates that a train is
+about to leave for Dundee.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During this time wonderful manoeuvres have been executed on the lines
+of rail opposite the platform.  Trains have left with all the air of a
+departure and disappeared round the curve outside the station, only to
+return in fragments.  Half a dozen carriages pass without an engine, as
+if they had started on their own account, break vans that one saw
+presiding over expresses stand forsaken, a long procession of horse
+boxes rattle through, and a saloon carriage, with people, is so much in
+evidence that the name of an English Duke is freely mentioned, and
+every new passage relieves the tedium of the waiting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Out of all this confusion trains begin to grow and take shape, and one,
+with green carriages, looks so complete that a rumour spreads that the
+Hielant train has been made up and may appear any minute in its place.
+The sunshine beating through the glass roof, the heat of travel, the
+dust of the station, the moving carriages with their various colours,
+the shouts of railway officials, the recurring panics of fussy
+passengers, begin to affect the nerves.  Conversation becomes broken,
+porters are beset on every side with questions they cannot answer,
+rushes are made on any empty carriages within reach, a child is knocked
+down and cries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Over all this excitement and confusion one man is presiding, untiring,
+forceful, ubiquitous&mdash;a sturdy man, somewhere about five feet ten,
+whose lungs are brass and nerves fine steel wire.  He is dressed, as to
+his body, in brown corduroy trousers, a blue jacket and waistcoat with
+shining brass buttons, a grey flannel shirt, and a silver-braided cap,
+which, as time passes, he thrusts further back on his head till its
+peak stands at last almost erect, a crest seen high above the conflict.
+As to the soul of him, this man is clothed with resolution, courage,
+authority, and an infectious enthusiasm.  He is the brain and will of
+the whole organism, its driving power.  Drivers lean out of their
+engines, one hand on the steam throttle, their eyes fixed on this man;
+if he waves his hands, trains move; if he holds them up, trains halt.
+Strings of carriages out in the open are carrying out his plans, and
+the porters toil like maniacs to meet his commands.  Piles of luggage
+disappear as he directs the attack, and his scouts capture isolated
+boxes hidden among the people.  Every horse box has a place in his
+memory, and he has calculated how many carriages would clear the north
+traffic; he carries the destination of families in his head, and has
+made arrangements for their comfort.  "Soon ready now, sir," as he
+passed swiftly down to receive the last southerner, "and a second
+compartment reserved for you," till people watched for him, and the
+sound of his voice, "forrit wi' the Hielant luggage," inspired
+bewildered tourists with confidence, and became an argument for
+Providence.  There is a general movement towards the northern end of
+the station; five barrows, whose luggage swings dangerously and has to
+be held on, pass in procession; dogs are collected and trailed along in
+bundles; families pick up their bags and press after their luggage,
+cheered to recognise a familiar piece peeping out from strange goods; a
+bell is rung with insistence.  The Aberdeen express leaves&mdash;its
+passengers regarding the platform with pity&mdash;and the guard of the last
+van slamming his door in triumph.  The great man concentrates his force
+with a wave of his hand for the <I>tour de force</I> of the year, the
+despatch of the Hielant train.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The southern end of the platform is now deserted&mdash;the London express
+departed half an hour ago with thirteen passengers, very crestfallen
+and envious&mdash;and across the open centre porters hustle barrows at
+headlong speed, with neglected pieces of luggage.  Along the edge of
+the Highland platform there stretches a solid mass of life,
+close-packed, motionless, silent, composed of tourists, dogs, families,
+lords, dogs, sheep farmers, keepers, clericals, dogs, footmen,
+commercials, ladies' maids, grooms, dogs, waiting for the empty train
+that, after deploying hither and thither, picking up some trifle, a
+horse box or a duke's saloon, at every new raid, is now backing slowly
+in for its freight.  The expectant crowd has ceased from conversation,
+sporting or otherwise; respectable elderly gentlemen brace themselves
+for the scramble, and examine their nearest neighbours suspiciously;
+heads of families gather their belongings round them by signs and
+explain in a whisper how to act; one female tourist&mdash;of a certain age
+and severe aspect&mdash;refreshes her memory as to the best window for the
+view of Killiecrankie.  The luggage has been piled in huge masses at
+each end of the siding; the porters rest themselves against it, taking
+off their caps, and wiping their foreheads with handkerchiefs of many
+colours and uses.  It is the stillness before the last charge; beyond
+the outermost luggage an arm is seen waving, and the long coil of
+carriages begins to twist into the station.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+People who know their ancient Muirtown well, and have taken part in
+this day of days, will remember a harbour of refuge beside the
+book-stall, protected by the buffers of the Highland siding on one side
+and a breakwater of luggage on the other, and persons within this
+shelter could see the storming of the train to great advantage.
+Carmichael, the young Free Kirk minister of Drumtochty, who had been
+tasting the civilisation of Muirtown overnight and was waiting for the
+Dunleith train, leant against the back of the bookstall, watching the
+scene with frank, boyish interest.  Rather under six feet in height, he
+passed for more, because he stood so straight and looked so slim, for
+his limbs were as slender as a woman's, while women (in Muirtown) had
+envied his hands and feet.  But in chest measure he was only two inches
+behind Saunders Baxter, the grieve of Drumsheugh, who was the standard
+of manhood by whom all others were tried and (mostly) condemned in
+Drumtochty.  Chancing to come upon Saunders putting the stone one day
+with the bothy lads, Carmichael had taken his turn, with the result
+that his stone lay foremost in the final heat by an inch exactly.
+MacLure saw them kneeling together to measure, the Free Kirk minister
+and the ploughmen all in a bunch, and went on his way rejoicing to tell
+the Free Kirk folk that their new minister was a man of his hands.  His
+hair was fair, just touched with gold, and he wore it rather long, so
+that in the excitement of preaching a lock sometimes fell down on his
+forehead, which he would throw back with a toss of his head&mdash;a gesture
+Mrs. Macfadyen, our critic, thought very taking.  His dark blue eyes
+used to enlarge with passion in the Sacrament and grow so tender, the
+healthy tan disappeared and left his cheeks so white, that the mothers
+were terrified lest he should die early, and sent offerings of cream on
+Monday morning.  For though his name was Carmichael, he had Celtic
+blood in him, and was full of all kinds of emotion, but mostly those
+that were brave and pure and true.  He had done well at the University,
+and was inclined to be philosophical, for he knew little of himself and
+nothing of the world.  There were times when he allowed himself to be
+supercilious and sarcastic; but it was not for an occasional jingle of
+cleverness the people loved him, or, for that matter, any other man.
+It was his humanity that won their hearts, and this he had partly from
+his mother, partly from his training.  Through a kind providence and
+his mother's countryness, he had been brought up among animals&mdash;birds,
+mice, dormice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, cattle, horses, till he knew
+all their ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi,
+to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother
+Wolf.  So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and
+little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or
+bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a
+little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper,
+and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael.  The dumb
+animals had an instinct about this young fellow, and would make
+overtures to him that were a certificate for any situation requiring
+character.  Horses by the wayside neighed at his approach, and
+stretched out their velvet muzzles to be stroked.  Dogs insisted upon
+sitting on his knees, unless quite prevented by their size, and then
+they put their paws on his chest.  Hillocks was utterly scandalised by
+his collie's familiarity with the minister, and brought him to his
+senses by the application of a boot, but Carmichael waived all
+apologies.  "Rover and I made friends two days ago on the road, and my
+clothes will take no injury."  And indeed they could not, for
+Carmichael, except on Sundays and at funerals, wore a soft hat and suit
+of threadbare tweeds, on which a microscopist could have found traces
+of a peat bog, moss of dykes, the scale of a trout, and a tiny bit of
+heather.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-010"></A>
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-010.jpg" ALT="Carmichael had taken his turn." BORDER="2" WIDTH="327" HEIGHT="444">
+<H3 CLASS="h3left" STYLE="width: 327px">
+Carmichael had taken his turn.
+</H3>
+<P>
+His usual fortune befell him that day in Muirtown Station, for two
+retrievers, worming their way through the luggage, reached him, and
+made known their wants.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thirsty?  I believe you.  All the way from England, and heat enough to
+roast you alive.  I 've got no dish, else I 'd soon get water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Inverness?  Poor chaps, that's too far to go with your tongues like a
+lime-kiln.  Down, good dogs; I 'll be back in a minute."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+You can have no idea, unless you have tried it, how much water a soft
+clerical hat can hold&mdash;if you turn up the edges and bash down the
+inside with your fist, and fill the space to the brim.  But it is
+difficult to convey such a vessel with undiminished content through a
+crowd, and altogether impossible to lift one's eyes.  Carmichael was
+therefore quite unconscious that two new-comers to the shelter were
+watching him with keen delight as he came in bareheaded, flushed,
+triumphant&mdash;amid howls of welcome&mdash;and knelt down to hold the cup
+till&mdash;drinking time about in strict honour&mdash;the retrievers had reached
+the maker's name.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think they would like a biscuit?" said a clear, sweet, low
+voice, with an accent of pride and just a flavour of amusement in its
+tone.  Carmichael rose in much embarrassment, and was quite confounded.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were standing together&mdash;father and daughter, evidently&mdash;and there
+was no manner of doubt about him.  A spare man, without an ounce of
+superfluous flesh, straight as a rod, and having an air of command,
+with keen grey eyes, close-cropped hair turning white, a clean-shaven
+face except where a heavy moustache covered a firm-set mouth&mdash;one
+recognised in him a retired army man of rank, a colonel at least, it
+might be a general; and the bronze on his face suggested long Indian
+service.  But he might have been dressed in Rob Roy tartan, or been a
+naval officer in full uniform, for all Carmichael knew.  A hundred
+thousand faces pass before your eyes and are forgotten, mere physical
+impressions; you see one, and it is in your heart for ever, as you saw
+it the first time.  Wavy black hair, a low, straight forehead, hazel
+eyes with long eyelashes, a perfectly-shaped Grecian nose, a strong
+mouth, whose upper lip had a curve of softness, a clear-cut chin with
+one dimple, small ears set high in the head, and a rich creamy
+complexion&mdash;that was what flashed upon Carmichael as he turned from the
+retrievers.  He was a man so unobservant of women that he could not
+have described a woman's dress to save his life or any other person's;
+and now that he is married&mdash;he is a middle-aged man now and threatened
+with stoutness&mdash;it is his wife's reproach that he does not know when
+she wears her new spring bonnet for the first time.  Yet he took in
+this young woman's dress, from the smart hat, with a white bird's wing
+on the side, and the close-fitting tailor made jacket, to the small,
+well-gloved hand in dogskin, the grey tweed skirt, and one shoe, with a
+tip on it, that peeped out below her frock.  Critics might have hinted
+that her shoulders were too square, and that her figure wanted somewhat
+in softness of outline; but it seemed to Carmichael that he had never
+seen so winsome or high-bred a woman; and so it has also seemed to many
+who have gone farther afield in the world than the young minister of
+Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael was at that age when a man prides himself on dressing and
+thinking as he pleases, and had quite scandalised a Muirtown elder&mdash;a
+stout gentleman, who had come out in '43, and could with difficulty be
+weaned from Dr. Chalmers&mdash;by making his appearance on the preceding
+evening in amazing tweeds and a grey flannel shirt.  He explained
+casually that for a fifteen-mile walk flannels were absolutely
+necessary, and that he was rather pleased to find that he had come from
+door to door in four hours and two minutes exactly.  His host was at a
+loss for words, because he was comparing this unconventional youth with
+the fathers, who wore large white stocks and ambled along at about two
+and a half miles an hour, clearing their throats also in a very
+impressive way, and seasoning the principles of the Free Kirk with
+snuff of an excellent fragrance.  It was hard even for the most
+generous charity to identify the spirit of the Disruption in such a
+figure, and the good elder grew so proper and so didactic that
+Carmichael went from bad to worse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you would find the congregation in excellent order.  The
+Professor was a most painstaking man, though retiring in disposition,
+and his sermons were thoroughly solid and edifying.  They were possibly
+just a little above the heads of Drumtochty, but I always enjoyed Mr.
+Cunningham myself," nodding his head as one who understood all
+mysteries.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever happen to hear the advice Jamie Soutar gave the
+deputation from Muirtown when they came up to see whether Cunningham
+would be fit for the North Kirk, where two Bailies stand at the plate
+every day, and the Provost did not think himself good enough to be an
+elder?" for Carmichael was full of wickedness that day, and earning a
+judgment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His host indicated that the deputation had given in a very full and
+satisfactory report&mdash;he was, in fact, on the Session of the North
+himself&mdash;but that no reference had been made to Jamie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you must know," and Carmichael laid himself out for narration,
+"the people were harassed with raids from the Lowlands during
+Cunningham's time, and did their best in self-defence.  Spying makes
+men cunning, and it was wonderful how many subterfuges the deputations
+used to practise.  They would walk from Kildrummie as if they were
+staying in the district, and one retired tradesman talked about the
+crops as if he was a farmer, but it was a pity that he did n't know the
+difference between the cereals.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Yon man that wes up aifter yir minister, Elspeth,' Hillocks said to
+Mrs. Macfadyen, 'hesna hed muckle money spent on his eddication.  "A
+graund field o' barley," he says, and as sure as a 'm stannin' here, it
+wes the haugh field o' aits.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'He 's frae Glaisgie,' was all Elspeth answered, 'and by next Friday
+we 'll hae his name an' kirk.  He said he wes up for a walk an' juist
+dropped in, the wratch.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some drove from Muirtown, giving out that they were English tourists,
+speaking with a fine East Coast accent, and were rebuked by Lachlan
+Campbell for breaking the Sabbath.  Your men put up their trap at the
+last farm in Netheraird&mdash;which always has grudged Drumtochty its
+ministers and borne their removal with resignation&mdash;and came up in
+pairs, who pretended they did not know one another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jamie was hearing the Professor's last lecture on Justification, and
+our people asked him to take charge of the strangers.  He found out the
+town from their hats, and escorted them to the boundaries of the
+parish, assisting their confidences till one of your men&mdash;I think it
+was the Provost&mdash;admitted that it had taken them all their time to
+follow the sermon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'A 'm astonished at ye,' said Jamie, for the Netheraird man let it
+out; 'yon wes a sermon for young fouk, juist milk, ye ken, tae the
+ordinar' discoorses.  Surely,' as if the thought had just struck him,
+'ye werena thinkin' o' callin' Maister Cunningham tae Muirtown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Edinboorgh, noo; that micht dae gin the feck o' the members be
+professors, but Muirtown wud be clean havers.  There's times when the
+Drumtochty fouk themsels canna understand the cratur, he 's that deep.
+As for Muirtown'&mdash;here Jamie allowed himself a brief rest of enjoyment;
+'but ye've hed a fine drive, tae say naethin' o' the traivel.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then, having begun, Carmichael retailed so many of Jamie's most wicked
+sayings, and so exalted the Glen as a place "where you can go up one
+side and down the other with your dogs, and every second man you meet
+will give you something to remember," that the city dignitary doubted
+afterwards to his wife "whether this young man was&nbsp;&#8230; quite what we
+have been accustomed to in a Free Church minister."  Carmichael ought
+to have had repentances for shocking a worthy man, but instead thereof
+laughed in his room and slept soundly, not knowing that he would be
+humbled in the dust by mid-day to-morrow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It seemed to him on the platform as if an hour passed while he, who had
+played with a city father, stood, clothed with shame, before this
+commanding young woman.  Had she ever looked upon a more abject wretch?
+and Carmichael photographed himself with merciless accuracy, from his
+hair that he had not thrown back to an impress of dust which one knee
+had taken from the platform, and he registered a resolution that he
+would never be again boastfully indifferent to the loss of a button on
+his coat.  She stooped and fed the dogs, who did her homage, and he
+marked that her profile was even finer&mdash;more delicate, more perfect,
+more bewitching&mdash;than her front face, but he still stood holding his
+shapeless hat in his hand, and for the first time in his life had no
+words to say.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are very polite dogs," and Miss Carnegie gave Carmichael one more
+chance; "they make as much of a biscuit as if it were a feast; but I do
+think dogs have such excellent manners, they are always so
+un-self-conscious."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wish I were a dog," said Carmichael, with much solemnity, and
+afterwards was filled with thankfulness that the baggage behind gave
+way at that moment, and that an exasperated porter was able to express
+his mind freely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dinna try tae lift that box for ony sake, man.  Sall, ye 're no'
+feared," as Carmichael, thirsting for action, swung it up unaided; and
+then, catching sight of the merest wisp of white, "A' didna see ye were
+a minister, an' the word cam oot sudden."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You would find it a help to say Northumberland, Cumberland,
+Westmoreland, and Durham," and with a smile to Carmichael, still
+bareheaded and now redder than ever, Miss Carnegie went along the
+platform to see the Hielant train depart.  It was worth waiting to
+watch the two minutes' scrimmage, and to hear the great man say, as he
+took off his cap with deliberation and wiped his brow, "That's anither
+year ower; some o' you lads see tae that Dunleith train."  There was a
+day when Carmichael would have enjoyed the scene to the full, but now
+he had eyes for nothing but that tall, slim figure and the white bird's
+wing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When they disappeared into the Dunleith train, Carmichael had a wild
+idea of entering the same compartment, and in the end had to be pushed
+into the last second by the guard, who knew most of his regular people
+and every one of the Drumtochty men.  He was so much engaged with his
+own thoughts that he gave two English tourists to understand that Lord
+Kilspindie's castle, standing amid its woods on the bank of the Tay,
+was a recently erected dye work, and that as the train turned off the
+North trunk line for Dunleith they might at any moment enter the pass
+of Killiecrankie.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap02"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER II.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+PEACE.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-020.jpg" ALT="dropcap-t" BORDER="0" WIDTH="230" HEIGHT="277">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+he last stage now, Kit; in less than two hours we'll see Tochty
+woods.  The very thought makes me a boy again, and it seems yesterday
+that I kissed your mother on the door-step of the old lodge and went
+off to the Crimean war.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's Muirtown Castle over there in the wood&mdash;a grand place in its
+way, but nothing to our home, lassie.  Kilspindie&mdash;he was Viscount Hay
+then&mdash;joined me at Muirtown, and we fought through the weary winter.
+He left the army after the war, with lots of honour.  A good fellow was
+Hay, both in the trenches and the messroom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've never seen him since, and I dare say he 's forgotten a battered
+old Indian.  Besides, he's the big swell in this district, and I 'm
+only a poor Hielant laird, with a wood and a tumble-down house and a
+couple of farms."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are also a shameless hypocrite and deceiver, for you believe that
+the Carnegies are as old as the Hays, and you know that, though you
+have only two farms, you have twelve medals and seven wounds.  What
+does money matter? it simply makes people vulgar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense, lassie; if a Carnegie runs down money, it's because he has
+got none and wishes he had.  If you and I had only a few hundreds a
+year over the half-pay to rattle in our pockets, we should have lots of
+little pleasures, and you might have lived in England, with all sorts
+of variety and comfort, instead of wandering about India with a gang of
+stupid old chaps who have been so busy fighting that they never had
+time to read a book."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean like yourself, dad, and V. C. and Colonel Kinloch?  Where
+could a girl have found finer company than with my Knights of King
+Arthur?  And do you dare to insinuate that I could have been content
+away from the regiment, that made me their daughter after mother died,
+and the army?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Pleasure!" and Kate's cheek flushed.  "I 've had it since I was a
+little tot and could remember anything&mdash;the bugles sounding reveille in
+the clear air, and the sergeants drilling the new drafts in the
+morning, and the regiment coming out with the band before and you at
+its head, and hearing 'God save the Queen' at a review, and seeing the
+companies passing like one man before the General.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think that's better than tea-drinking, and gossiping, and
+sewing meetings, and going for walks in some stupid little hole of a
+country town?  Oh, you wicked, aggravating dad.  Now, what more will
+money do?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," said the General, with much gravity, "if you were even a
+moderate heiress there is no saying but that we might pick up a
+presentable husband for you among the lairds.  As it is, I fancy a
+country minister is all you could expect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't&nbsp;&#8230; my ears will come off some day; one was loosened by a cut
+in the Mutiny.  No, I 'll never do the like again.  But some day you
+will marry, all the same," and Kate's father rubbed his ears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I 'm not going to leave you, for nobody else could ever make a
+curry to please; and if I do, it will not be a Scotch minister&mdash;horrid,
+bigoted wretches, V. C. says.  Am I like a minister's wife, to address
+mothers' meetings and write out sermons?  By the way, is there a kirk
+at Drumtochty, or will you read prayers to Janet and Donald and me?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I was a lad there was just one minister in Drumtochty, Mr.
+Davidson, a splendid specimen of the old school, who, on great
+occasions, wore gaiters and a frill with a diamond in the centre; he
+carried a gold-headed stick, and took snuff out of a presentation box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His son Sandie was my age to a year, and many a ploy we had together;
+there was the jackdaw's nest in the ivy on the old tower we harried
+together," and the General could only indicate the delightful risk of
+the exploit.  "My father and the minister were pacing the avenue at the
+time, and caught sight of us against the sky.  'It's your rascal and
+mine, Laird,' we heard the minister say, and they waited till we got
+down, and then each did his duty by his own for trying to break his
+neck; but they were secretly proud of the exploit, for I caught my
+father showing old Lord Kilspindie the spot, and next time Hay was up
+he tried to reach the place, and stuck where the wall hangs over.  I
+'ll point out the hole this evening; you can see it from the other side
+of the den quite plain."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-023"></A>
+<IMG CLASS="imgright" SRC="images/img-023.jpg" ALT="&quot;Many a ploy we had together.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="303" HEIGHT="423">
+<H3 CLASS="h3right" STYLE="width: 303px">
+&quot;Many a ploy we had together.&quot;
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"Sandie went to the church&mdash;I wish every parson were as straight&mdash;and
+Kilspindie appointed him to succeed the old gentleman, and when I saw
+him in his study last month, it seemed as if his father stood before
+you, except the breeches and the frill; but Sandie has a  marvellous
+stock&mdash;what havers I 'm deivin' you with, lassie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me about Sandie this minute&mdash;did he remember the raiding of the
+jack-daws?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He did," cried the General, in great spirits; "he just looked at me
+for an instant&mdash;no one knew of my visit&mdash;and then he gripped my hands,
+and do you know, Kit, he was&nbsp;&#8230; well, and there was a lump in my
+throat too; it would be about thirty years, for one reason and another,
+since we met."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What did he say? the very words, dad," and Kate held up her finger in
+command.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Jack, old man, is this really you?'&mdash;he held me at arm's
+length&mdash;'man, div ye mind the jackdaw's nest?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did he?  And he 's to be our padre.  I know I 'll love him at once.
+Go on, everything, for you 've never told me anything about Drumtochty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We had a glorious time going over old times.  We fished up every trout
+again, and we shot our first day on the moor again with Peter Stewart,
+Kilspindie's head keeper, as fine an old Highlander as ever lived.
+Stewart said in the evening, 'You 're a pair of prave boys, as becometh
+your fathers' sons,' and Sandie gave him two and fourpence he had
+scraped for a tip, but I had only one and elevenpence&mdash;we were both
+kept bare.  But he knew better than to refuse our offerings, though he
+never saw less than gold or notes from the men that shot at the lodge,
+and Sandie remembered how he touched his Highland bonnet and said, 'I
+will be much obliged to you both; and you will be coming to the moor
+another day, for I hef his lordship's orders.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Boys are queer animals, lassie; we were prouder that Peter accepted
+our poor little tip than about the muirfowl we shot, though I had three
+brace and Sandie four.  Highlanders are all gentlemen by birth, and be
+sure of this, Kit, it's only that breed which can manage boys and
+soldiers.  But where am I now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With Sandie&mdash;I beg his reverence's pardon&mdash;with the Rev. the padre of
+Drumtochty," and Kate went over and sat down beside the General to
+anticipate any rebellion, for it was a joy to see the warrior turning
+into a boy before her eyes.  "Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We had a royal dinner, as it seemed to me.  Sandie has a couple of
+servants, man and wife, who rule him with a rod of iron, but I would
+forgive that for the cooking and the loyalty.  After dinner he
+disappeared with a look of mystery, and came back with a cobwebbed
+bottle of the old shape, short and bunchy, which he carried as if it
+were a baby.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Just two bottles of my father's port left; we 'll have one to-day to
+welcome you back, and we 'll keep the other to celebrate your
+daughter's marriage.' He had one sister, younger by ten years, and her
+death in girlhood nearly broke his heart.  It struck me from something
+he said that his love is with her; at any rate, he has never married.
+Sandie has just one fault&mdash;he would not touch a cheroot; but he snuffs
+handsomely out of his father's box.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, I can't say anything about his preaching, but it's bound to
+be sensible stuff."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bother the sermons; he 's an old dear himself, and I know we shall be
+great friends.  We 'll flirt together, and you will not have one word
+to say, so make up your mind to submit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall have good days in the old place, lassie; but you know we are
+poor, and must live quietly.  What I have planned is a couple of handy
+women or so in the house with Donald.  Janet is going to live at the
+gate where she was brought up, but she will look after you well, and we
+'ll always have a bed and a glass of wine for a friend.  Then you can
+have a run up to London and get your things, Kit," and the General
+looked wistfully at his daughter, as one who would have given her a
+kingdom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think your girl cares so much about luxuries and dresses?  Of
+course I like to look well&mdash;every woman does, and if she pretends
+otherwise she 's a hypocrite; but money just seems to make some women
+hideous.  It is enough for me to have you all to myself up in your old
+home, and to see you enjoying the rest you have earned.  We'll be as
+happy as two lovers, dad," and Kate threw an arm round her father's
+neck and kissed him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We have to change here," as the train began to slow; "prepare to see
+the most remarkable railway in the empire, and a guard to correspond."
+And then it came upon them, the first sight that made a Drumtochty
+man's heart warm, and assured him that he was nearing home.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+An engine on a reduced scale, that had once served in the local goods
+department of a big station, and then, having grown old and asthmatic,
+was transferred on half-pay, as it were, to the Kildrummie branch,
+where it puffed between the junction and the terminus half a dozen
+times a day, with two carriages and an occasional coal truck.  Times
+there were when wood was exported from Kildrummie, and then the train
+was taken down in detachments, and it was a pleasant legend that, one
+market day, when Drumtochty was down in force, the engine stuck, and
+Drumsheugh invited the Glen to get out and push.  The two carriages
+were quite distinguished in construction, and had seen better days.
+One consisted of a single first-class compartment in the centre, with a
+bulge of an imposing appearance, supported on either side by two
+seconds.  As no native ever travelled second, one compartment had been
+employed as a reserve to the luggage van, so that Drumtochty might have
+a convenient place of deposit for calves, but the other was jealously
+reserved by Peter Bruce for strangers with second-class tickets, that
+his branch might not be put to confusion.  The other carriage was
+three-fourths third class and one-fourth luggage, and did the real
+work; on its steps Peter stood and dispensed wisdom, between the
+junction and Kildrummie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But neither the carriages nor the engine could have made history
+without the guard, beside whom the guards of the main line&mdash;even of the
+expresses that ran to London&mdash;were as nothing&mdash;fribbles and weaklings.
+For the guard of the Kildrummie branch was absolute ruler, lording it
+over man and beast without appeal, and treating the Kildrummie
+stationmaster as a federated power.  Peter was a short man of great
+breadth, like unto the cutting of an oak-tree, with a penetrating grey
+eye, an immovable countenance, and bushy whiskers.  It was understood
+that when the line was opened, and the directors were about to fill up
+the post of guard from a number of candidates qualified by long
+experience on various lines, Peter, who had been simply wasting his
+time driving a carrier's cart, came in, and sitting down opposite the
+board&mdash;two lairds and a farmer&mdash;looked straight before him without
+making any application.  It was felt by all in an instant that only one
+course was open, in the eternal fitness of things.  Experience was well
+enough, but special creation was better, and Peter was immediately
+appointed, his name being asked by the chairman afterwards as a
+formality.  From the beginning he took up a masterful position,
+receiving his human cargo at the junction and discharging it at the
+station with a power that even Drumtochty did not resist, and a
+knowledge of individuals that was almost comprehensive.  It is true
+that, boasting one Friday evening concerning the "crooded" state of the
+train, he admitted with reluctance that "there 's a stranger in the
+second I canna mak oot," but it is understood that he solved the
+problem before the man got his luggage at Kildrummie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps Peter's most famous achievement was his demolition of a south
+country bagman, who had made himself unpleasant, and the story was much
+tasted by our guard's admirers.  This self-important and vivacious
+gentleman, seated in the first, was watching Peter's leisurely
+movements on the Kildrummie platform with much impatience, and lost all
+self-control on Peter going outside to examine the road for any distant
+passenger.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look here, guard, this train ought to have left five minutes ago, and
+I give you notice that if we miss our connection I 'll hold your
+company responsible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the sound of this foreign voice with its indecent clamour, Peter
+returned and took up his position opposite the speaker, while the staff
+and the whole body of passengers&mdash;four Kildrummie and three Drumtochty,
+quite sufficient for the situation&mdash;waited the issue.  Not one word did
+Peter deign to reply, but he fixed the irate traveller with a gaze so
+searching, so awful, so irresistible, that the poor man fell back into
+his seat and pretended to look out at the opposite window.  After a
+pause of thirty seconds, Peter turned to the engine-driver.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 're a' here noo, an' there 's nae use waitin' langer; ca' awa',
+but ye needna distress the engine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was noticed that the foolhardy traveller kept the full length of the
+junction between himself and Peter till the Dunleith train came in,
+while his very back was eloquent of humiliation, and Hillocks offered
+his snuff-box ostentatiously to Peter, which that worthy accepted as a
+public tribute of admiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Look, Kate, there he is;" and there Peter was, standing in his
+favourite attitude, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in his armholes,
+superior, abstracted, motionless till the train stopped, when he came
+forward.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-029"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG SRC="images/img-029.jpg" ALT="Peter was standing in his favourite attitude." BORDER="2" WIDTH="339" HEIGHT="586">
+<H3 STYLE="width: 339px">
+Peter was standing in his favourite attitude.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Prood tae see ye, General, coming back at laist, an' the Miss wi' ye;
+it 'll no be the blame o' the fouk up by gin ye bena happy.  Drumtochty
+hes an idea o' itsel', and peety the man 'at tries tae drive them, but
+they 're couthy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This wy, an' a'll see tae yir luggage," and before Peter made for the
+Dunleith van it is said that he took off his cap to Kate; but if so,
+this was the only time he had ever shown such gallantry to a lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Certainly he must have been flustered by something, for he did not
+notice that Carmichael, overcome by shyness at the sight of the
+Carnegies in the first, had hid himself in the second, till he closed
+the doors; then the Carnegies heard it all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's I, Peter," very quietly; "your first has passengers to-day,
+and&nbsp;&#8230; I 'll just sit here."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come oot o' that," after a moment, during which Peter had simply
+looked; then the hat and the tweeds came stumbling into the first,
+making some sort of a bow and muttering an apology.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A'll tak' yir ticket, Maister Carmichael," with severity.  "General,"
+suddenly relaxing, "this is the Free Kirk minister of yir pairish, an'
+a 'm jidgin' he 'll no try the second again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael lifted his head and caught Kate's eye, and at the meeting of
+humour they laughed aloud.  Whereupon the General said, "My daughter,
+Miss Carnegie," and they became so friendly before they reached
+Kildrummie that Carmichael forgot his disgraceful appearance and when
+the General offered him a lift up, simply clutched at the opportunity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The trap was a four-wheeled dog-cart.  Kate drove, with her father by
+her side and Carmichael behind, but he found it necessary to turn round
+to give information of names and places, and he so managed that he
+could catch Kate's profile half the time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he got down at the foot of the hill by Hillocks' farm, to go up
+the near road, instead thereof he scrambled along the ridge, and looked
+through the trees as the carriage passed below; but he did not escape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's he glowerin' at doon there?" Hillocks inquired of Jamie Soutar,
+to whom he was giving some directions about a dyke, and Hillocks made a
+reconnaissance.  "A 'll warrant that's the General and his dochter.
+She 's a weel-faured lassie an' speerity-lookin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It cowes a'," said Jamie to himself; "the first day he ever saw her;
+but it's aye the way, aince an' ever, or&nbsp;&#8230; never."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the Free Kirk, dad?" when Carmichael had gone.  "Is it the same
+as the Methodists?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no, quite different.  I 'm not up in those things, but I 've heard
+it was a lot of fellows who would not obey the laws, and so they left
+and made a kirk for themselves, where they do whatever they like.  By
+the way, that was the young fellow we saw giving the dogs water at
+Muirtown.  I rather like him; but why did he look such a fool, and try
+to escape us at the junction?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How should I know?  I suppose because he is a&nbsp;&#8230; foolish boy.  And
+now, dad, for the Lodge and Tochty woods."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap03"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER III.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-032.jpg" ALT="dropcap-i" BORDER="0" WIDTH="215" HEIGHT="304">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+t was the custom of the former time to construct roads on a straight
+line, with a preference for uphill and down, and engineers refused to
+make a circuit of twenty yards to secure level ground.  There were two
+advantages in this uncompromising principle of construction, and it may
+be doubtful which commended itself most to the mind of our fathers.
+Roads were drained after the simplest fashion, because a standing pool
+in the hollow had more than a compensation in the dryness of the ascent
+and descent, while the necessity of sliddering down one side and
+scrambling up the other reduced driving to the safe average of four
+miles an hour&mdash;horse-doctors forming a class by themselves, and being
+preserved in their headlong career by the particular Providence which
+has a genial regard for persons who have too little sense or have taken
+too much liquor.  Degenerate descendants, anxious to obtain the maximum
+of speed with the minimum of exertion, have shown a quite wonderful
+ingenuity in circumventing hills, so the road between Drumtochty Manse
+and Tochty Lodge gate was duplicated, and the track that plunged into
+the hollow was now forsaken of wheeled traffic and overgrown with grass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This way, Kate; it's the old road, and the way I came to kirk with my
+mother.  Yes, it's narrow, but we'll get through and down below&mdash;it is
+worth the seeing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they forced a passage where the overgrown hedges resisted the
+wheels, and the trees, wet with a morning shower, dashed Kate's jacket
+with a pleasant spray, and the rail of the dog-cart was festooned with
+tendrils of honeysuckle and wild geranium.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is the parish kirk of Drumtochty," as they came out and halted
+on the crest of the hill, "and though it be not much to look at after
+the Norman churches of the south, it's a brave old kirk in our fashion,
+and well set in the Glen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For it stood on a knoll, whence the ground sloped down to the Tochty,
+and it lay with God's acre round it in the shining of the sun.  Half a
+dozen old beeches made a shadow in the summer-time, and beat off the
+winter's storms.  One standing at the west corner of the kirkyard had a
+fuller and sweeter view of the Glen than could be got anywhere save
+from the beeches at the Lodge; but then nothing like unto that can be
+seen far or near, and I have marvelled why painting men have never had
+it on their canvas.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our vault is at the east end, where the altar was in the old days, and
+there our dead of many generations lie.  A Carnegie always prayed to be
+buried with his people in Drumtochty, but as it happened, two out of
+three of our house have fallen on the field, and so most of us have not
+had our wish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Black John, my great-grandfather, was out in '45, and escaped to
+France.  He married a Highland lassie orphaned there, and entered the
+French service, as many a Scot did before him since the days of the
+Scots Guards.  But when he felt himself a-dying, he asked leave of the
+English government to come home, and he would not die till he laid
+himself down in his room in the tower.  Then he gave directions for his
+funeral, how none were to be asked of the county folk but Drummonds and
+Hays and Stewarts from Blair Athole and such like that had been out
+with the Prince.  And he made his wife promise that she would have him
+dressed for his coffin as he fought on Culloden field, for he had kept
+the clothes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then he asked that the window should be opened that he might hear the
+lilting of the burn below; and he called for my grandfather, who was
+only a young lad, and commanded him to enter one of the Scottish
+regiments and be a loyal kingsman, since all was over with the Stewarts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said a prayer and kissed his wife's hand, being a courtly
+gentleman, and died listening to the sound of the water running over
+the stones in the den below."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was as good as dying on the field," said Kate, her face flushing
+with pride; "that is an ancestor worth remembering; and did he get a
+worthy funeral?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"More than he asked for; his old comrades gathered from far and near,
+and some of the chiefs that were out of hiding came down, and they
+brought him up this very road, with the pipers playing before the
+coffin.  Fifty gentlemen buried John Carnegie, and every man of them
+had been out with the Prince.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When they gathered in the stone hall you 'll see soon, his
+friend-in-arms, Patrick Murray, gave three toasts.  The first was 'the
+king,' and every man bared his head; the second was 'to him that is
+gone;' the third was 'to the friends that are far awa';' and then one
+of the chiefs proposed another, 'to the men of Culloden;' and after
+that every gentleman dashed his glass on the floor.  Though he was only
+a little lad at the time, my grandfather never forgot the sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He also told me that his mother never shed a tear, but looked prouder
+than he ever saw her, and before they left the hall she bade each
+gentleman good-bye, and to the chief she spoke in Gaelic, being of
+Cluny's blood and a gallant lady.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Another thing she did also which the lad could not forget, for she
+brought down her husband's sword from the room in the turret, and
+Patrick Murray, of the House of Athole, fastened it above the big
+fireplace, where it hangs unto this day, crossed now with my father's,
+as you will see, Kate, unless we stand here all day going over old
+stories."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 're glorious stories, dad; why did n't you tell them to me
+before?  I want to get into the spirit of the past and feel the
+Carnegie blood swinging in my veins before we come to the Lodge.  What
+did they do afterwards, or was that all?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They mounted their horses in the courtyard, and as each man passed out
+of the gate he took off his hat and bowed low to the widow, who stood
+in a window I will show you, and watched till the last disappeared into
+the avenue; but my grandfather ran out and saw them ride down the road
+in order of threes, a goodly company of gentlemen.  But this sight is
+better than horsemen and swords."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were now in the hollow between the kirk and the Lodge, a cup of
+greenery surrounded by wood.  Behind, they still saw the belfry through
+the beeches; before, away to the right, the grey stone of a turret
+showed among the trees.  The burn that sang to Black John ran beneath
+them with a pleasant sound, and fifty yards of turf climbed up to the
+cottage where the old road joined the new and the avenue of the Lodge
+began.  Over this ascent the branches met, through which the sunshine
+glimmered and flickered, and down the centre came a white and brown cow
+in charge of an old woman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's Bell Robb, that lives in the cottage there among the bushes.  I
+was at the parish school with her, Kate&mdash;she 's just my age&mdash;for we
+were all John Tamson's bairns in those days, and got our learning and
+our licks together, laird's son and cottar's daughter.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People would count it a queer mixture nowadays, but there were some
+advantages in the former parish school idea; there were lots of
+cleverer subalterns in the old regiment, but none knew his men so well
+as I did.  I had played and fought with their kind.  Would you mind
+saying a word to Bell&nbsp;&#8230; just her name or something?" for this was a
+new life to the pride of the regiment, as they called Kate, and
+Carnegie was not sure how she might take it.  Kate was a lovable lass,
+but like every complete woman, she had a temper and a stock of
+prejudices.  She was good comrade with all true men, although her heart
+was whole, and with a few women that did not mince their words or carry
+two faces, but Kate had claws inside the velvet, and once she so
+handled with her tongue a young fellow who offended her that he sent in
+his papers.  What she said was not much, but it was memorable, and
+every word drew blood.  Her father was never quite certain what she
+would do, although he was always sure of her love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you suppose, dad, that I 'm to take up with all your friends of the
+jackdaw days?  You seem to have kept fine company."  Kate was already
+out of the dogcart, and now took Bell by the hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am the General's daughter, and he was telling me that you and he
+were playmates long ago.  You 'll let me come to see you, and you 'll
+tell me all his exploits when he was John Carnegie?"
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-038"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-038.jpg" ALT="&quot;I am the General's daughter.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="378" HEIGHT="594">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 378px">
+&quot;I am the General's daughter.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"To think he minded me, an' him sae lang awa' at the weary wars."  Bell
+was between the laughing and the crying.  "We 're lifted to know oor
+laird 's a General, and that he's gotten sic honour.  There's nae bluid
+like the auld bluid, an' the Carnegies cud aye afford to be hamely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye're like him," and Bell examined Kate carefully; "but a' can tell
+yir mither's dochter, a weel-faured mettlesome lady as wes ever seen;
+wae 's me, wae 's me for the wars," at the sight of Carnegie's face;
+"but ye 'll come in to see Marjorie.  A 'll mak her ready," and Bell
+hurried into the cottage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marjorie has been blind from her birth.  She was the pet of the
+school, and now Bell takes care of her.  Davidson was telling me that
+she wanted to support Marjorie off the wages she earns as a field hand
+on the farms, and the parish had to force half-a-crown a week on them;
+but hear this."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind hoo ye look," Bell was speaking.  "A' canna keep them
+waitin' till ye be snoddit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gie me ma kep, at ony rate, that the minister brocht frae Muirtown,
+and Drumsheugh's shawl; it wudna be respectfu' to oor Laird, an' it his
+first veesit;" and there was a note of refinement in the voice, as of
+one living apart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I'm here, Marjorie," and the General stooped over the low bed
+where the old woman was lying, "and this is my daughter, the only child
+left me; you would hear that all my boys were killed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We did that, and we were a' wae for ye; a' thocht o' ye and a' saw ye
+in yir sorrow, for them 'at canna see ootside see the better inside.
+But it 'll be some comfort to be in the hame o' yir people aince mair,
+and to ken ye 've dune yir wark weel.  It's pleasant for us to think
+the licht 'll be burnin' in the windows o' the Lodge again, and that ye
+'re come back aifter the wars.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Kate, wull ye lat me pass ma hand ower yir face, an' then a 'll
+ken what like ye are better nor some 'at hes the joy o' seein' ye wi'
+their een.&#8230;  The Glen 'll be the happier for the sicht o' ye; a'
+thank ye for yir kindness to a puir woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If you begin to pay compliments, Marjorie, I 'll tell you what I think
+of that cap; for the pink is just the very shade for your complexion,
+and it's a perfect shape."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma young minister, Maister Carmichael, seleckit it in Muirtown, an' a'
+heard that he went ower sax shops to find one to his fancy; he never
+forgets me, an' he wrote me a letter on his holiday.  A'body likes him
+for his bonnie face an' honest ways."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I know him already, Marjorie, for he drove up with us, and I
+thought him very nice; but we must go, for you know I 've not yet seen
+our home, and I 'm just tingling with curiosity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 'll not leave without breakin' bread; it's little we hae, but we
+can offer ye oat-cake an' milk in token o' oor loyalty," and then Bell
+brought the elements of Scottish food; and when Marjorie's lips moved
+in prayer as they ate, it seemed to Carnegie and his daughter like a
+sacrament.  So the two went from the fellowship of the poor to their
+ancient house.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They drove along the avenue between the stately beeches that stood on
+either side and reached out their branches, almost but not quite unto
+meeting, so that the sun, now in the south, made a train of light down
+which the General and Kate came home.  At the end of the beeches the
+road wheeled to the right, and Kate saw for the first time the
+dwelling-place of her people.  Tochty Lodge was of the fourth period of
+Scottish castellated architecture, and till it fell into disrepair was
+a very perfect example of the sixteenth century mansion-house, where
+strength of defence could not yet be dispensed with, for the Carnegies
+were too near the Highland border to do without thick walls or to risk
+habitation on the ground floor.  The buildings had first been erected
+on the L plan, and then had been made into a quadrangle, so that on the
+left was the main part, with a tower at the south-west corner over the
+den, and a wing at the south-east coming out to meet the gate.  On the
+north-east and north were a tower and rooms now in ruins, and along the
+west ran a wall some six feet high with a stone walk three feet from
+the top, whence you could look down on the burn.  A big gateway, whose
+doors were of oak studded with nails, with a grated lattice for
+observation, gave entrance to the courtyard.  In the centre of the yard
+there was an ancient oak and a draw well whose water never failed.  The
+eastern face was bare of ivy, except at the north corner, where stood
+the jackdaws' tower; but the rough grey stone was relieved by the
+tendrils and red blossoms of the hardy tropaeolum which despises the
+rich soil of the south and the softer air, and grows luxuriantly on our
+homely northern houses.  As they came to the gateway, the General bade
+Kate pull up and read the scroll above, which ran in clear-cut letters&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+TRY AND THEN<BR>
+TRVST BETTER GVDE<BR>
+ASSVRANCE<BR>
+BOT TRUST NOT<BR>
+OR YE TRY FOR FEAR<BR>
+OF REPENTANCE.<BR>
+</H3>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"We 've been a slow dour race, Kit, who never gave our heart lightly,
+but having given it, never played the traitor.  Fortune has not
+favoured us, for acre after acre has gone from our hands, but, thank
+God, we 've never had dishonour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And never will, dad, for we are the last of the race."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway of the tower, and gave
+Kate welcome as one whose ancestors had for four generations served the
+Carnegies, since the day Black John had married a Macpherson.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-042"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-042.jpg" ALT="Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway." BORDER="2" WIDTH="360" HEIGHT="610">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 360px">
+Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Calf of my heart," she cried, and took Kate in her arms.  "It is your
+foster-mother that will be glad to see you in the home of your people,
+and will be praying that God will give you peace and good days."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they went up the winding stone stair, with deep, narrow windows,
+and came into the dining-hall where the fifty Jacobites toasted the
+king and many a gathering had taken place in the olden time.  It was
+thirty-five feet long by fifteen broad, and twenty-two feet high.  The
+floor was of flags over arches below, and the bare stone walls showed
+at the windows and above the black oak panelling which reached ten feet
+from the ground.  The fireplace was six feet high, and so wide that two
+could sit on either side within.  Upon the mantelpiece the Carnegie
+arms stood out in bold relief under the two crossed swords.  One or two
+portraits of dead Carnegies and some curious weapons broke the monotony
+of the walls, and from the roof hung a finely wrought iron candelabra.
+The western portion of the hall was separated by a screen of open
+woodwork, and made a pleasant dining-room.  A door in the corner led
+into the tower, which had a library, with Carnegie's bedroom above, and
+higher still Kate's room, each with a tiny dressing closet.  For the
+Carnegies always lived together in this tower, and their guests at the
+other end of the hall.  The library had two windows.  From one you
+could look down and see nothing but the foliage of the den, with a
+gleam of water where the burn made a pool, and from the other you
+looked over a meadow with big trees to the Tochty sweeping round a
+bend, and across to the high opposite banks covered with brush-wood.
+First they visited Carnegie's room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Here have we been born, and died if we did not fall in battle, and
+it's not a bad billet after all for an old soldier.  Yes, that is your
+mother when we were married, but I like this one better," and the
+General touched his breast, for he carried his love next his heart in a
+silver locket of Indian workmanship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Three fine deerskins lay on the floor, and one side of the room was
+hung with tapestry; but the most striking piece of furnishing in the
+room was an oak cupboard, sunk a foot into the wall.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll show you something in that cabinet after luncheon, Kate; but now
+let's see your room."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How beautiful, and how cunning you have been," and then she took an
+inventory of the furniture, all new, but all in keeping with the age of
+the room.  "You have spent far too much on a very self-willed and
+bad-tempered girl, and all I can do is to make you promise that you
+will come up here sometimes and let me give you tea in this
+window-seat, where we can see the woods and the Tochty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Donald," said the General at table to his faithful servant, "how
+do you think Drumtochty will suit you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any place where you and Miss Kate will be living iss a good place for
+me, and there are six or maybe four men I hef been meeting that hef the
+language, but not good Gaelic&mdash;just poor Perthshire talk," for Donald
+was a West Highlander, and prided himself on his better speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what about a kirk, Donald?  Aren't you Free like Janet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, yes, I am Free; but it iss not to that kirk I will be going most
+here, and I am telling Janet that she will be caring more about a man
+that hass a pleasant way with him than about the truth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's wrong with things, Donald, since we lay in Edinburgh twenty
+years ago, and you used to give me bits of the Free Kirk sermons?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It iss all wrong that they hef been going these last years, for they
+stand to sing and they sit to pray, and they will be using human himes.
+And it iss great pieces of the Bible they hef cut out, and I am told
+that they are not done yet, but are going from bad to worse," and
+Donald invited questioning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What more are they after, man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be myself that has found it out, and it iss only what might be
+expected, but I am not saying that you will be believing me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Out with it, Donald; let's hear what kind of people we 've come
+amongst."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They 've been just fairly left to themselves, and the godless bodies
+hef taken to watering the whisky."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap04"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IV.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A SECRET CHAMBER.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-046.jpg" ALT="dropcap-t" BORDER="0" WIDTH="210" HEIGHT="270">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+he cabinet now, dad, and at once," when they went up the stairs and
+were standing in the room.  "Just give me three guesses about the
+mystery; but first let me examine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was pretty to see Kate opening the doors, curiously carved with
+hunting scenes, and searching the interior, tapping with her knuckles
+and listening for a hollow sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it a treasure we are to find?  Then that's one point.  Not in the
+cabinet?  I have it; there is a door into some other place; am n't I
+right?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where could it be?  We're in a tower cut off from the body of the
+Lodge, with a room above and a room below;" and the General sat down to
+allow full investigation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After many journeys up and down the stair, and many questions that
+brought no light, Kate played a woman's trick up in her room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The General wishes to show me the concealed room in this tower, Janet,
+or whatever you call it.  Would you kindly tell us how to get entrance?
+You need n't come down; just explain to me;" and Kate was very pleasant
+indeed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I am hearing there iss a room in the tower, Miss Kate, that
+strangers will not be able to find; and it would be very curious if the
+Carnegies did not have a safe place for an honest gentleman when he
+wass in a little trouble.  All the good houses will have their secret
+places, and it will not be easy to find some of them.  Oh no; now I
+will remember one at Glamis Castle.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind Glamis, nurse, for the General is waiting.  Where is the
+spring? is it in the oak cabinet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be good for the General to be resting himself after his
+luncheon, and he will be thinking many things in his room.  Oh yes,"
+continued Janet, settling herself down to narrative, and giving no heed
+to Kate's beguiling ways, "old Mary that died near a hundred would be
+often telling me stories of the old days when I wass a little girl, and
+the one I liked best wass about the hiding of the Duke of Perth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will tell me that to-morrow, when I come down to see your house,
+Janet, and to-day you 'll tell me how to open the spring."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But it would be a pity not to finish the story about the Duke of
+Perth, for it goes well, and it will be good for a Carnegie to hear
+it."  And Kate flung herself into the window-seat, but was hugely
+interested all the same.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mary wass sitting at her door in the evening, and that would be three
+days after Culloden, for the news had been sent by a sure hand from the
+Laird, when a man came riding along the road, and as soon as Mary saw
+him she knew he wass somebody; but perhaps it will be too long a
+story," and Janet began to arrange dresses in a wardrobe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no; as you have begun it, I want to hear the end, but quick, for
+there 's the room to see and the rest of the Lodge before it grows
+dark.  What like was he?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wass a man that looked as if he would be commanding, but his
+clothes were common grey, and stained with the road.  He wass very
+tired, and could hardly hold himself up in the saddle, and his horse
+wass covered with foam.  'Is this Tochty Lodge?' he asked, softening
+his voice as one trying to speak humbly.  'I am passing this way, and
+have a message for Mistress Carnegie; think you that I can have speech
+of her quietly?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So Mary will go up and tell the lady that one wass waiting to see her,
+and that he seemed a noble gentleman.  When they came down to the
+courtyard he had drawn water for his horse from the well, and wass
+giving him to drink, thinking more of the beast that had borne him than
+of his own need, as became a man of birth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"At the sight of the lady he took off his bonnet and bowed low, and
+asked if he might hef a private audience, to which Mistress Carnegie
+replied, 'We are private here,' and asked, 'Have you been with my son?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'We fought together for the Prince three days since&mdash;my name is Perth.
+I am escaping for my life, and desire a brief rest, if it please you,
+and bring no danger to your house.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Ye had been welcome, my Lord Duke,' and Mary used to show how her
+mistress straightened herself, though you were the poorest soldier that
+had drawn his sword for the good cause, and ye will stay here till it
+be safe for you to escape to France.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wass four weeks hidden in the room, and although the soldiers
+searched all the house, they could never find the place, and Mrs.
+Carnegie put scorn upon them, asking why they did her so much honour
+and whom they sought.  Oh yes, it wass a cunning place for the bad
+times, and you will be pleased to see it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the secret, Janet," cried Kate, her hand upon the door; "you know
+it quite well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So does the General, Catherine of my heart," said Janet, "and he will
+be liking to show it himself."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Kate departed in a rage, and gave orders that there be no more
+delay, for she would not spend an afternoon seeking for rat-holes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No rat-hole, Kit, but a very fair chamber for a hunted man; it is
+twenty years and more since this door opened last, for none knows the
+trick of it save Janet and myself.  There it goes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A panel in the back of the cabinet slid aside behind its neighbour and
+left a passage through which one could squeeze himself with an effort.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We go up a stair now, and must have light; a candle will do; the air
+is perfectly pure, for there 's plenty of ventilation;" and then they
+crept up by steps in the thickness of the walls, till they stood in a
+chamber under six feet high, but otherwise as large as the bedroom
+below.  The walls were lined with wood, and there were two tiny slits
+that gave air, but hardly any light.  The only furniture in the room
+was an oaken chest, clasped with iron and curiously locked.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our plate chest, Kit; but there 'a not much silver and gold in it,
+worse luck for you, lassie; in fact, we're a pack of fools to set store
+by it.  There 's nothing in the kist but some old clothes, and perhaps
+some buckles and such like.  I dare say there is a lock of hair also.
+Some day we will have a look inside."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-day, instantly," and Kate shook her father.  "You are a dreadful
+hypocrite, for I can see that you would rather Tochty were burned down
+than this box be lost.  Are there any relics of Prince Charlie in it?
+Quick."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be patient; it's a difficult key to turn; there now;" but there was
+not much to see&mdash;only pieces of woollen cloth tightly folded down.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-050"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-050.jpg" ALT="&quot;It's a difficult key to turn.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="344" HEIGHT="326">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 344px">
+&quot;It's a difficult key to turn.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Call Janet, Kate, for she ought to see this opening, and we 'll carry
+everything down to my room, for no one could tell what like things are
+in this gloom.  Yes, Perth lived here for weeks, and used to go up to
+the gallery where Black John's mother sat with her maid; but the son
+was hiding in the North, and never reached his house till he came to
+die."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+First of all they came upon a ball dress of the former time, of white
+silk, with a sash of Macpherson tartan, besides much fine lace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is the dress your great-grandmother wore as a bride at the Court
+of Versailles in the fifties.  She was only a lassie, and seemed like
+her husband's daughter.  The Prince danced with her, and they counted
+the dress something to be kept, and that night Locheil and Cluny also
+had a reel with Sheena Carnegie, while Black John looked like a young
+man, for he had been too sorely wounded to be able to dance with her
+himself."  And then the General carried down with his own hands a
+Highland gentleman's evening dress, trews of the Royal tartan, and a
+velvet coat with silver buttons, and a light plaid of fine cloth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And this was her husband's dress that night; but why the Stewart
+tartan?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, lassie, that is the suit the Prince wore at Holyrood, where he
+gave a great ball after Prestonpans, and danced with the Edinburgh
+ladies.  It was smuggled across to France at last with other things of
+the Prince's, and he gave it to Carnegie.  'It will remind you of our
+great days,' he said, 'when the Stewarts saw their friends in Mary's
+Palace.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Last of all, the General lifted out a casket and laid it on his table.
+Within it was a brooch, such as might once have been worn either by a
+man or a woman; diamonds set in gold, and in the midst a lock of fair
+hair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it really, father?&#8230;"  And Kate took the jewel in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, the Prince's hair&mdash;his wedding present to Sheena Macpherson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate kissed it fervently, and passed it to Janet, who placed it
+carefully in the box, while the General made believe to laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your mother wore the brooch on great occasions, and you will do the
+same, Kit, for auld lang syne.  There are two or three families left in
+Perthshire that will like to see it on your breast."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, and there will maybe be more than two or three that will like to
+see the lady that wears it."  This from Janet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your compliments are a little late, and you may keep them to yourself,
+Janet; it would have been kinder to tell me.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell you what?"  And the General looked very provoking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hate to be beaten."  Kate first looked angry, and then laughed.
+"What else is there to see?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is the gallery, which is the one feature in our poor house, and
+we will try to reach it from the Duke's hiding-place, for it was a
+cleverly designed hole, and had its stair up as well as down."  And
+then they all came out into one of the strangest rooms you could find
+in Scotland, and one that left a pleasant picture in their minds who
+had seen it lit of a winter night, and the wood burning on the hearth,
+and Kate dancing a reel with Lord Hay or some other brisk young man,
+while the General looked on from one of the deep window recesses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The gallery extended over the hall and Kate's drawing-room, and
+measured fifty feet long from end to end.  The upper part of the walls
+was divided into compartments by an arcading, made of painted pilasters
+and flat arches.  Each compartment had a motto, and this was on one
+side of the fireplace:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+A nice wyfe and<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">A back doore</SPAN><BR>
+Oft maketh a rich<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Man poore.</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+And on the other:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+Give liberalye<BR>
+To neidfvl folke<BR>
+Denye nane of<BR>
+Them al for litle<BR>
+Thow knawest heir<BR>
+In this lyfe of what<BR>
+Chaunce may the<BR>
+Befall.<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+The glory of the gallery, however, was its ceiling, which was of the
+seventeenth century work, and so wonderful that many learned persons
+used to come and study it.  After the great disaster when the Lodge was
+sold and allowed to fall to pieces, this fine work went first, and now
+no one examining its remains could have imagined how wonderful it was,
+and in its own way how beautiful.  This ceiling was of wood, painted,
+and semi-elliptical in form, and one wet day, when we knew not what
+else to do, Kate and I counted more than three hundred panels.  It was
+an arduous labour for the neck, and the General refused to help us; but
+I am sure that we did not make too many, for we worked time about,
+while the General took note of the figures, and our plan was that each
+finished his tale of work at some amazing beast, so that we could make
+no mistake.  Some of the panels were circles, and they were filled in
+with coats-of-arms; some were squares and they contained a bestiary of
+that day.  It was hard indeed to decide whether the circles or the
+squares were more interesting.  The former had the arms of every family
+in Scotland that had the remotest connection with the Carnegies, and
+besides swept in a wider field, comprising David, King of Israel, who
+was placed near Hector of Troy, and Arthur of Brittany not far from
+Moses&mdash;all of whom had appropriate crests and mottoes.  In the centre
+were the arms of our Lord Christ as Emperor of Judea, and the chief
+part of them was the Cross.  But it came upon one with a curious shock,
+to see this coat among the shields of Scottish nobles.  There were
+beasts that could be recognised at once, and these were sparingly
+named; but others were astounding, and above them were inscribed titles
+such as these: Shoe-lyon, Musket, Ostray; and one fearsome animal in
+the centre was designated the Ram of Arabia.  This display of heraldry
+and natural history was reinforced by the cardinal virtues in
+seventeenth century dress: Charitas as an elderly female of extremely
+forbidding aspect, receiving two very imperfectly clad children; and
+Temperantia as a furious-looking person&mdash;male on the whole rather than
+female&mdash;pouring some liquor&mdash;surely water&mdash;from a jug into a cup, with
+averted face, and leaving little to be desired.  The afternoon sun
+shining in through a western window and lingering among the black and
+white tracery, so that the marking of a shield came into relief or a
+beast suddenly glared down on one, had a weird, old-world effect.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's half an armoury and half a menagerie," said Kate, "and I think we
+'ll have tea in the library with the windows open to the Glen."  And so
+they sat together in quietness, with books of heraldry and sport and
+ancient Scottish classics and such like round them, while Janet went
+out and in.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So Donald has been obliged to leave his kirk;" for Kate had not yet
+forgiven Janet.  "He says it's very bad here; I hope you won't go to
+such a place."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What would Donald Macdonald be saying against it?" inquired Janet,
+severely.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I don't remember&mdash;lots of things.  He thought you were making too
+much of the minister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The minister iss a good man, and hass some Highland blood in him,
+though he hass lost his Gaelic, and he will be very pleasant in the
+house.  If I wass seeing a sheep, and it will be putting on this side
+and that, and quarrelling with everybody, do you know what I will be
+thinking?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's Donald, I suppose; well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will say to myself, that sheep iss a goat."  And Janet left the room
+with the laurels of victory.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap05"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER V.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CONCERNING BESOMS.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-056.jpg" ALT="dropcap-i" BORDER="0" WIDTH="178" HEIGHT="265">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less
+than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never
+known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house.  When the
+sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from
+the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart,
+and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are
+covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes.  This
+erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their
+sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie.  No man compelled
+to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or
+other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life,
+and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his
+talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged
+for him at the Great Assize.  Small wonder that he comes to regard the
+world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted
+at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit
+dwelling-place all his years.  When a prophet cometh from the Eternal
+to speak unto modern times as Dante did unto the Middle Ages, and
+constructs the other world before our eyes, he will have one circle in
+his hell for the builders of rotten houses, and doubtless it will be a
+collection of their own works, so that their sin will be its
+punishment, as is most fitting and the way of things.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Surely there will also be some corner of heaven kept for the man who,
+having received a charge to build the shell wherein two people were to
+make a home, laid its foundations deep and raised strong walls that
+nothing but gunpowder could rend in pieces, and roofed it over with
+oaken timber and lined it with the same, so that many generations might
+live therein in peace and honour.  Such a house was the Lodge in those
+days, although at last beginning to show signs of decay, and it somehow
+stirred up the heroic spirit of the former time within a man to sit
+before the big fire in the hall, with grim Carnegies looking down from
+the walls and daring you to do any meanness, while the light blazing
+out from a log was flung back from a sword that had been drawn in the
+'15.  One was unconsciously reinforced in the secret place of his
+manhood, and inwardly convinced that what concerneth every man is not
+whether he fail or succeed, but that he do his duty according to the
+light which may have been given him until he die.  It was also a
+regeneration of the soul to awake in a room of the eastern tower, where
+the Carnegies' guests slept, and fling up the window, with its small
+square panes, to fill one's lungs with the snell northern air, and look
+down on the woods glistening in every leaf, and the silver Tochty just
+touched by the full risen sun.  Miracles have been wrought in that
+tower, for it happened once that an Edinburgh advocate came to stay at
+the Lodge, who spake after a quite marvellous fashion, known neither in
+England nor Scotland; and being himself of pure bourgeois blood, the
+fifth son of a factor, felt it necessary to despise his land, from its
+kirk downwards, and had a collection of japes at Scottish ways, which
+in his provincial simplicity he offered to the Carnegies.  It seemed to
+him certain that people of Jacobite blood and many travels would have
+relished his clever talk, for it is not given to a national decadent to
+understand either the people he has deserted or the ancient houses at
+whose door he stands.  Carnegie was the dullest man living in the
+matter of sneering, and Kate took an instant dislike to the mincing
+little man, whom she ever afterwards called the Popinjay, and so
+handled him with her tongue that his superiority was mightily shaken.
+But there was good stuff in the advocate, besides some brains, and
+after a week's living in the Lodge, he forgot to wear his eye-glass,
+and let his r's out of captivity, and attempted to make love to Kate,
+which foolishness that masterful damsel brought to speedy confusion.
+It was also said that when he went back to the Parliament House, every
+one could understand what he said, and that he got two briefs in one
+week, which shows how good it is to live in an ancient house with
+honest people.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there a ghost, dad?"  They were sitting before the fire in the hall
+after dinner&mdash;Kate in her favourite posture, leaning forward and
+nursing her knee.  The veterans and I thought that she always looked at
+her best so, with her fine eyes fixed on the fire, and the light
+bringing her face into relief against the shadow.  We saw her feet
+then&mdash;one lifted a little from the ground&mdash;and V. C. declared they were
+the smallest you could find for a woman of her size.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-059"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-059.jpg" ALT="Kate in her favourite position." BORDER="2" WIDTH="344" HEIGHT="425">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 344px">
+Kate in her favourite position.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"She knows it, too," he used to say, "for when a woman has big feet she
+always keeps them tucked in below her gown.  A woman with an eight-size
+glove and feet to correspond is usually a paragon of modesty, and
+strong on women's rights."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kate's glove is number six, and I think it's a size too big," broke in
+the Colonel&mdash;we were all lying in the sun on a bank below the beeches
+at the time, and the Colonel was understood to be preparing a sermon
+for some meeting&mdash;"but it's a strong little hand, and a steady; she
+used to be able to strike a shilling in the air at revolver practice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ghost, lassie.  Oh, in the Lodge, a Carnegie ghost&mdash;not one I've ever
+heard of; so you may sleep in peace, and I 'm below if you feel lonely
+the first night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are most insulting; one would think I were a milksop.  I was
+hoping for a ghost&mdash;a white lady by choice.  Did no Carnegie murder his
+wife, for instance, through jealousy or quarrelling?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Carnegies have never quarrelled," said the General, with much
+simplicity; "you see the men have generally been away fighting, and the
+women had never time to weary of them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No woman ever wearies of a man unless he be a fool and gives in to
+her&mdash;then she grows sick of him.  Life might be wholesome, but it would
+have no smack; it would be like meat without mustard.  If a man cannot
+rule, he ought not to marry, for his wife will play the fool in some
+fashion or other like a runaway horse, and he has half the blame.  Why
+did he take the box-seat?" and Kate nodded to the fire.  "What are you
+laughing at?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps I ought to be shocked, but the thought of any one trying to
+rule you, Kit, tickles me immensely.  I have had the reins since you
+were a bairn, and you have been a handful.  You were a 'smatchit' at
+six years old, and a 'trimmie' at twelve, and you are qualifying for
+the highest rank in your class."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What may that be, pray? it seems to me that the Scottish tongue is a
+perfect treasure-house for impertinent people.  How Scots must
+congratulate themselves that they need never be at a loss when they are
+angry or even simply frank."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it comes to downright swearing, you must go to Gaelic," said the
+General, branching off.  "Donald used to be quite contemptuous of any
+slight efforts at profanity in the barrack yard, although they sickened
+me.  'Toots, Colonel; ye do not need to be troubling yourself with such
+poor little words, for they are just nothing at all, and yet the bodies
+will be saying them over and over again like parrots.  Now a Lochaber
+man could hef been saying what he wass wanting for fifteen minutes, and
+nefer hef used the same word twice, unless he had been forgetting his
+Gaelic.  It's a peautiful language, the Gaelic, when you will not be
+fery well pleased with a man.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is very good, dad, but I think we were speaking in Scotch, and
+you have not told me that nice complimentary title I am living to
+deserve.  Is 'cutty' the disreputable word? for I think I 've passed
+that rank already; it sounds quite familiar."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, it's a far more fetching word than 'cutty,' or even than 'randy'
+(scold), which you may have heard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have," replied Kate instantly, "more than once, and especially after
+I had a difference in opinion with Lieutenant Strange.  You called me
+one or two names then, dad&mdash;-in fact you were quite eloquent; but you
+know that he was a bad fellow, and that the regiment was well rid of
+him; but I 'm older now, and I have not heard my promotion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's the most vigorous word that Scots have for a particular kind of
+woman."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Describe her," demanded Kate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One who has a mind of her own," began the General, carefully, "and a
+way, too, who is not easily cowed or managed, who is not&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A fool," suggested Kate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who is not conspicuously soft in manner," pursued the General, with
+discretion, "who might even have a temper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a tame rabbit, in fact.  I understand what you are driving at, and
+I know what a model must feel when she is being painted.  And now
+kindly pluck up courage and name the picture."  And Kate leant back,
+with her hand behind her head, challenging the General&mdash;if he dared.
+"Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besom."  And he was not at all ashamed, for a Scot never uses this
+word without a ring of fondness and admiration in his voice, as of one
+who gives the world to understand that he quite disapproves of this
+audacious woman, wife or daughter of his, but is proud of her all the
+time.  It is indeed a necessity of his nature for a Scot to have husks
+of reproach containing kernels of compliment, so that he may let out
+his heart and yet preserve his character as an austere person,
+destitute of vanity and sentiment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Accept your servant's thanks, my General.  I am highly honoured."  And
+Kate made a sweeping courtesy, whereupon they both laughed merrily; and
+a log blazing up suddenly made an old Carnegie smile who had taken the
+field for Queen Mary, and was the very man to have delighted in a besom.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When I was here in June"&mdash;and the General stretched himself in a deep
+red leather chair&mdash;"I stood a while one evening watching a fair-haired,
+blue-eyed little maid who was making a daisy chain and singing to
+herself in a garden.  Her mother came out from the cottage, and, since
+she did not see me, devoured the child with eyes of love.  Then
+something came into her mind&mdash;perhaps that the good man would soon be
+home for supper; she rushed forward and seized the child, as if it had
+been caught in some act of mischief.  'Come into the hoose, this
+meenut, ye little beesom, an' say yir carritches.  What's the chief end
+o' man?'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Could she have been so accomplished at that age?" Kate inquired, with
+interest.  "Are you sure about the term of endearment?  Was the child
+visibly flattered?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She caught my eye as they passed in, and flung me a smile like one
+excusing her mother's fondness.  But Davidson hears better things, for
+as soon as he appears the younger members of a family are taken from
+their porridge and set to their devotions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'What are ye glowerin' at there, ye little cutty?  Toom (empty) yir
+mooth this meenut and say the twenty-third Psalm to the minister.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Life seems full of incident, and the women make the play.  What about
+the men?  Are they merely a chorus?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A stranger spending a week in one of our farm-houses would be ready to
+give evidence in a court of justice that he had never seen women so
+domineering or men so submissive as in Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And why?  Because the housewife who sits in church as if butter would
+n't melt in her mouth speaks with much fluency and vigour at home, and
+the man says nothing.  His normal state is doing wrong and being
+scolded from morning till night&mdash;for going out without his breakfast,
+for not cleaning his boots when he comes in, for spoiling chairs by
+sitting on them with wet clothes, for spilling his tea on the
+tablecloth, for going away to market with a dusty coat, for visiting
+the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors,
+for saying things he ought n't when he does speak&mdash;till the
+long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in
+desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation,
+'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's
+little better than a threshing-mill.'  His confusion, however, is
+neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a
+round of the farm in good heart, once or twice saying 'Sall' in a way
+that shows a lively recollection of his wife's gifts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the men love to be ruled," began Kate, with some contempt; "it
+does not give me a higher idea of the district."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait a moment, young woman, for all that goes for nothing except to
+show that the men allow the women to be supreme in one sphere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the dairy, I suppose?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps; and a very pleasant kingdom, too, as I remember it, when a
+hot, thirsty, tired laddie, who had been fishing or ferreting, was
+taken into the cool, moist, darkened place, and saw a dish of milk
+creamed for his benefit by some sonsy housewife.  Sandie and I used to
+think her omnipotent, and heard her put the gude man through his
+facings with awe, but by-and-by we noticed that her power had limits.
+When the matter had to do with anything serious, sowing or reaping or
+kirk or market, his word was law.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He said little, but it was final, and she never contradicted; it was
+rare to hear a man call his wife by name; it was usually 'gude wife,'
+and she always referred to him as the 'maister.'  And without any
+exception, these silent, reserved men were 'maister;' they had a look
+of authority."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They gave way in trifles, to rule in a crisis, which is just my idea
+of masculine government," expatiated Kate.  "A woman likes to say what
+she pleases and have her will in little things; she has her way, and if
+a man corrects her because she is inaccurate, and nags at her when she
+does anything he does not approve, then he is very foolish and very
+trying, and if she is not quite a saint, she will make him suffer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you remember Dr. Pettigrew, that prim little effigy of a man, and
+his delightful Irish wife, and how conversation used to run when he was
+within hearing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glad to have a tasting, Kit," and the General lay back in expectation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oi remember him, as foine an upstanding young officer as ye would
+wish to see, six feet in his boots.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'About five feet ten, I believe, was his exact height, my dear.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Maybe he was n't full grown then, but he was a good-looking man, and
+as pretty a rider as ever sat on a horse.  Well, he was a Warwickshire
+man&nbsp;&#8230;'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Bucks, he said himself.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'He was maybe born in both counties for all you know.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Alethea,' with a cough and reproving look.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'At any rate Oi saw him riding in a steeplechase in the spring of '67,
+at Aldershot.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It must, I think, have been '66.  We were at Gibraltar in '67.
+Please be accurate.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Bother your accuracy, for ye are driving the pigs through my story.
+Well, Oi was telling ye about the steeplechase Jimmy Brook rode.  It
+was a mile, and he had led for half, and so he was just four hundred
+yards from the post.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'A half would be eight hundred and eighty yards.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oi wish from my heart that geography, arithmetic, memory, and
+accuracy, and every other work of Satan were drowned with Moses in the
+Red Sea.  Go, for any sake, and bring me a glass of irritated water.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Capital," cried the General.  "I heard that myself, or something like
+it.  Pettigrew was a tiresome wretch, but he was devoted to his wife in
+his own way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which was enough to make a woman throw things at him, as very likely
+Alethea did when they were alone.  What a fool he was to bother about
+facts; the charm of Lithy was that she had none&mdash;dates and such like
+would have made her quite uninteresting.  The only dates I can quote
+myself are the Rebellion and the Mutiny, and I 'll add the year we came
+home.  I don't like datey women; but then it's rather cheap for one to
+say that who does n't know anything," and Kate sighed very becomingly
+at the contemplation of her ignorance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Except French, which she speaks like a Parisian," murmured the General.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's a fluke, because I was educated at the Scotch convent with
+these dear old absurd nuns who were Gordons, and Camerons, and
+Macdonalds, and did n't know a word of English."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who can manage her horse like a rough-rider," continued the General,
+counting on his finger, "and dance like a Frenchwoman, and play whist
+like a half-pay officer, and&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's not education; those are simply the accomplishments of a besom.
+You know, dad, I 've never read a word of Darwin, and I got tired of
+George Eliot and went back to Scott."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 've no education myself," said the General, ruefully, "except the
+Latin the old dominie thrashed into me; and some French which all our
+set in Scotland used to have, and&nbsp;&#8230; I can hold my own with the
+broadsword.  When I think of all those young officers know, I wonder we
+old chaps were fit for anything."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, you see, dad," and Kate began to count also, "you were made of
+steel wire, and were never ill; you could march for a day and rather
+enjoy a fight in the evening; you would go anywhere, and the men
+followed just eighteen inches behind; you always knew what the enemy
+was going to do before he did it, and you always did what he did n't
+expect you to do.  That's not half the list of your accomplishments,
+but they make a good beginning for a fighting man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be all mathematics in the future, Kit, and there will be no
+fighting at close quarters.  The officers will wear gloves and
+spectacles&mdash;but where are we now, grumbling as if we were sitting in a
+club window?  Besides, these young fellows can fight as well as pass
+exams.  You were saying that it was a shame of a man to complain of his
+wife flirting," and the General studied the ceiling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You know that I never said anything of the kind; some women are flirty
+in a nice way, just as some are booky, and some are dressy, and some
+are witty, and some are horsey; and I think a woman should be herself.
+I should say the right kind of man would be proud of his wife's strong
+point, and give her liberty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He is to have none, I suppose, but just be a foil to throw her into
+relief.  Is he to be allowed any opinions of his own?&#8230;  It looks
+hard, that cushion, Kit, and I 'm an old broken-down man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You deserve leather, for you know what I think about a man's position
+quite well.  If he allow himself to be governed by his wife in serious
+matters, he is not worth calling a man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like poor Major Macintosh."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Exactly.  What an abject he was before that woman, who was simply&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not a besom, Kate," interrupted the General, anxiously&mdash;afraid that a
+classical word was to be misused.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly not, for a besom must be nice, and at bottom a lady&mdash;in
+fact, a woman of decided character."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite so.  You 've hit the bull's-eye, Kit, and paid a neat compliment
+to yourself.  Have you a word for Mrs. Macintosh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A vulgar termagant"&mdash;the General indicated that would do&mdash;"who would
+call her husband an idiot aloud before a dinner-table, and quarrel like
+a fishwife with people in his presence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, he daren't call his soul his own; he belonged to the kirk, you
+know, and there was a Scotch padre, but she marched him off to our
+service, and if you had seen him trying to find the places in the
+Prayer-book.  If a man has n't courage enough to stand by his faith, he
+might as well go and hang himself.  Don't you think the first thing is
+to stick by your religion, and the next by your country, though it cost
+one his life?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it, lassie; every gentleman does."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She was a disgusting woman," continued Kate, "and jingling with money:
+I never saw so many precious stones wasted on one woman; they always
+reminded me of a jewel in a swine's snout."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kate!" remonstrated her father, "that's&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rather coarse, but it's her blame; and to hear Mrs. Macintosh
+calculating what each officer had&mdash;I told her we would live in a Lodge
+at home and raise our own food.  My opinion is that her father was a
+publican, and I 'm sure she had once been a Methodist."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because she was so Churchy, always talking about celebrations and
+vigils, and explaining that it was a sin to listen to a Dissenting
+chaplain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then, Kate, if your man&mdash;as they say here&mdash;tried to make you hold his
+views?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I wouldn't, and I'd hate him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if he accepted yours?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'd despise him," replied Kate, promptly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a perfect contradiction."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean I 'm a woman, and a besom, and therefore I don't pretend to
+be consistent or logical, or even fair, but I am right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then they went up the west tower to the General's room, and looked out
+on the woods and the river, and on a field of ripe corn upon the height
+across the river, flooded with the moonlight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Home at last, lassie, you and I, and another not far off, maybe."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate kissed her father, and said, "One in love, dad&nbsp;&#8230; and faith."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap06"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VI.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A PLEASAUNCE.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-070.jpg" ALT="dropcap-t" BORDER="0" WIDTH="178" HEIGHT="266">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+he General read Morning Prayers in brief, omitting the Psalms and
+lessons, and then after breakfast, with much gossip and ancient stories
+from Donald, the father and daughter went out to survey their domain,
+and though there be many larger, yet there can be few more romantic in
+the north.  That Carnegie had a fine eye and a sense of things who, out
+of all the Glen&mdash;for the Hays had little in Drumtochty in those
+days&mdash;fastened on the site of the Lodge and planted three miles of
+wood, birch and oak, and beech and ash, with the rowan tree, along the
+river that goes out and in seven times in that distance, so that his
+descendants might have a fastness for their habitation and their
+children might grow up in kindly woods on which the south sun beats
+from early spring till late autumn, and within the sight and sound of
+clean, running water.  No wonder they loved their lonely home with
+tenacious hearts, and left it only because it was in their blood to be
+fighting.  They had been out at Langside and Philiphaugh, in the '15
+and the '45, and always on the losing side.  The Lodge had never been
+long without a young widow and a fatherless lad, but family history had
+no warning for him&mdash;in fact, seemed rather to be an inspiration in the
+old way&mdash;for no sooner had the young laird loved and married than he
+would hear of another rebellion, and ride off some morning to fight for
+that ill-fated dynasty whose love was ever another name for death.
+There was always a Carnegie ready as soon as the white cockade appeared
+anywhere in Scotland, and each of the house fought like the men before
+him, save that he brought fewer at his back and had less in his pocket.
+Little was left to the General and our Kate, and then came the great
+catastrophe that lost them the Lodge, and so the race has now neither
+name nor house in Scotland, save in the vault in Drumtochty Kirk.  It
+is a question whether one is wise to revisit any place where he has
+often been in happier times and see it desolate.  For me, at least, it
+was a mistake, and the melancholy is still upon me.  The deserted house
+falling at last to pieces, the over-grown garden, the crumbling paths,
+the gaping bridges over the little burns, and the loneliness, chilled
+one's soul.  There was no money to spare in the General's time, but it
+is wonderful what one gardener, who has no hours, and works for love's
+sake, can do, even in a place that needed half a dozen.  Then he was
+assisted unofficially by Donald, who declared that working in the woods
+was "fery healthy and good for one or two small cuts I happened to get
+in India," and Kate gave herself to the garden.  The path by the river
+was kept in repair, and one never knew when Kate might appear round the
+corner.  Once I had come down from the cottage on a fine February day
+to see the snowdrops in the sheltered nooks, for there were little
+dells white as snow at that season in Tochty woods, and Kate, hearing
+that I had passed, came of her kindness to take me back to luncheon.
+She had on a jacket of sealskin that we greatly admired, and a felt hat
+with three grouse feathers on the side, and round her throat a red
+satin scarf.  The sun was shining on the bend of the path, and she came
+into the light singing "Jack o' Hazeldean," walking, as Kate ever did
+in song, with a swinging step like soldiers on a march.  It seemed to
+me that day that she was born to be the wife either of a noble or a
+soldier, and I still wish at times within my heart she were Countess of
+Kilspindie, for then the Lodge had been a fair sight to-day, and her
+father had died in his own room.  And other times I have imagined
+myself Kilspindie, who was then Lord Hay, and questioned whether I
+should have ordered Tochty to be dismantled and left a waste as it is
+this day, and would have gone away to the wars, or would not have loved
+to keep it in order for her sake, and visited it in the springtime when
+the primroses are out, and the autumn when the leaves are blood-red.
+Then I declare that Hay, being of a brave stock, and having acted as a
+man of honour&mdash;for that is known to all now&mdash;ought to have put a good
+face on his disappointment; but all the time I know one man who would
+have followed Lord Hay's suit, and who regrets that he ever again saw
+Tochty Lodge.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-072"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-072.jpg" ALT="One gardener who . . . works for love's sake." BORDER="2" WIDTH="360" HEIGHT="487">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 360px">
+One gardener who&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;. works for love's sake.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"First of all," said the General as they sallied forth, "we shall go to
+the Beeches, and see a view for which one might travel many days, and
+pay a ransom."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So they went out into the court with its draw-well, from which they
+must needs have a draught.  Suddenly the General laid down the cup like
+a man in sudden pain, for he was thinking of Cawnpore, and they passed
+quickly through the gateway and turned into a path that wound among
+great trees that had been planted, it was said, by the Carnegie who
+rode with Montrose.  They were walking on a plateau stretching out
+beyond the line of the Lodge, and therefore commanding the Glen, if one
+had eyes to see and the trees were not in the way.  Kate laid her hand
+on the General's arm beneath an ancient beech, and they stood in
+silence to receive the blessing of the place, for surely never is the
+soul so open to the voice of nature as by the side of running water and
+in the heart of a wood.  The fretted sunlight made shifting figures of
+brightness on the ground; above the innumerable leaves rustled and
+whispered; a squirrel darted along a branch and watched the intruders
+with bright, curious eyes; the rooks cawed from the distance; the
+pigeons cooed in sweet, sad cadence close at hand.  They sat down on
+the bare roots at their feet and yielded themselves to the genius of
+the forest&mdash;the god who will receive the heart torn and distracted by
+the fierce haste and unfinished labours and vain ambitions of life, and
+will lay its fever to rest and encompass it with the quietness of
+eternity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father," whispered Kate, after a while, as one wishing to share
+confidences, for there must be something to tell, "where are you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You wish to know?  Well, all day I 've been fishing down the stream,
+and am coming home, very tired, very dirty, very happy, and I meet my
+mother just outside those trees.  I am boasting of the fish that I have
+caught, none of which, I 'm sure, can be less than half a pound.  She
+is rating me for my appearance and beseeching me to keep at a distance.
+Then I go home and down into the vaulted kitchen, where Janet's mother
+gives me joyous welcome, and produces dainties saved from dinner for my
+eating.  The trouts are now at biggest only a quarter of a pound, for
+they have to be cooked as a final course, but those that were hooked
+and escaped are each a pound, except one in the hole below Lynedoch
+Bridge, which was two pounds to an ounce.  Afterwards I make a brave
+attempt to rehearse the day in the gunroom to Sandie, who first taught
+me to cast a line, and fall fast asleep, and, being shaken up, sneak
+off to bed, creeping slowly up the stair, where the light is falling,
+to the little room above yours, where, as I am falling over, I seem to
+hear my mother's voice as in this sighing of the wind.  Ah me, what a
+day it was!  And you, Kit?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, I was back in the convent with my nuns, and Sister Flora was
+trying to teach me English grammar in good French, and I was correcting
+her in bad French, and she begins to laugh because it is all so droll.
+'I am Scotch, and I teach you English all wrong, and you tell me what I
+ought to say in French which is all wrong; let us go into the garden,'
+for she was a perfect love, and always covered my faults.  I am sitting
+in the arbour, and the Sister brings a pear that has fallen.  'I do not
+think it is wicked,' she says, and I say it is simply a duty to eat up
+fallen pears, and we laugh again.  As we sit, they are singing in the
+chapel, and I hear 'Ave Maria, ora pro nobis.'  Then I think of you,
+and the tears will come to my eyes, and I try to hide my face, but the
+Sister understands and comforts me.  'Your father is a gallant
+gentleman, and the good God pities you, and will keep him in danger,'
+and I fondle the Sister, and wonder whether any more pears have fallen.
+How peaceful it is within that high wall, which is rough and forbidding
+outside, but inside it is hung with greenery, and among the leaves I
+see pears and peaches.  But I missed you, dad," and Kate touched her
+father, for they had a habit of just touching each other gently when
+together.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you really think we have been in India, and that you have a dozen
+medals, and I am&nbsp;&#8230; an old maid?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly not, Kit, a mere invention&mdash;we are boy and girl, and&nbsp;&#8230;
+we 'll go on to the view."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Suddenly they came out from the shade into a narrow lane of light,
+where some one of the former time, with an eye and a soul, had cleared
+a passage among the trees, so that one standing at the inner end and
+looking outwards could see the whole Glen, while the outstretched
+branches of the beeches shaded his eyes.  Morning in the summer-time
+about five o'clock was a favourable hour, because one might see the
+last mists lift, and the sun light up the face of Ben Urtach, and
+evening-tide was better, because the Glen showed wonderfully tender in
+the soft light, and the Grampians were covered with glory.  But it was
+best to take your first view towards noon, for then you could trace the
+Tochty upwards as it appeared and reappeared, till it was lost in woods
+at the foot of Glen Urtach, with every spot of interest on either side.
+Below the kirk it ran broad and shallow, with a bank of brushwood on
+one side and a meadow on the other, fringed with low bushes from behind
+which it was possible to drop a fly with some prospects of success,
+while in quite unprotected situations the Drumtochty fish laughed at
+the tempter, and departed with contemptuous whisks of the tail.  Above
+the haughs was a little mill, where flax was once spun and its lade
+still remained, running between the Tochty and the steep banks down
+which the glen descended to the river.  Opposite this mill the Tochty
+ran with strength, escaping from the narrows of the bridge, and there
+it was that Weelum MacLure drove across Sir George in safety, because
+the bridge was not for use that day.  Whether that bridge was really
+built by Marshall Wade in his great work of pacifying the Highlands is
+very far from certain, but Drumtochty did not relish any trifling with
+its traditions, and had a wonderful pride in its solitary bridge, as
+well it might, since from the Beeches nothing could well be more
+picturesque.  Its plan came nearly to an inverted V, and the apex was
+just long enough to allow the horses to rest after the ascent, before
+they precipitated themselves down the other side.  During that time the
+driver leant on the ledge, and let his eye run down the river, taking
+in the Parish Kirk above and settling on the Lodge, just able to be
+seen among the trees where the Tochty below turned round the bend.
+What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you
+might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis.  The bridge
+stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising,
+unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch
+and abrupt descents.  One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see
+the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up,
+before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up
+the stream.  Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the
+Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the
+veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a
+little child.  And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver,
+and at last is seen no more from the beeches.  From the Tochty the eye
+makes its raids on north and south.  The dark, massy pine-woods on the
+left side of the glen are broken at intervals by fields as they
+threaten to come down upon the river, and their shelter lends an air of
+comfort and warmth to the glen.  On the right the sloping land is
+tilled from the bank above the river up to the edge of the moor that
+swells in green and purple to the foot of the northern rampart of
+mountains, but on this side also the glen here and there breaks into
+belts of fir, which fling their kindly arms round the scattered
+farm-houses, and break up the monotony of green and gold with squares
+of dark green foliage and the brown of the tall, bare trunks.  Between
+the meandering stream and the cultivated land and the woods and the
+heather and the distant hills, there was such a variety as cannot be
+often gathered into the compass of one landscape.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-079"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-079.jpg" ALT="Among the great trees." BORDER="2" WIDTH="356" HEIGHT="560">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 356px">
+Among the great trees.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"And all our own," cried Kate in exultation; "let us congratulate
+ourselves."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I only wish it were, lassie.  Why, did n't you understand we have only
+these woods and a few acres of ploughed land now?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You stupid old dad; I begin to believe that you have had no education.
+Of course the Hays have got the land, but we have the view and the joy
+of it.  This is the only place where one can say to a stranger, 'Behold
+Drumtochty,' and he will see it at a flash and at its best."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're brighter than your father, Kit, and a contented lassie to
+boot, and for that word I'll take you straight to the Pleasaunce."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a charming name; it suggests a fairy world, with all sorts of
+beautiful things and people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite right, Kit"&mdash;leading the way down to a hollow, surrounded by
+wood and facing the sun, the General opened a door in an ivy-covered
+wall&mdash;"for there is just one Pleasaunce on the earth, and that is a
+garden."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It had been a risk to raise certain people's expectations and then
+bring them into Tochty garden, for they can be satisfied with no place
+that has not a clean-shaven lawn and beds of unvarying circles,
+pyrethrum, calceolaria, and geranium, and brakes of rare roses, and
+glass-houses with orchids worth fifty pound each, which is a garden in
+high life, full of luxury, extravagance, weariness.  As Kate entered, a
+moss rose which wandered at its will caught her skirt, and the General
+cut a blossom which she fastened in her breast, and surely there is no
+flower so winsome and fragrant as this homely rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like yourself, Miss Carnegie," and the General rallied his simple wit
+for the occasion, "very sweet and true, with a thorn, too, if one
+gripped it the wrong way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereat he made believe to run, and had the better speed because there
+were no gravel walks with boxwood borders here, but alleys of old turf
+that were pleasant both to the touch and the eye.  In the centre where
+all the ways met he capitulated with honours of war, and explained that
+he had intended to compare Kate to a violet, which was her natural
+emblem, but had succumbed to the temptation of her eyes, "which make
+men wicked, Kit, with the gleam that is in them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is n't it a tangle?"  Which it was, and no one could look upon it
+without keen delight, unless he were a horticultural pedant in whom the
+appreciation of nature had been killed by parterres.  There was some
+principle of order, and even now, when the Pleasaunce is a wilderness,
+the traces can be found.  A dwarf fruit tree stood at every corner, and
+between the trees a three-foot border of flowers kept the peas and
+potatoes in their places.  But the borders were one sustained,
+elaborate, glorified disorder.  There were roses of all kinds that have
+ever gladdened poor gardens and simple hearts&mdash;yellow tea roses, moss
+roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all
+the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country
+people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple
+blossom.  Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one
+another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in
+the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and
+primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white,
+forget-me-nots and pansies, pinks and carnations, marigolds and phloxes
+of many varieties.  The confusion of colours was preposterous, and
+showed an utter want of aesthetic sense.  In fact, one may confess that
+the Lodge garden was only one degree removed from the vulgarity and
+prodigality of nature.  There was no taste, no reserve, no harmony
+about that garden.  Nature simply ran riot and played according to her
+will like a child of the former days, bursting into apple blossom and
+laburnum gold and the bloom of peas and the white strawberry flower in
+early summer, and then, later in the year, weaving garlands of blazing
+red, yellow, white, purple, round beds of stolid roots and brakes of
+currant bushes.  There was a copper beech, where the birds sang, and
+from which they raided the fruit with the skill of Highland caterans.
+The Lodge bees lived all day in this garden, save when they went to
+reinforce their sweetness from the heather bloom.  The big trees stood
+round the place and covered it from every wind except the south, and
+the sun was ever blessing it.  There was one summer-house, a mass of
+honeysuckle, and there they sat down as those that had come back to
+Eden from a wander year.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Kit?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thank God for our Pleasaunce."  And they would have stayed for hours,
+but there was one other spot that had a fascination for the General
+neither years nor wars had dulled, and he, who was the most
+matter-of-fact and romantic of men, must see and show it to his
+daughter before they ceased.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A mile and more, Kit, but through the woods and by the water all the
+way."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sometimes they went down a little ravine made by a small burn fighting
+and wearing its way for ages to the Tochty, and stood on a bridge of
+two planks and a handrail thrown over a tiny pool, where the water was
+resting on a bed of small pebbles.  The oak copse covered the sides of
+the tiny glen and met across the streamlet, and one below could see
+nothing but greenery and the glint of the waterfall where the burn
+broke into the bosky den from the bare heights above.  Other times the
+path, that allowed two to walk abreast if they wished very much and
+kept close together, would skirt the face of the high river bank, and
+if you peeped down through the foliage of the clinging trees you could
+see the Tochty running swiftly, and the overhanging branches dipping in
+their leaves.  Then the river would make a sweep and forsake its bank,
+leaving a peninsula of alluvial land between, where the geranium and
+the hyacinth and the iris grew in deep, moist soil.  One of these was
+almost clear of wood and carpeted with thick, soft turf, and the river
+beside it was broad and shining.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We shall go down here," said the General, "and I will show you
+something that I count the finest monument in Perthshire, or maybe in
+broad Scotland."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the centre of the sward, with trees just touching it with the tips
+of their branches, was a little square, with a simple weather-beaten
+railing.  And the General led Kate to the spot, and stood for a while
+in silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two young Scottish lassies, Kate, who died two hundred years ago, and
+were buried here, and this is the ballad&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'Bessie Bell and Mary Grey<BR>
+They were twa bonnie lassies,<BR>
+They biggit a hoose on yonder brae<BR>
+And theikit it ower wi' rashes.'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Then the General and Kate sat down by the river edge, and he told her
+the deathless story,&mdash;how in the plague of 1666 they fled to this
+district to escape infection; how a lover came to visit one of them and
+brought death in his kiss; how they sickened and died; how they were
+laid to rest beside the Tochty water; and generations have made their
+pilgrimage to the place, so wonderful and beautiful is love.  They
+loved, and their memory is immortal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate rested her chin on her hand and gazed at the running water, which
+continued while men and women live and love and die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He ought not to have come; it was a cowardly, selfish act, but I
+suppose," added the General, "he could not keep away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Be sure she thought none the less of him for his coming, and I think a
+woman will count life itself a small sacrifice for love," and Kate went
+over to the grave.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A thrush was singing as they turned to go, and nothing was said on the
+way home till they came near the Lodge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who can that be going in, Kate?  He seems a padre."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not know, unless it be our fellow traveller from Muirtown; but he
+has been redressing himself, and is not improved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father," and Kate stayed the General, as they crossed the threshold of
+their home, "we have seen many beautiful things to-day, for which I
+thank you; but the greatest was love."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap07"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-085.jpg" ALT="dropcap-c" BORDER="2" WIDTH="194" HEIGHT="277">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+armichael's aunt, who equipped his house, was determined on one point,
+and would not hear of a clerical housekeeper for her laddie.  Margaret
+Meiklewham&mdash;a woman of a severe countenance, and filled with the spirit
+of the Disruption&mdash;who had governed the minister of Pitscowrie till his
+decease, and had been the terror of callow young probationers, offered
+herself, and gave instances of her capability.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gin ye leave yir nephew in my hands, ye needna hae ony mair concern.
+A 'll manage him fine, an' hand him on the richt road.  Ye may lippen
+tae 't, a' wesna five and thirty year wi' Maister MacWheep for naethin'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He wes a wee fractious and self-willed at the off-go, an' wud be
+wantin' this an' that for his denner, but he sune learned tae tak' what
+wes pit afore him; an' as for gaein' oot withoot tellin' me, he wud as
+sune hae thocht o' fleein'; when he cam' in he keepit naethin' back at
+his tea.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Preachin' wes kittle wark in Pitscoorie, for the fouk were awfu'
+creetics, though they didna maybe think sae muckle o' themselves as
+Drumtochty.  A' aye githered their jidgment through the week, an' gin
+he hed made a slip meddling wi' warks or sic-like in his sermon, it wes
+pit richt next Sabbath, and sovereignty whuppit in at the feenish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye ken the Auld Kirk hes tae be watchit like a cat wi' a moose, an'
+though a' say it as sudna, Maister MacWheep wud hae made a puir job o'
+the business himsel'.  The pairish meenister wes terrible plausible,
+an' askit oor man tae denner afore he wes settled in his poopit, an' he
+wes that simple, he wud hae gaen," and Margaret indicated by an
+uplifting of her eyebrows the pitiable innocence of MacWheep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye guidit him, nae doot?" inquired Carmichael's aunt, with interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Maister MacWheep,' says I," and Miss Meiklewham's lips were very
+firm, "'a 'll no deny that the Auld Kirk is Christian, an' a've never
+said that a Moderate cudna be savit, but the less trokin' (trafficking)
+ye hae wi' them the better.  There 's maybe naethin' wrang wi' a
+denner, but the next thing 'll be an exchange o' poopits, and the day
+ye dae that ye may close the Free Kirk.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And the weemen"&mdash;here the housekeeper paused as one still lost in
+amazement at the audacity with which they had waylaid the helpless
+MacWheep&mdash;"there wes ae madam in Muirtown that hed the face tae invite
+hersel' oot tae tea wi' three dochters, an' the way they wud flatter
+him on his sermons wes shamefu'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If they didna begin askin' him tae stay wi' them on Presbytery days,
+and Mrs. MacOmish hed the face tae peety him wi' naebody but a
+hoosekeeper.  He lat oot tae me though that the potatoes were as hard
+as a stone at denner, an' that he hed juist ae blanket on his bed,
+which wesna great management for four weemen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As Carmichael's aunt seemed to be more and more impressed, Margaret
+moistened her lips and rose higher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So the next time ma lady comes oot tae see the spring flowers," she
+said, "a' explained that the minister wes sae delicate that a' didna
+coont it richt for him tae change his bed, and a' thocht it wud be mair
+comfortable for him tae come hame on the Presbytery nichts, an' safer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What said she?  No a word," and Miss Meiklewham recalled the ancient
+victory with relish.  "She lookit at me, and a' lookit at her, an'
+naething passed; but that wes the laist time a' saw her at the manse.
+A 've hed experience, and a 'm no feared tae tak' chairge o' yir
+nephew."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael's aunt was very deferential, complimenting the eminent woman
+on her gifts and achievements, and indicating that it would be hard for
+a young Free Kirk minister to obtain a better guardian; but she had
+already made arrangements with a woman from the south, and could not
+change.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Drumtochty was amazed at her self-will, and declared by the mouth of
+Kirsty Stewart that Carmichael's aunt had flown in the face of
+Providence.  Below her gentle simplicity she was however a shrewd
+woman, and was quite determined that her nephew should not be handed
+over to the tender mercies of a clerical housekeeper, who is said to be
+a heavier yoke than the Confession of Faith, for there be clever ways
+of escape from confessions, but none from Margaret Meiklewham; and
+while all the churches are busy every year in explaining that their
+Articles do not mean what they say, Miss Meiklewham had a snort which
+was beyond all she said, and that was not by any means restricted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John," said Carmichael's aunt, one day after they had been buying
+carpets, "I 've got a housekeeper for you that will keep you
+comfortable and can hold her tongue," but neither then nor afterwards,
+neither to her nephew nor to Drumtochty, did Carmichael's aunt tell
+where she secured Sarah.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's my secret, John," she used to say, with much roguishness, "an'
+ye maun confess that there 's ae thing ye dinna ken.  Ye 'll hae the
+best-kept manse in the Presbytery, an' ye 'll hae nae concern, sae be
+content."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Which he was, and asked no questions, so that he knew no more of Sarah
+the day she left than the night she arrived; and now he sometimes
+speculates about her history, but he has no clue.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was an event in the life of the parish, and there are those who
+speak of her unto this day with exasperation.  The new housekeeper was
+a subject of legitimate though ostentatiously veiled curiosity, and it
+was expected that a full biography by Elspeth Macfadyen would be at the
+disposal of the kirkyard, as well as the Free Kirk gate, within ten
+days of her arrival; it might even be on the following Sabbath,
+although it was felt that this was asking too much of Elspeth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was on the Friday evening Mrs. Macfadyen called, with gifts of
+butter and cream for the minister, and was received with grave, silent
+courtesy.  While they played with the weather, the visitor made a swift
+examination, and she gave the results on Sabbath for what they were
+worth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A tall, black wumman, spare an' erect, no ill-faured nor ill-made; na,
+na, a 'll alloo that; a trig, handy cummer, wi' an eye like a hawk an'
+a voice like pussy; nane o' yir gossipin', haverin', stravaigin' kind.
+He 'll be clever 'at gets onything out o' her or maks much o' a bargain
+wi' her.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sall, she 's a madam an' nae mistak'.  If that waefu', cunnin',
+tramping wratch Clockie didna come tae the door, where I was sittin',
+an' askit for the new minister.  Ye ken he used tae come an' hear
+Maister Cunningham on the principles o' the Disruption for an 'oor,
+givin' oot that he wes comin' roond tae the Free Kirk view; then he got
+his denner an' a suit o' claithes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A' mind o' Clockie gettin' five shillin's ae day," remarked Jamie
+Soutar, who was at the Free Kirk that morning; "he hed started Dr.
+Chalmers wi' the minister; Dr. Guthrie he coontit to be worth aboot
+half-a-croon; but he aince hed three shillin's oot o' the Cardross
+case.  He wes graund on the doctrine o' speeritual independence, and
+terrible drouthy; but a 'm interruptin' ye, Elspeth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'The minister is at dinner,' says she, 'and can't be disturbed; he
+sees no one at the door.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's reeligion a 'm come aboot,' says Clockie, stickin' in his foot
+tae keep the door open, 'an' a'll juist wait at the fire.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's more likely to be whisky from your breath, and you will find a
+public-house in the village; we give nothing to vagrants here.'  Then
+she closed the door on his foot, and the language he used in the yard
+wesna connectit wi' reeligion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Drumtochty admitted that this showed a woman of vigour&mdash;although our
+conventions did not allow us to treat Clockie or any known wastrel so
+masterfully&mdash;and there was an evident anxiety to hear more.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Her dress wes black an' fittit like a glove, an' wes set aff wi' a
+collar an' cuffs, an' a' saw she hedna come frae the country, so that
+wes ae thing settled; yon 's either a toon dress or maybe her ain
+makin' frae patterns.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It micht be Edinburgh or Glesgie, but a' began tae jalouse England
+aifter hearin' her hannel Clockie, sae a' watchit fur a word tae try
+her tongue."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wurk is a gude handy test," suggested Jamie; "the English hae barely
+ae r, and the Scotch hae aboot sax in 't."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wudna say 't, Jamie, though a' gied her a chance, speakin' aboot
+ae wumman daein' a'thing in the manse, sae a' fell back on church, an'
+that brocht oot the truth.  She didna say 'chich,' so she 's no English
+born, and she didna say 'churrrch,' so she 's been oot o' Scotland.  It
+wes half and between, and so a' said it wud be pleasant for her tae be
+in her ain country again, aifter livin' in the sooth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her hearers indicated that Elspeth had not fallen beneath herself, and
+began to wonder how a woman who had lived in London would fit into
+Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What div ye think she said tae me?"  Then Drumtochty understood that
+there had been an incident, and that Elspeth as a conversationalist, if
+not as a raconteur, had found her equal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'You are very kind to think of my movements, but'"&mdash;and here Mrs.
+Macfadyen spoke very slowly&mdash;"'I'm afraid they don't teach home
+geography at your school.  Paisley is not out of Scotland.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye've met yir match, Elspeth," said Jamie, with a hoarse chuckle, and
+the situation was apparent to all.  It was evident that the new
+housekeeper was minded to hide her past, and the choice of her last
+residence was a stroke of diabolical genius.  Paisley is an ancient
+town inhabited by a virtuous and industrious people, who used to make
+shawls and now spin thread, and the atmosphere is so literary that it
+is believed every tenth man is a poet.  Yet people do not boast of
+having been born there, and natives will pretend they came from
+Greenock.  No one can mention Paisley without a smile, and yet no one
+can say what amused him.  Certain names are the source of perennial
+laughter, in which their inhabitants join doubtfully, as persons not
+sure whether to be proud or angry.  They generally end in an apology,
+while the public, grasping vaguely at the purpose of such a place,
+settle on it every good tale that is going about the world unprovided
+for and fatherless.  So a name comes to be bathed in the ridiculous,
+and a mere reference to it passes for a stroke of supreme felicity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Paisley"&mdash;Jamie again tasted the idea&mdash;"she 'll be an acqueesition tae
+the Glen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Sarah's first stroke of character to arrive without
+notice&mdash;having utterly baffled Peter at the Junction&mdash;and to be in
+complete possession of the manse on the return of Carmichael and his
+aunt from pastoral visits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sarah," cried the old lady in amazement at the sight of the
+housekeeper in full uniform, calm and self-possessed, as one having
+been years in this place, "when did ye come?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two hours ago, m'am, and I think I understand the house.  Shall I
+bring tea into the dining-room, or would you rather have it in the
+study?"  But she did not once glance past his aunt to Carmichael, who
+was gazing in silence at this composed young woman in the doorway.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is Sarah, John, who hes come to keep yir house," and his aunt
+stepped back.  "Sarah, this is my dear laddie, the minister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps because her eyes were of a flashing black that pierced one like
+a steel blade, Sarah usually looked down in speaking to you, but now
+she gave Carmichael one swift, comprehensive look that judged him soul
+and body, then her eyes fell, and her face, always too hard and keen,
+softened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will try, sir, to make you comfortable, and you will tell me
+anything that is wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You took us by surprise, Sarah," and Carmichael, after his hearty
+fashion, seized his housekeeper's hand; "let me bid you welcome to the
+manse.  I hope you will be happy here, and not feel lonely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+But the housekeeper only bowed, and turned to his aunt.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dinner at six?  As you were not in, and it did not seem any use
+consulting the woman that was here, I am preparing for that hour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, ye see, Sarah, we have just been taking tea, with something to
+it, but if&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gentlemen prefer evening dinner, ma'am."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite right, Sarah," burst in Carmichael in great glee; "tea-dinner is
+the most loathsome meal ever invented, and we 'll never have it in the
+Free Manse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is an admirable woman, auntie," as Sarah disappeared, "with sound
+views on important subjects.  I 'll never ask again where she came
+from; she is her own testimonial."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mauna be extravagant, John; Sarah hes never seen a manse before,
+and I must tell her not to&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ruin me, do you mean, by ten courses every evening, like the dinners
+West-end philanthropists used to give our men to show them how to
+behave at table?  We 'll be very economical, only having meat twice a
+week&mdash;salt fish the other days&mdash;but it will always be dinner."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What ails you at tea-dinner, John? it's very tasty and homely."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's wicked, auntie, and has done more injury to religion than
+drinking.  No, I'm not joking&mdash;that is a childish habit&mdash;but giving
+utterance to profound truth, which ought to be proclaimed on the
+house-tops, or perhaps in the kitchens.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let me explain, and I 'll make it as plain as day&mdash;all heresy is just
+bad thinking, and that comes from bad health, and the foundation of
+health is food.  A certain number of tea-dinners would make a man into
+a Plymouth brother.  It's a mere question of time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see if a man's digestion is good he takes a cheerful view of
+things; but if he is full of bile, then he is sure that everybody is
+going to be lost except himself and his little set, and that's heresy.
+Apologetics is just dietetics; now there 's an epigram made for you on
+the spot, and you don't know what it means, so we 'll have a walk
+instead."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His aunt knew what was coming, but was too late to resist, so she was
+twice taken round the room for exercise, till she cried out for mercy,
+and was left to rest while Carmichael went out to get an appetite for
+that dinner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nothing was said during its progress, but when Sarah had finally
+departed after her first triumph, won under every adverse circumstance
+of strangeness and limited resources, Carmichael took his aunt's hand
+and kissed it.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is an illuminated address you deserve, auntie, for such a paragon;
+as it is, I shall be the benefactor of a Presbytery, asking the men up
+by turns on fast-days, and sending them home speechless with
+satisfaction."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sarah was always a clever woman; if she had only&mdash;"  But Carmichael
+heard not, in his boyish excitement of householding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Clever is a cold word for such genius.  Mark my words, there is not a
+manse in Perthshire that shall not sound with the praise of Sarah.  I
+vow perpetual celibacy on the spot.  No man would dream of marrying
+that had the privilege of such a housekeeper."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 're a silly laddie, John; but some day a fair face will change a'
+yer life, an' if she be a good wumman like your mother, I 'll thank
+God."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No woman can be compared with her," and the minister sobered.  "You
+and she have spoiled me for other women, and now you have placed me
+beyond temptation with such a cook."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it came to pass that Carmichael, who knew nothing about fine cooking
+till Sarah formed his palate with her cunning sauces, and, after all,
+cared as little what he ate as any other healthy young man, boasted of
+his housekeeper continually by skilful allusions, till the honest wives
+of his fathers and brethren were outraged and grew feline, as any
+natural woman will if a servant is flung in her face in this
+aggravating fashion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'm glad to hear you 're so well pleased, Mr. Carmichael," Mrs.
+MacGuffie would say, who was full of advice, and fed visitors on the
+produce of her garden, "but no man knows comfort till he marries.  It's
+a chop one day and a steak the next all the year round&mdash;nothing tasty
+or appetising; and as for his shirts, most bachelors have to sew on
+their own buttons.  Ah, you all pretend to be comfortable, but I know
+better, for Mr. MacGuffie has often told me what he suffered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whereat Carmichael would rage furiously, and then, catching sight of
+MacGuffie, would bethink him of a Christian revenge.  MacGuffie was
+invited up to a day of humiliation&mdash;Sarah receiving for once <I>carte
+blanche</I>&mdash;and after he had powerfully exhorted the people from the
+words, "I am become like a bottle in the smoke," he was conducted to
+the manse in an appropriately mournful condition, and set down at the
+table.  He was inclined to dwell on the decadence of Disruption
+principles during soup, but as the dinner advanced grew wonderfully
+cheerful, and being installed in an arm-chair with a cup of decent
+coffee beside him, sighed peacefully, and said, "Mr. Carmichael, you
+have much cause for thankfulness."  Mr. MacGuffie had not come to the
+age of sixty, however, without learning something, and he only gave his
+curious spouse to understand that Carmichael had done all in his power
+to make his guest comfortable, and was not responsible for his
+servant's defects.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-096"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-096.jpg" ALT="&quot;Mr. Carmichael, you have much cause for thankfulness.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="294" HEIGHT="460">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 294px">
+&quot;Mr. Carmichael, you have much cause for thankfulness.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Ladies coming with their husbands to visit the manse, conceived a
+prejudice against Sarah on the general ground of dislike to all
+housekeepers as a class of servants outside of any mistress's control,
+and therefore apt to give themselves airs, and especially because this
+one had a subtle suggestion of independent personality that was all the
+more irritating because it could not be made plain to the dull male
+intelligence, which was sadly deceived.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What a lucky man Carmichael is on his first venture!"  Even Dr.
+Dowbiggin, of St. Columba's, Muirtown, grew enthusiastic to his wife in
+the privacy of their bedchamber on a sacramental visit, and every one
+knows that the Doctor was a responsible man, ministering to four
+bailies and making "overtures" to the Assembly, beginning with
+"Whereas" and ending with "Venerable House."  "I am extremely pleased
+to see&nbsp;&#8230; everything so nice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean, James, that you have had a good dinner, far too ambitious
+for a young minister's table.  Did you ever see an entrée on a
+Disruption table, or dessert with finger glasses?  I call it
+sinful&mdash;for the minister of Drumtochty, at least; and I don't believe
+he was ever accustomed to such ways.  If she attended to his clothes,
+it would set her better than cooking French dishes.  Did you notice the
+coat he was wearing at the station?&mdash;just like a gamekeeper.  But it is
+easy for a woman to satisfy a man; give him something nice to eat, and
+he 'll ask no more."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So far as my recollection serves me, Maria"&mdash;the Doctor was ruffled,
+and fell into his public style&mdash;"I made no reference to food, cooked or
+uncooked, and perhaps I may be allowed to say that it is not a subject
+one thinks of&nbsp;&#8230; at such seasons.  What gave me much satisfaction
+was to see one of our manses so presentable; as regards the
+housekeeper, so far as I had an opportunity of observing, she seemed a
+very capable woman indeed," and the Doctor gave one of his coughs,
+which were found most conclusive in debate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's easy to be a man's servant," retorted Mrs. Dowbiggin, removing a
+vase of flowers from the dressing-table with contempt, "for they never
+look below the surface.  Did you notice her hands, as white and smooth
+as a lady's?  You may be sure there 's little scrubbing and brushing
+goes on in this manse."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How do you know, Maria?"&mdash;the Doctor was weakening.  "You have never
+been in the house before."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll soon see that, James, though I dare say it would never occur to
+a man to do such a thing.  Did you ever look below the bed?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never," replied the Doctor, promptly, who was not constructed to
+stoop, "and I am not going to begin after that&nbsp;&#8230; ah&nbsp;&#8230; this
+evening, with work before me to-morrow.  But I would be glad to see
+you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I have done so every night of my life for fear of robbers, and the
+dust I 've seen in strange houses&mdash;it's there you can tell a good
+servant," and Mrs. Dowbiggin nodded with an air of great sagacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well," demanded the Doctor, anxiously watching the operation, "guilty
+or not guilty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She knew what I would do.  I hate those sharp women," and then the
+Doctor grew so eloquent over uncharitable judgments and unreasonable
+prejudices that his wife denounced Sarah bitterly as a "cunning woman
+who got on the blind side of gentlemen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her popularity with Carmichael's friends was beyond question, for
+though she was a reserved woman, with no voluntary conversation, they
+all sent messages to her, inquired for her well-being at Fast-days, and
+brought her gifts of handkerchiefs, gloves, and such like.  When they
+met at Theologicals and Synods they used to talk of Sarah with
+unction&mdash;till married men were green with envy&mdash;being simple fellows
+and helpless in the hands of elderly females of the Meiklewham genus.
+For there are various arts by which a woman, in Sarah's place, wins a
+man's gratitude, and it may be admitted that one is skilful cooking.
+Sensible and book-reading men do not hunger for six courses, but they
+are critical about their toast and&nbsp;&#8230; nothing more, for that is the
+pulse.  Then a man also hates to have any fixed hour for
+breakfast&mdash;never thinking of houses where they have prayers at 7.50
+without a shudder&mdash;but a man refuses to be kept waiting five minutes
+for dinner.  If a woman will find his belongings, which he has
+scattered over three rooms and the hall, he invests her with many
+virtues, and if she packs his portmanteau, he will associate her with
+St. Theresa.  But if his hostess be inclined to discuss problems with
+him, he will receive her name with marked coldness; and if she follow
+up this trial with evil food, he will conceive a rooted dislike for
+her, and will flee her house.  So simple is a man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Sarah proposed to Carmichael that she should prepare breakfast
+after he rung for his hot water, and when he never caught a hint of
+reproach on her face though he sat up till three and came down at
+eleven, he was lifted, hardly believing that such humanity could be
+found among women, who always seem to have a time table they are
+carrying out the livelong day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The millennium is near at hand," said MacQueen, when the morning
+arrangements of the Free Kirk manse of Drumtochty were made known to
+him&mdash;MacQueen, who used to arrive without so much as a nightshirt,
+having left a trail of luggage behind him at various junctions, and has
+written books so learned that no one dares to say that he has not read
+them.  Then he placed an ounce of shag handy, and Carmichael stoked the
+fire, and they sat down, with Beaton, who could refer to the Summa of
+St. Thomas Aquinas from beginning to end, and they discussed the
+Doctrine of Scripture in the Fathers, and the formation of the Canon,
+and the authorship of the Pentateuch till two in the study.  Afterwards
+they went to MacQueen's room to hear him on the Talmud, and next
+adjourned to Beaton's room, who offered a series of twelve preliminary
+observations on the Theology of Rupert of Deutz, whereupon his host
+promptly put out his candle, leaving that man of supernatural memory to
+go to bed in the dark; and as Carmichael pulled up the blind in his own
+room, the day was breaking and a blackbird had begun to sing.  Next
+afternoon Beaton had resumed his observations on Rupert, but now they
+were lying among the heather on the side of Glen Urtach, and Carmichael
+was asleep, while MacQueen was thinking that they would have a good
+appetite for dinner that evening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Sarah had only one fault to find with her master, and that was his
+Bohemian dress; but since it pleased him to go one button less through
+studied carelessness, she let him have his way; and as for everything
+else, she kept her word to his aunt, and saw that he wanted for
+nothing, serving him with perpetual thoughtfulness and swift capacity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Little passed between them except a good-natured word or two from him
+and her courteous answer, but she could read him as a book, and when he
+came home that day from Muirtown she saw he was changed.  He was
+slightly flushed, and he could not sit still, wandering in and out his
+study till dinner-time.  He allowed the soup to cool, and when she came
+in with sweets he had barely touched his cutlet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the sauce you like, sir," with some reproach in her voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So it is, Sarah&mdash;and first rate."  Then he added suddenly, "Can you
+put a button on this coat to-night, and give it a good brush?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In the evening Sarah went down to post a letter, and heard the talk,
+how Miss Carnegie had come home with the General, and was worthy of her
+house; how the minister also had driven up with her from Muirtown; and
+on her return she did her best by the coat, handling it very kindly,
+and singing softly to herself "Robin Adair."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Next morning he came down in his blacks&mdash;the worst-made suit ever seen
+on a man, ordered to help a village tailor at his home&mdash;and announced
+his intention of starting after lunch for Saunderson's manse, beyond
+Tochty woods, where he would stay all night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He will call on the way down, and, if he can, coming back," Sarah said
+to herself, as she watched him go, "but it's a pity he should go in
+such a coat; it might have been put together with a pitchfork.  It only
+makes the difference greater, and 't is wider than he knows already.
+And yet a woman can marry beneath her without loss; but for a man it is
+ruin."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She went up to his room and made it neat, which was ever in disorder on
+his leaving, and then she went to a western window and looked into the
+far distance.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap08"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER VIII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-102.jpg" ALT="dropcap-e" BORDER="0" WIDTH="209" HEIGHT="293">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+very Sabbath at eleven o'clock, or as soon thereafter as the people
+were seated&mdash;consideration was always shown to distant figures coming
+down from the high glen&mdash;Carmichael held what might be called High Mass
+in the Free Kirk.  Nothing was used in praise but the Psalms of David,
+with an occasional Paraphrase sanctioned by usage and sound teaching.
+The prayers were expected to be elaborate in expression and careful in
+statement, and it was then that they prayed for the Queen and Houses of
+Parliament.  And the sermon was the event to which the efforts of the
+minister and the thoughts of the people had been moving for the whole
+week.  No person was absent except through sore sickness or urgent farm
+duty; nor did rain or snow reduce the congregation by more than ten
+people, very old or very young.  Carmichael is now minister of a West
+End kirk, and, it is freely rumoured in Drumtochty, has preached before
+Lords of Session; but he has never been more nervous than facing that
+handful of quiet, impenetrable, critical faces in his first kirk.  When
+the service was over, the people broke into little bands that
+disappeared along the west road, and over the moor, and across the
+Tochty.  Carmichael knew each one was reviewing his sermon head by
+head, and, pacing his garden, he remembered the missing points with
+dismay.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the custom of the Free Kirk minister to go far afield of a
+summer evening, and to hold informal services in distant parts of the
+parish.  This was the joy of the day to him, who was really very young
+and hated all conventionalities even unto affectation.  He was never
+weary of complaining that he had to wear a gown, which was continually
+falling back and being hitched over with impatient motions, and the
+bands, which he could never tie, and were, he explained to a horrified
+beadle in Muirtown, an invention of Satan to disturb the preacher's
+soul before his work.  Once, indeed, he dared to appear without his
+trappings, on the plea of heat, but the visible dismay and sorrow of
+the people was so great&mdash;some failing to find the Psalm till the first
+verse had been sung&mdash;that he perspired freely and forgot the middle
+head of his discourse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a mercy," remarked Mrs. Macfadyen to Burnbrae afterward, "that he
+didna play that trick when there wes a bairn tae be baptised.  It wudna
+hae been lichtsome for its fouk; a'body wants a properly ordained
+minister.  Ye 'll gie him a hint, Burnbrae, for he's young and
+fordersome (rash), but gude stuff for a' his pliskies (frolics)."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one would have liked to see the sacred robes in the places of
+evening worship, and Carmichael threw all forms to the winds&mdash;only
+drawing the line, with great regret and some searchings of heart, at
+his tweed jacket.  His address for these summer evening gatherings he
+studied as he went through the fragrant pine woods or over the moor by
+springy paths that twisted through the heather, or along near cuts that
+meant leaping little burns and climbing dykes whose top stones were apt
+to follow your heels with embarrassing attachment.  Here and there the
+minister would stop as a trout leapt in a pool, or a flock of wild duck
+crossed the sky to Loch Sheuchie, or the cattle thrust inquisitive
+noses through some hedge, as a student snatches a mouthful from some
+book in passing.  For these walks were his best study; when thinking of
+his people in their goodness and simplicity, and touched by nature at
+her gentlest, he was freed from many vain ideas of the schools and from
+artificial learning, and heard the Galilean speak as He used to do
+among the fields of corn.  He came on people going in the same
+direction, but they only saluted, refraining even from the weather,
+since the minister's thoughts must not be disturbed, and they were
+amazed to notice, that he stooped to pluck a violet in the wood.  His
+host would come a little way to meet him and explain the arrangements
+that had been made for a kirk.  Sometimes the meeting-place was the
+granary of the farm, with floor swept clean and the wooden shutters
+opened for light, where the minister preached against a mixed
+background of fanners, corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare
+implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a
+ladder cautiously like hens going to roost&mdash;being severally warned
+about the second highest step&mdash;sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards
+resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated
+with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor.  It was
+pleasanter in the barn, a cool, lofty, not unimpressive place of
+worship, with its mass of golden straw and its open door through which
+various kindly sounds of farm life came in and strange visitors
+entered.  The collies, most sociable of animals, would saunter in and
+make friendly advances to Carmichael reading a chapter; then, catching
+their master's eye and detecting no encouragement, would suddenly
+realise that they were at kirk, and compose themselves to sleep&mdash;"juist
+like ony Christian," as Hillocks once remarked with envy, his own plank
+allowing no liberties&mdash;and never taking any part except in a hymn like
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"See the mighty host advancing,<BR>
+<SPAN STYLE="margin-left: 1em">Satan leading on,"</SPAN><BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+which they regarded as recreation rather than worship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was also recalled for years that a pet lamb came into Donald
+Menzies's barn and wandered about for a while, and Carmichael told that
+pretty legend of St. Francis, how he saw a white lamb among the kids,
+and burst into tears at the sight, because it reminded him of Jesus
+among the sinners.  Indeed, these services were very extemporaneous,
+with hymns instead of psalms, and sermons without divisions.
+Carmichael also allowed himself illustrations from the life around, and
+even an anecdote at a time, which was all the more keenly relished that
+it would have been considered a confession of weakness in a regular
+sermon.  He has been heard to say that he came nearer the heart of
+things once or twice in the barns than he has ever done since, not even
+excepting that famous course of sermons every one talked about last
+year, the "Analysis of Doubt," which almost converted two professors to
+Christianity, and were heard by the editor of the <I>Caledonian</I> in the
+disguise of a street preacher.  It was also pleasantly remembered for
+long in the parish that Dr. Davidson appeared one evening in Donald
+Menzies's barn and joined affably in the "Sweet By-and-Bye."
+Afterward, being supplied with a large arm-chair, he heard the address
+with much attention&mdash;nodding approval four times, if not five&mdash;and
+pronouncing the benediction with such impressiveness that Donald felt
+some hesitation in thrashing his last stack in the place next day.  The
+Doctor followed up this visit with an exhortation from the pulpit on
+the following Sabbath, in which he carefully distinguished such
+services by an ordained minister, although held in a barn, from
+unlicensed Plymouthistic gatherings held in corn rooms&mdash;this at
+Milton's amateur efforts&mdash;and advised his people in each district to
+avail themselves of "my friend Mr. Carmichael's excellent
+ministrations," which Papal Bull, being distributed to the furthest
+corner of the parish before nightfall, greatly lifted the Free Kirk and
+sweetened the blood of the Glen for years.  It seemed to me, watching
+things in Drumtochty during those days with an impartial mind, that the
+Doctor, with his care for the poor, his sympathy for the oppressed, his
+interest in everything human, his shrewd practical wisdom, and his wide
+toleration, was the very ideal of the parish clergyman.  He showed me
+much courtesy while I lived in the Cottage, although I did not belong
+to his communion, and as my imagination reconstructs the old parish of
+a winter night by the fire, I miss him as he used to be on the road, in
+the people's homes, in his pulpit, among his books&mdash;ever an honourable
+and kind-hearted gentleman.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One evening a woman came into Donald Menzies's barn just before the
+hour of service, elderly, most careful in her widow's dress, somewhat
+austere in expression, but very courteous in her manner.  No one
+recognised her at the time, but she was suspected to be the forerunner
+of the Carnegie household, and Donald offered her a front seat.  She
+thanked him for his good-will, but asked for a lower place, greatly
+delighting him by a reference to the parable wherein the Master rebuked
+the ambitious Pharisees who scrambled for chief seats.  Their accent
+showed of what blood they both were, and that their Gaelic had still
+been mercifully left them, but they did not use it because of their
+perfect breeding, which taught them not to speak a foreign tongue in
+this place.  So the people saw Donald offer her a hymn-book and heard
+her reply:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It iss not a book that I will be using, and it will be a peety to take
+it from other people;" nor would she stand at the singing, but sat very
+rigid and with closed lips.  When Carmichael, who had a pleasant tenor
+voice and a good ear, sang a solo, then much tasted in such meetings,
+she arose and left the place, and the minister thought he had never
+seen anything more uncompromising than her pale set face.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-108"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-108.jpg" ALT="Carmichael sang a solo." BORDER="2" WIDTH="535" HEIGHT="341">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 535px">
+Carmichael sang a solo.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+It was evident that she was Free Kirk and of the Highland persuasion,
+which was once over-praised and then has been over-blamed, but is never
+understood by the Lowland mind; and as Carmichael found that she had
+come to live in a cottage at the entrance to the Lodge, he looked in on
+his way home.  She was sitting at a table reading the Bible, and her
+face was more hostile than in the meeting; but she received him with
+much politeness, dusting a chair and praying him to be seated.  "You
+have just come to the district to reside, I think?  I hope you will
+like our Glen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wass here that I lived long ago, but I hef been married and away
+with my mistress many years, and there are not many that will know me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But you are not of Drumtochty blood?" inquired the minister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There iss not one drop of Sassenach blood in my veins"&mdash;this with a
+sudden flash.  "I am a Macpherson and my husband wass a Macpherson; but
+we hef served the house of Carnegie for four generations."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a widow, I think, Mrs. Macpherson?" and Carmichael's voice
+took a tone of sympathy.  "Have you any children?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My husband iss dead, and I had one son, and he iss dead also; that iss
+all, and I am alone;" but in her voice there was no weakening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you let me say how sorry I am?" pleaded Carmichael, "this is a
+great grief, but I hope you have consolations."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I will be having many consolations; they both died like brave men
+with their face to the enemy.  There were six that did not feel fery
+well before Ian fell; he could do good work with the sword as well as
+the bayonet, and he wass not bad with the dirk at a time."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Neither this woman nor her house were like anything in Drumtochty, for
+in it there was a buffet for dishes, and a carved chest and a large
+chair, all of old black oak; and above the mantelpiece two broadswords
+were crossed, with a circle of war medals beneath on a velvet ground,
+flanked by two old pistols.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I suppose those arms have belonged to your people, Mrs. Macpherson;
+may I look at them?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are not anything to be admiring, and it wass not manners that I
+should hef been boasting of my men.  It iss a pleasant evening and good
+for walking."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You were at the meeting, I think?" and Carmichael tried to get nearer
+this iron woman.  "We were sorry you had to go out before the end.  Did
+you not feel at home?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I will not be accustomed to the theatre, and I am not liking it
+instead of the church."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But surely there was nothing worse in my singing alone than praying
+alone?" and Carmichael began to argue like a Scotsman, who always
+fancies that people can be convinced by logic, and forgets that many
+people, Celts in especial, are ruled by their heart and not by their
+head; "do you see anything wrong in one praising God aloud in a hymn,
+as the Virgin Mary did?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It iss the Virgin Mary you will be coming to next, no doubt, and the
+Cross and the Mass, like the Catholics, although I am not saying
+anything against them, for my mother's cousins four times removed were
+Catholics, and fery good people.  But I am a Presbyterian, and do not
+want the Virgin Mary."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael learned at that moment what it was to argue with a woman,
+and he was to make more discoveries in that department before he came
+to terms with the sex, and would have left in despair had it not been
+for an inspiration of his good angel.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Mrs. Macpherson, I did n't come to argue about hymns, but to bid
+you welcome to the Glen and to ask for a glass of water, for preaching
+is thirsty work."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It iss black shame I am crying on myself for sitting here and offering
+you neither meat nor drink," and she was stung with regret in an
+instant.  "It iss a little spirits you will be tasting, and this iss
+Talisker which I will be keeping for a friend, for whisky iss not for
+women."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was full of attention, but when Carmichael took milk instead of
+whisky, her suspicions revived, and she eyed him again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are not one of those new people I am hearing of in the Lowlands
+that are wiser than the fery Apostles?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What people?" and Carmichael trembled for his new position.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Total abstainers' they will call themselves," and the contempt in her
+accent was wonderful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I am not," Carmichael hastened to reassure his hostess; "but there
+are worse people than abstainers in the world, and it would be better
+if we had a few more.  I will stick to the milk, if you please."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will take what you please," and she was again mollified; "but the
+great ministers always had their tasting after preaching; and I hef
+heard one of them say that it wass a sin to despise the Lord's mercies.
+You will be taking another glass of milk and resting a little."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This hospitality reminds me of my mother, Mrs. Macpherson."
+Carmichael was still inspired, and was, indeed, now in full sail.  "She
+was a Highland woman, and had the Gaelic.  She sometimes called me Ian
+instead of John."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"When you wass preaching about the shepherd finding the sheep, I wass
+wondering how you had the way to the heart, and I might have been
+thinking, oh yes, I might hef known"&mdash;all the time Janet was ever
+bringing something new out of the cupboard, though Carmichael only
+sipped the milk.  "And what wass your mother's name?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Farquharson; her people came from Braemar; but they are all dead now,
+and I am the last of the race."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A good clan," cried Janet, in great spirits, "and a loyal; they were
+out with the Macphersons in the '45.  Will you happen to know whether
+your ancestor suffered?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That he did, for he shot an English officer dead on his doorstep, and
+had to flee the country; it was not a pretty deed."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had the officer broken bread with him?" inquired Janet, anxiously.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, he had come to quarter himself and his men on him, and said
+something rude about the Prince."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your ancestor gave him back his word like a gentleman; but he would
+maybe hef to stay away for a while.  Wass he of the chief's blood?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh no, just a little laird, and he lost his bit of land, and we never
+saw the place again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He would be a Dunniewassal, and proud it iss I am to see you in my
+house; and the Gaelic, will you hef some words?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Just the sound of it, Mrs. Macpherson," and he repeated his three
+sentences, all that he had learned of his mother, who had become a
+Scotswoman in her speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Call me Janet, my dear; and it iss the good Gaelic your mother must
+have had, and it makes my heart glad to think my minister iss a
+Farquharson, by the mother's side."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We sing nothing but Psalms at church, Mrs.&nbsp;&#8230; Janet, so you will
+be pleased, and we stand to pray and sit to sing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tuts, tuts, I am not minding about a bit hime at a time from a friend,
+but it iss those Lowlanders meddling with everything I do not like, and
+I am hoping to hear you sing again, for it wass a fery pretty tune;"
+and the smith, passing along the road when Carmichael left that
+evening, heard Janet call him "my dear," and invoke a thousand
+blessings on his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he called again in the end of the week to cement the alliance and
+secure her presence on Sabbath, Janet was polishing the swords, and was
+willing enough to give their history.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This wass my great-grandfather's, and these two nicks in the blade
+were made on the dragoons at Prestonpans; and this wass my husband's
+sword, for he wass sergeant-major before he died, a fery brave man,
+good at the fighting and the praying too.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe I am wrong, and I do not know what you may be thinking, but
+things come into my mind when I am reading the Bible, and I will be
+considering that it wass maybe not so good that the Apostles were
+fishing people."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What ails you at fishermen, Janet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing at all but one thing; they are clever at their nets and at
+religion, but I am not hearing that they can play with the sword or the
+dirk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wass a fery good intention that Peter had that night, no doubt, and
+I will be liking him for it when he took his sword to the policeman,
+but it wass a mighty poor blow.  If Ian or his father had got as near
+as that, it would not have been an ear that would have been missing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps his head," suggested Carmichael.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He would not have been putting his nose into honest people's business
+again, at any rate," and Janet nodded her head as one who could see a
+downright blow that left no regrets; "it hass always made me ashamed to
+read about that ear.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wass not possible, and it iss maybe no good speaking about it
+now"&mdash;Janet felt she had a minister now she could open her mind
+to&mdash;"but it would hef been better if our Lord could hef had twelve
+Macphersons for His Apostles."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean they would have been more brave and faithful?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 'wass a price of six thousand pounds, or it might be four, put
+on Cluny's head after Culloden, and the English soldiers were all up
+and down the country, but I am not hearing that any clansman betrayed
+his chief.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thirty pieces of silver wass a fery small reward for such a dirty
+deed, and him one of the Chief's tail too; it wass a mistake to be
+trusting to fisher folk instead of Glen's men.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There iss something I hef wished," concluded Janet, who seemed to have
+given her mind to the whole incident, "that Peter or some other man had
+drawn his skean-dhu and slippit it quietly into Judas.  We would hef
+been respecting him fery much to-day, and it would hef been a good
+lesson&mdash;oh yes, a fery good lesson&mdash;to all traitors."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As they got more confidential, Janet began to speak of signs and
+dreams, and Carmichael asked her if she had the second sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No; it iss not a lie I will be telling you, my dear, nor will I be
+boasting.  I have not got it, nor had my mother, but she heard sounds,
+oh yes, and knew what wass coming to pass.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Janet,' she would say, 'I have heard the knock three times at the
+head of the bed; it will be your Uncle Alister, and I must go to see
+him before he dies.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And was she&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh yes, she wass in time, and he wass expecting her; and once she saw
+the shroud begin to rise on her sister, but no more; it never covered
+the face before her eyes; but the knock, oh yes, many times."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you known any one that could tell what was happening at a
+distance, and gave warning of danger?" for the latent Celt was
+awakening in Carmichael, with his love of mystery and his sense of the
+unseen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Listen, my dear"&mdash;Janet lowered her voice as one speaking of sacred
+things&mdash;"and I will tell you of Ina Macpherson, who lived to a hundred
+and two, and had the vision clear and sure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In the great war with Russia I wass staying in the clachan of my
+people, and then seven lads of our blood were with the Black Watch, and
+every Sabbath the minister would pray for them and the rest of the lads
+from Badenoch that were away at the fighting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One day Ina came into my sister's house, and she said, 'It iss danger
+that I am seeing,' and my heart stood still in my bosom for fear that
+it wass my own man Hamish.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'No,' and she looked at me, 'not yet, and not to-day,' but more she
+would not say about him.  'Is it my son Ronald?' my sister cried, and
+Ina only looked before her.  'It's a sore travail, and round a few
+black tartans I see many men in grey, pressing them hard; ochone,
+ochone.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It 's time to pray,' I said, and there wass a man in the clachan that
+wass mighty in prayer, and we gathered into his kitchen, four and
+twenty women and four men, and every one had a kinsman in the field.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It iss this minute that I hear Dugald crying to the Almighty,
+'Remember our lads, and be their help in the day of battle, and give
+them the necks of their enemies,' and he might be wrestling for half an
+hour, when Ina rose from her knees and said, 'The prayer is answered,
+for the tartans have the field, and I see blood on Ronald, but it is
+not his own.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And did you ever hear&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Wait, my dear, and I will tell you, for the letter came from my
+nephew, and this is what he wrote:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It wass three to one, and the gloom came on me, for I thought that I
+would never see Glenfeshie again, nor the water of the loch, nor the
+deer on the side of the hill.  Then I wass suddenly strengthened with
+all might in the inner man, and it iss five Russians that I hef killed
+to my own hands.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And so it wass, and a letter came from his captain, who wass of
+Cluny's blood, and it will be read in church, and a fery proud woman
+wass my sister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+These were the stories that Janet told to her minister in the days
+before the Carnegies came home, as well as afterwards, and so she
+prepared him to be an easier prey to a soldier's daughter.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap09"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER IX.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-117.jpg" ALT="dropcap-t" BORDER="0" WIDTH="190" HEIGHT="273">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+hey met under the arch of the gate, and Carmichael returned with the
+Carnegies, Kate making much of him and insisting that he should stay to
+luncheon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are our first visitor, Mr. Carmichael, and the General says that
+we need not expect more than six, so we mean to be very kind to them.
+Do you live far from here?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite near&mdash;just two miles west.  I happened to be passing; in fact, I
+'m going down to the next parish, and I&nbsp;&#8230; I thought that I would
+like to call and&nbsp;&#8230; and bid you welcome;" for Carmichael had not yet
+learned the art of conversation, which stands mainly in touching
+details lightly and avoiding the letter I.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is very cruel of you to be so honest and dispel our flattering
+illusions"&mdash;Kate marvelled at his mendacity&mdash;"we supposed you had come
+'anes errand'&mdash;I'm picking up Scotch&mdash;to call on your new neighbours.
+Does the high road pass the Lodge?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh no; the road is eight miles further; but the Drumtochty people take
+the near way through the woods; it's also much prettier.  I hope you
+will not forbid us, General? two people a week is all the traffic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forbid them&mdash;not I," said Carnegie, laughing.  "A man is not born and
+bred in this parish without learning some sense.  It would be a right
+of way case, and Drumtochty would follow me from court to court, and
+would never rest till they had gained or we were all ruined.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has it ever struck you, Mr. Carmichael, that one of the differences
+between a Highlander and a Scot is that each has got a pet enjoyment?
+With the one it's a feud, and with the other it's a lawsuit.  A Scot
+dearly loves a 'ganging plea.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no; Tochty woods will be open so long as Kate and I have anything
+to say in the matter.  The Glen and our people have not had the same
+politics, but we 've lived at peace, as neighbours ought to do, with
+never a lawsuit even to give a fillip to life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So you see, Mr. Carmichael," said Kate, "you may come and go at all
+times through our territory; but it would be bare courtesy to call at
+the Lodge for afternoon tea."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Or tiffin," suggested the General; "and we can always offer curry, as
+you see.  My daughter has a capital recipe she wiled out of an old
+Hindoo rascal that cooked for our mess.  You really need not take it on
+that account," as Carmichael was doing his best in much misery; "it is
+only meant to keep old Indians in fair humour&mdash;not to be a test of good
+manners.  By the way, Janet has been sounding your praises, how have
+you won her heart?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, very easily&mdash;by having some drops of Highland blood in my veins;
+and so I am forgiven all my faults, and am credited with all sorts of
+excellences."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then the Highlanders are as clannish as ever," cried the General.
+"Scotland has changed so much in the last half century that the
+Highlanders might have become quite unsentimental and matter-of-fact.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lowland civilisation only crossed the Highland line after '45, and it
+will take more than a hundred and thirty years to recast a Celt.
+Scottish education and theology are only a veneer on him, and below he
+has all his old instincts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So far as I can make out, a Celt will rather fish than plough, and be
+a gamekeeper than a workman; but if he be free to follow his own way, a
+genuine Highlander would rather be a soldier than anything else under
+the sun."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What better could a man be?" and Kate's eyes sparkled; "they must envy
+the old times when their fathers raided the Lowlands and came home with
+the booty.  It's a pity everybody is so respectable now, don't you
+think?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly the police are very meddlesome," and Carmichael now devoted
+himself to Kate, without pretence of including the General; "but the
+spirit is not dead.  A Celt is the child of generations of
+cattle-stealers, and the raiding spirit is still in the blood.  May I
+offer an anecdote?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Six, if you have got so many, and they are all about Highlanders," and
+Kate leant forward and nursed her knee, for they had gone into the
+library.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Last week I was passing the cattle market in Edinburgh, and a big
+Highland drover stopped me, begging for a little money.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It iss from Lochaber I hef come with some beasties, and to-morrow I
+will be walking back all the way, and it iss this night I hef no bed.
+I wass considering that the gardens would be a good place for a night,
+but they are telling me that the police will be disturbing me.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He looked so simple and honest that I gave him half-a-crown and said
+that I was half a Highlander.  I have three Gaelic sentences, and I
+reeled them off with my best accent.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Got forgive me,' he said, 'for thinking you to be a Sassenach body,
+and taking your money from you.  You are a fery well-made man, and here
+iss your silver piece, and may you always hef one in your pocket.'"
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-121"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-121.jpg" ALT="&quot;Here is your silver piece.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="342" HEIGHT="589">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 342px">
+&quot;Here is your silver piece.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"'But what about your bed?'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Tuts, tuts, that will be all right, for I hef maybe got some six or
+five notes of my own that were profit on the beasties; but it iss a
+pity not to be taking anything that iss handy when a body happens to be
+in the south.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Capital."  Kate laughed merrily, and her too rare laugh I used to
+think the gayest I ever heard.  "It was the only opportunity left him
+of following his fathers.  What a fine business it must have been,
+starting from Braemar one afternoon, a dozen men well armed, and
+getting down to Strathmore in the morning; then lying hid in some wood
+all day, and collecting a herd of fat cattle in the evening, and
+driving them up Glen Shee, not knowing when there might be a fight."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hard lines on the Scottish farmers, Kit, who might be very decent
+fellows, to lose their cattle or get a cut from a broadsword."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, they had plenty left; and seriously, dad, without joking, you
+know, what better could a Presbyterian Lowlander do than raise good
+beef for Highland gentlemen?  Mr. Carmichael, I beg pardon; you seem so
+good a Celt, that I forgot you were not of our faith."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are not Catholics," the General explained, gravely, "although many
+of our blood have been, and my daughter was educated in a convent.  We
+belong to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and will go into Muirtown
+at a time, but mostly we shall attend the kirk of my old friend Dr.
+Davidson.  Every man is entitled to his faith, and Miss Carnegie rather&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgot herself."  Kate came to her father's relief.  "She often does;
+but one thing Miss Carnegie remembers, and that is that General
+Carnegie likes his cheroot after tiffin.  Do you smoke, Mr. Carmichael?
+Oh, I am allowed to stay, if you don't object, and have forgiven my
+rudeness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You make too much of a word, Miss Carnegie."  Carmichael was not a man
+to take offence till his pride was roused.  "Very likely my drover was
+a true blue Presbyterian, and his minister as genuine a cateran as
+himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Years ago I made the acquaintance of an old Highland minister called
+MacTavish, and he sometimes stays with me on his way north in the
+spring.  For thirty years he has started at the first sign of snow, and
+spent winter spoiling the good people of the south.  Some years he has
+gone home with three hundred pounds."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But how does he get the money?" inquired the General, "and what does
+he use it for?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He told me the history of his campaigns when he passed in March, and
+it might interest you; it's our modern raid, and although it's not so
+picturesque as a foray of the Macphersons, yet it has points, and shows
+the old spirit lives.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'She wass a goot woman, Janet Cameron, oh yes, Mr. John, a fery
+exercised woman, and when she wass dying she will be saying peautiful
+things, and one day she will be speaking of a little field she had
+beside the church.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"What do you think I should be doing with that piece of ground," she
+will be saying, "for the end iss not far off, and it iss not earth I
+can be taking with me, oh no, nor cows."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"No, Janet," I said, "but it iss a nice field, and lies to the sun.
+It might be doing good after you are gone, if it wass not wasted on
+your mother's cousins twice removed in Inverness, who will be drinking
+every drop of it, and maybe going to the Moderate Kirk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It wass not for two months or maybe six weeks she died, and I will be
+visiting her every second day.  Her experiences were fery good, and I
+hef told them at sacraments in the north.  The people in the south are
+free with their money, but it iss not the best of my stories that I can
+give them; they are too rich for their stomachs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Janet will often be saying to me, "Mister Dugald, it iss a thankful
+woman that I ought to be, for though I lost my man in the big storm and
+two sons in the war, I hef had mercies, oh yes.  There wass the
+Almighty and my cow, and between them I hef not wanted, oh no: they
+just did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'"Janet, you will be forgetting your field that iss lying next the
+manse, and the people will be thinking that it iss a glebe; but I am
+telling them that it iss Janet Cameron's, who iss a fery experienced
+woman, and hass nefer seen the inside of a Moderate Kirk since the
+Disruption."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Maybe you will be astonished, Mister John, but when Janet's will will
+be read that piece of ground wass left to the Free Kirk, which wass
+fery kind and mindful of Janet, and I made a sermon about her from the
+text of the "elect lady."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It wass a good field, but it needed a dyke and some drains, and it
+wass not our people that had the money.  So I made another sermon on
+the text, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast
+of the field doth devour it," and went down to the south.  It wass not
+a dyke and some drains, but enough to build a byre and a stable I came
+back with.  That wass in '55, and before '60 there will be a new manse
+with twelve rooms that iss good for letting to the English people.  But
+it wass ten years the church needed, and a year for the porch to keep
+it warm, for I am not liking stoves, and will not hef one in
+Crianshalloch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It iss wonderful how much money the bodies hef in Glasgow, and it iss
+good for them to be hearing sound doctrine at a time.  There will be no
+Arminianism when I am preaching, and no joking; but maybe there will be
+some parables, oh yes, about the sheep coming in at the manse door for
+want of a fence, and the snow lying in the pulpit.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a cateran for you, and, mind you, a good fellow too.  It's
+not greed sends him out, but sheer love of spoil.  Would you like to
+see MacTavish next time he passes up with the cattle?" for Carmichael
+was emboldened by the reception of his sketch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing we should like better, for the General and I want to know all
+about Scotland; but don't you think that those ministers have injured
+the Highlanders?  Janet, you know, has such gloomy ideas about
+religion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no doubt, Miss Carnegie, that a load of Saxon theology has
+been landed on the Celt, and it has disfigured his religion.  Sometimes
+I have felt that the Catholic of the west is a truer type of northern
+faith than the Presbyterian of Ross-shire."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am so glad to hear you say that," said Miss Carnegie, "for we had
+one or two west Catholics in the old regiment, and their superstitions
+were lovely.  You remember, dad, the MacIvers."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That was all well enough, Kit, but none of them could get the length
+of corporal; they were fearfully ignorant, and were reported at
+intervals for not keeping their accoutrements clean."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That only showed how religious they were, did n't it, Mr. Carmichael?
+Hadn't the early Christians a rooted objection to the bath?  I remember
+our Padre saying that in a lecture."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There are a good many modern Christians of the same mind, Miss
+Carnegie, and I don't think our poor Highlanders are worse than
+Lowlanders; but Catholic or Protestant, they are all subject to the
+gloom.  I cannot give the Gaelic word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is that?  Oh, a southerner would call it depression, and assign
+it to the liver, for he traces all trouble to that source.  But there
+is no word for this mood in English, because it is not an English
+experience.  My mother fell under it at times, and I saw the effect."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell us, please, if all this description does not weary you?" and Kate
+shone on Carmichael, who would have talked on the Council of Nice or
+the rotation of crops to prolong his privileges.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It comes on quite suddenly, and is quite a spiritual matter&mdash;a cloud
+which descends and envelops the soul.  While it lasts a Highlander will
+not laugh nor sing; he will hardly speak, and he loses all hope about
+everything.  One of our men has the gloom at a time, and then he
+believes that he is&nbsp;&#8230; damned.  I am speaking theologically."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The regiment must have been fond of theology, dad.  Yes, we
+understand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Once he went out to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and
+agonising to be sure whether there was a God.  You know he 's just a
+small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give
+himself to the big problems of the universe.  Do you know," and
+Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great peace, "I
+believe that is the reason the Highlanders are such good fighting men.
+They fear God, and they don't fear any other person."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll vouch for one thing," said the veteran with emphasis; "our men
+put off the gloom, or whatever you call it, when they smelt powder; I
+never saw a panic in a Highland regiment in more than forty years'
+soldiering."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What's the reason of the gloom?  I believe that I have a touch of it
+myself at times&mdash;don't stare at me, dad, it's rude&mdash;just a thin mist,
+you know, but distinctly not indigestion.  Is it a matter of race?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course, but that's no explanation."  Carmichael had fallen into his
+debating society style.  "I mean one has to go further back; all our
+habits are shaped by environment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One moment, please.  I have always wanted to ask some clever person
+what environment meant.  I asked Colonel MacLeod once, dad, and he said
+it was out of the new book on tactics, and he was thankful he had
+retired.  Now Mr. Carmichael will make it plain," and Kate was very
+demure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is rather stupid to use the word so much as people do now," and
+Carmichael glanced dubiously at Kate; "scientific men use it for
+circumstances."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is that all? then do pray say environment.  Such a word introduces one
+into good society, and gives one the feeling of being well dressed; now
+about a Highlander's environment, is it his kilt you are thinking of,
+or his house, or what?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His country"&mdash;and Carmichael's tone had a slight note of resentment,
+as of one ruffled by this frivolity&mdash;"with its sea lochs, and glens,
+and mists.  Any one who has been bred and reared at the foot of one of
+our mountains will have a different nature and religion from one living
+in Kent or Italy.  He has a sense of reverence, and surely that is a
+good thing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nothing more needed nowadays," the General broke in with much spirit;
+"it seems to me that people nowadays respect nobody, neither the Queen
+nor Almighty God.  As for that man Brimstone, he will never cease till
+he has ruined the Empire.  You need n't look at me, Kate, for Mr.&#8230;
+Carmichael must know this as well as any other sensible man.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, sir," and now the General was on his feet, "I was told on good
+authority at the club last week by a newspaper man&mdash;a monstrously
+clever man&mdash;that Mr. Brimstone, when he is going down to the House of
+Commons to disestablish the Church, or the army, or something, will
+call in at a shop and order two hundred silk hats to be sent to his
+house.  What do you call that, sir?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I should call it a deliberate&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-128"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-128.jpg" ALT="&quot;I should call it a deliberate--&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="352" HEIGHT="605">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 352px">
+&quot;I should call it a deliberate&mdash;&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Jeu d'esprit</I>.  Of course it is, dad," and Kate threw an appealing
+glance to Carmichael, who had sprung to his feet and was standing
+stiffly behind his chair, for he was a fierce Radical.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps it was, lassie&mdash;those war correspondents used to be sad
+rascals&mdash;and, at any rate, politics are bad taste.  Another cheroot,
+Mr. Carmichael?  Oh, nonsense; you must tell my daughter more about
+your Highlanders.  They are a loyal set, at any rate, and we all admire
+that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, they are," and Carmichael unbent again, "and will stick by their
+side whether it be right or wrong.  They 're something like a woman in
+their disposition."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Indeed," said Kate, who did not think Carmichael had responded very
+courteously to her lead, "that is very interesting.  They are, you
+mean, full of prejudices and notions."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If a Highlander takes you into his friendship, you may say or do what
+you like, he will stand by you, and although his views are as different
+from yours as black from white, will swear he agrees with every one.
+If he 's not your friend, he can see no good in anything you do,
+although you be on his own side."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"In fact, he has very little judgment and no sense of justice; and I
+think you said," Kate went on sweetly, "his nature reminded you of a
+woman's?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You're sure that you like cheroots?" for the General did not wish this
+lad, Radical though he was, sacrificed on his first visit; "some men
+are afraid of the opium in them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Please do not interrupt Mr. Carmichael when he is making a capital
+comparison," and Kate held him to the point.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What I intend is really a compliment," went on Carmichael, "and shows
+the superior fineness and sensitiveness of a woman's mind."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate indicated that she was sure that was his meaning, but waited for
+details.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You see," with the spirit of one still fresh to the pulpit, "a man is
+slower, and goes by evidence; a woman is quicker, and goes by her
+instincts."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Like the lower animals," suggested Kate, sweetly, "by scent, perhaps.
+Well?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are twisting my words, Miss Carnegie."  Carmichael did not like
+being bantered by this self-possessed young woman.  "Let me put it this
+way.  Would a jury of women be as impartial as a jury of men?  Why, a
+bad-looking man would have no chance, for they would condemn him at
+once, not for what he did, but for what they imagined he was."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Which would save a lot of time and rid society of some precious
+scoundrels," with vivid recollections of her own efforts in this
+direction.  "Then you grant that women have some intelligence, although
+no sense of justice, which is a want?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Far brighter than men," said Carmichael, eagerly; "just consider the
+difference between a man's and a woman's speech.  A man arranges and
+argues from beginning to end, and is the slave of connection.  He will
+labour every idea to exhaustion before he allows it to escape, and then
+will give a solemn cough by way of punctuating with a full stop, before
+he goes on to his next point.  Of course the audience look at their
+watches and make for the door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What would a woman do?" Kate inquired with much interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A lady was speaking lately at Muirtown for an orphanage at
+Ballyskiddle, and described how Patsy was rescued from starvation, and
+greatly affected us.  'Patsy will never want bread again,' she
+concluded, and two bailies wept aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then she went on, and it seemed to me a stroke of genius, 'Speaking
+about Patsy, has any lady present a black dress suitable for a widow
+woman?'  Before we knew that we had left Patsy, the people were in a
+widow's home, and the bailies were again overcome.  I mention them
+because it is supposed that a bailie is the most important human being
+in Scotland, and he feels it his duty not to yield to emotion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, a woman speaker never sacrifices her capital; she carries it with
+her from England to France in her speech, and recognises no channel
+passage.  In fact," and Carmichael plunged into new imagery, "a man's
+progress is after the manner of a mole, while a woman flits from branch
+to branch like a&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Squirrel&mdash;I know," came in Kate, getting tired.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bird, I meant.  Why do you say squirrel?" and Carmichael looked
+suspiciously at Kate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because it's such a careless, senseless, irresponsible little beast.
+Have you met many women, Mr. Carmichael?  Really they are not all
+fools, as you have been trying to suggest for the last ten minutes."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Highlanders are a safer subject of conversation than women," said the
+General, good-naturedly, as he bade Carmichael good-bye.  "And you must
+tell us more about them next time you call, which I hope will be soon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael halted twice on his way through the woods; once he stamped
+his foot and looked like a man whose pride had been ruffled; the other
+time he smiled to himself as one who was thinking of a future pleasure.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was dusk as he crossed Lynedoch Bridge, and he looked down upon the
+pool below where the trout were leaping.  Half an hour passed, and then
+he started off at high speed for Kilbogie Manse.  "Please God if I am
+worthy," he was saying to himself; "but I fear she is too high above me
+every way."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap10"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER X.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-133.jpg" ALT="dropcap-j" BORDER="0" WIDTH="176" HEIGHT="269">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+eremiah Saunderson had remained in the low estate of a "probationer"
+for twelve years after he left the Divinity Hall, where he was reported
+so great a scholar that the Professor of Apologetics spoke to him
+deprecatingly, and the Professor of Dogmatics openly consulted him on
+obscure writers.  He had wooed twenty-three congregations in vain, from
+churches in the black country where the colliers rose in squares of
+twenty and went out without ceremony, to suburban places of worship
+where the beadle, after due consideration of the sermon, would take up
+the afternoon notices and ask that they be read at once for purposes of
+utility, which that unflinching functionary stated to the minister with
+accuracy and much faithfulness.  Vacant congregations desiring a list
+of candidates made one exception, and prayed that Jeremiah should not
+be let loose upon them, till at last it came home to the unfortunate
+scholar himself that he was an offence and a byeword.  He began to
+dread the ordeal of giving his name, and, as is still told, declared to
+a household, living in the fat wheat lands and without any imagination,
+that he was called Magor Missabib.  When a stranger makes a statement
+of this kind with a sad seriousness, no one judges it expedient to
+offer any remark, but it was skilfully arranged that Missabib's door
+should be locked from the outside, and one member of the household sat
+up all night.  The sermon next day did not tend to confidence&mdash;having
+seven quotations in unknown tongues&mdash;and the attitude of the
+congregation was one of alert vigilance; but no one gave any outward
+sign of uneasiness, and six able-bodied men collected in a pew below
+the pulpit knew their duty in an emergency.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saunderson's election to the Free Church of Kilbogie was therefore an
+event in the ecclesiastical world, and a consistent tradition in the
+parish explained its inwardness on certain grounds, complimentary both
+to the judgment of Kilbogie and the gifts of Mr. Saunderson.  On
+Saturday evening he was removed from the train by the merest accident,
+and left the railway station in such a maze of meditation that he
+ignored the road to Kilbogie altogether, although its sign post was
+staring him in the face, and continued his way to Drumtochty.  It was
+half-past nine when Jamie Soutar met him on the high road through our
+Glen, still travelling steadily west, and being arrested by his
+appearance, beguiled him into conversation, till he elicited that
+Saunderson was minded to reach Kilbogie.  For an hour did the wanderer
+rest in Jamie's kitchen, during which he put Jamie's ecclesiastical
+history into a state of thorough repair&mdash;making seven distinct
+parallels between the errors that had afflicted the Scottish Church and
+the early heretical sects&mdash;and then Jamie gave him in charge of a
+ploughman who was courting in Kilbogie and was not averse to a journey
+that seemed to illustrate the double meaning of charity.  Jeremiah was
+handed over to his anxious hosts at a quarter to one in the morning,
+covered with mud, somewhat fatigued, but in great peace of soul, having
+settled the place of election in the prophecy of Habakkuk as he came
+down with his silent companion through Tochty woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nor was that all he had done.  When they came out from the shadow and
+struck into the parish of Kilbogie&mdash;whose fields, now yellow unto
+harvest, shone in the moonlight&mdash;his guide broke silence and enlarged
+on a plague of field-mice which had quite suddenly appeared and had
+sadly devastated the grain of Kilbogie, Saunderson awoke from study and
+became exceedingly curious, first of all demanding a particular account
+of the coming of the mice, their multitude, their habits, and their
+determination.  Then he asked many questions about the moral conduct
+and godliness of the inhabitants of Kilbogie, which his companion, as a
+native of Drumtochty, painted in gloomy colours, although indicating
+that even in Kilbogie there was a remnant.  Next morning the minister
+rose at daybreak, and was found wandering through the fields in such a
+state of excitement that he could hardly be induced to look at
+breakfast.  When the "books" were placed before him, he turned promptly
+to the ten plagues of Egypt, which he expounded in order as preliminary
+to a full treatment of the visitations of Providence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He cowes (beats) a' ye ever saw or heard," the farmer of Mains
+explained to the elders at the gate.  "He gaed tae bed at half twa and
+wes oot in the fields by four, an' a 'm dootin' he never saw his bed.
+He 's lifted abune the body a'thegither, an' can hardly keep himsel'
+awa' frae the Hebrew at his breakfast.  Ye 'll get a sermon the day, or
+ma name is no Peter Pitillo."  Mains also declared his conviction that
+the invasion of mice would be dealt with after a Scriptural and
+satisfying fashion.  The people went in full of expectation, and to
+this day old people recall Jeremiah Saunderson's trial sermon with
+lively admiration.  Experienced critics were suspicious of candidates
+who read lengthy chapters from both Testaments and prayed at length for
+the Houses of Parliament, for it was justly held that no man would take
+refuge in such obvious devices for filling up the time unless he was
+short of sermon material.  One unfortunate, indeed, ruined his chances
+at once by a long petition for those in danger on the sea&mdash;availing
+himself with some eloquence of the sympathetic imagery of the 107th
+Psalm&mdash;for this effort was regarded as not only the most barefaced
+padding, but also as evidence of an almost incredible blindness to
+circumstances.  "Did he think Kilbogie wes a fishing village?" Mains
+inquired of the elders afterwards, with pointed sarcasm.  Kilbogie was
+not indifferent to a well-ordered prayer&mdash;although its palate was
+coarser in the appreciation of felicitous terms and allusions than that
+of Drumtochty&mdash;and would have been scandalised if the Queen had been
+omitted; but it was by the sermon the young man must stand or fall, and
+Kilbogie despised a man who postponed the ordeal.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saunderson gave double pledges of capacity and fulness before he opened
+his mouth in the sermon, for he read no Scripture at all that day, and
+had only one prayer, which was mainly a statement of the Divine Decrees
+and a careful confession of the sins of Kilbogie; and then, having
+given out his text from the prophecy of Joel, he reverently closed the
+Bible and placed it on the seat behind him.  His own reason for this
+proceeding was a desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject,
+and a painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church
+when he landed a Bible&mdash;with clasps&mdash;on the head of the precentor in
+the heat of a discourse defending the rejection of Esau.  Our best and
+simplest actions&mdash;and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe&mdash;can be
+misconstrued, and the only dissentient from Saunderson's election
+insisted that the Bible had been deposited on the floor, and asserted
+that the object of this profanity was to give the preacher a higher
+standing in the pulpit.  This malignant reading of circumstances might
+have wrought mischief&mdash;for Saunderson's gaunt figure did seem to grow
+in the pulpit&mdash;had it not been for the bold line of defence taken up by
+Mains.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gin he wanted tae stand high, wes it no tae preach the word? an' gin
+he wanted a soond foundation for his feet, what better could he get
+than the twa Testaments?  Answer me that."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was seen at once that no one could answer that, and the captious
+objector never quite recovered his position in the parish, while it is
+not the least of Kilbogie's boasting, in which the Auld Kirk will even
+join against Drumtochty, that they have a minister who not only does
+not read his sermons and does not need to quote his texts, but carries
+the whole book in at least three languages in his head, and once, as a
+proof thereof, preached with it below his feet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Much was to be looked for from such a man, but even Mains, whetted by
+intercourse with Saunderson, was astonished at the sermon.  It was a
+happy beginning to draw a parallel between the locusts of Joel and the
+mice of Kilbogie, and gave the preacher an opportunity of describing
+the appearance, habits, and destruction of the locusts, which he did
+solely from Holy Scripture, translating various passages afresh and
+combining lights with marvellous ingenuity.  This brief preface of half
+an hour, which was merely a stimulant for the Kilbogie appetite, led up
+to a thorough examination of physical judgments, during which both
+Bible and Church history were laid under liberal contribution.  At this
+point the minister halted, and complimented the congregation on the
+attention they had given to the facts of the case, which were his first
+head, and suggested that before approaching the doctrine of visitations
+they might refresh themselves with a Psalm.  The congregation were
+visibly impressed, and many made up their minds while singing:
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"That man hath perfect blessedness;"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+and while others thought it due to themselves to suspend judgment till
+they had tasted the doctrine, they afterwards confessed their
+confidence.  It goes without saying that he was immediately beyond the
+reach of the ordinary people on the second head, and even veterans in
+theology panted after him in vain, so that one of the elders, nodding
+assent to an exposure of the Manichaean heresy, suddenly blushed as one
+who had played the hypocrite.  Some professed to have noticed a
+doctrine that had not been touched upon, but they never could give it a
+name, and it excited just admiration that a preacher, starting from a
+plague of mice, should have made a way by strictly scientific methods
+into the secret places of theology.  Saunderson allowed his hearers a
+brief rest after the second head, and cheered them with the assurance
+that what was still before them would be easy to follow.  It was the
+application of all that had gone before to the life of Kilbogie, and
+the preacher proceeded to convict the parish under each of the ten
+commandments&mdash;with the plague of mice ever in reserve to silence
+excuses&mdash;till the delighted congregation could have risen in a body and
+taken Saunderson by the hand for his fearlessness and faithfulness.
+Perhaps the extent and thoroughness of this monumental sermon can be
+best estimated by the fact that Claypots, father of the present tenant,
+who always timed his rest to fifty minutes exactly, thus overseeing
+both the introduction and application of the sermon, had a double
+portion, and even a series of supplementary dozes, till at last he sat
+upright through sheer satiety.  It may also be offered as evidence that
+the reserve of peppermint held by mothers for their bairns was pooled,
+doles being furtively passed across pews to conspicuously needy
+families, and yet the last had gone before Saunderson finished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mains reported to the congregational meeting that the minister had been
+quiet for the rest of the day, but had offered to say something about
+Habakkuk to any evening gathering, and had cleared up at family worship
+some obscure points in the morning discourse.  He also informed the
+neighbours that he had driven his guest all the way to Muirtown, and
+put him in an Edinburgh carriage with his own hands, since it had
+emerged that Saunderson, through absence of mind, had made his down
+journey by the triangular route of Dundee.  It was quite impossible for
+Kilbogie to conceal their pride in electing such a miracle of learning,
+and their bearing in Muirtown was distinctly changed; but indeed they
+did not boast vainly about Jeremiah Saunderson, for his career was
+throughout on the level of that monumental sermon.  When the Presbytery
+in the gaiety of their heart examined Saunderson to ascertain whether
+he was fully equipped for the work of the ministry, he professed the
+whole Old Testament in Hebrew, and MacWheep of Pitscowrie, who always
+asked the candidate to read the twenty-third Psalm, was beguiled by
+Jeremiah into the Book of Job, and reduced to the necessity of asking
+questions by indicating verbs with his finger.  His Greek examination
+led to an argument between Jeremiah and Dr. Dowbiggin on the use of the
+aorist, from which the minister-elect of Kilbogie came out an easy
+first; and his sermons were heard to within measurable distance of the
+second head by an exact quorum of the exhausted court, who were kept by
+the clerk sitting at the door, and preventing MacWheep escaping.  His
+position in the court was assured from the beginning, and fulfilled the
+function of an Encyclopaedia with occasional amazing results, as when
+information was asked about some Eastern sect for whose necessities the
+Presbytery were asked to collect, and to whose warm piety affecting
+allusion was made, and Jeremiah showed clearly, with the reporters
+present, that the Cappadocians were guilty of a heresy beside which
+Morisonianism was an unsullied whiteness.  His work as
+examiner-in-general for the court was a merciful failure, and
+encouraged the students of the district to return to their district
+court, who on the rumour of him had transferred themselves in a body to
+a Highland Presbytery, where the standard question in Philosophy used
+to be, "How many horns has a dilemma, and distinguish the one from the
+other."  No man knew what the minister of Kilbogie might not ask&mdash;he
+was only perfectly certain that it would be beyond his knowledge; but
+as Saunderson always gave the answer himself in the end, and imputed it
+to the student, anxiety was reduced to a minimum.  Saunderson, indeed,
+was in the custom of passing all candidates and reporting them as
+marvels of erudition, whose only fault was a becoming modesty&mdash;which,
+however, had not concealed from his keen eye hidden treasures of
+learning.  Beyond this sphere the good man's services were not used by
+a body of shrewd ecclesiastics, as the inordinate length of an
+ordination sermon had ruined a dinner prepared for the court by "one of
+our intelligent and large-hearted laymen," and it is still pleasantly
+told how Saunderson was invited to a congregational <I>soirée</I>&mdash;an
+ancient meeting where the people ate oranges and the speaker rallied
+the minister on being still unmarried&mdash;and discoursed&mdash;-as a carefully
+chosen subject&mdash;on the Jewish feasts, with illustrations from the
+Talmud, till some one burst a paper bag and allowed the feelings of the
+people to escape.  When this history was passed round Muirtown Market,
+Kilbogie thought still more highly of their minister, and indicated
+their opinion of the other parish in severely theological language.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saunderson's reputation for unfathomable learning and saintly
+simplicity was built up out of many incidents, and grew with the lapse
+of years to a solitary height in the big strath, so that no man would
+have dared to smile had the Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie appeared in
+Muirtown in his shirt sleeves, and Kilbogie would only have been a
+trifle more conceited.  Truly he was an amazing man, and, now that he
+is dead and gone, the last of his race, I wish some man of his
+profession had written his life, for the doctrine he taught and the way
+he lived will not be believed by the new generation.  The arrival of
+his goods was more than many sermons to Kilbogie, and I had it from
+Mains's own lips.  It was the kindly fashion of those days that the
+farmers carted the new minister's furniture from the nearest railway
+station, and as the railway to Kildrummie was not yet open, they had to
+go to Stormont Station on the north line; and a pleasant procession
+they made passing through Pitscowrie, ten carts in their best array,
+and drivers with a semi-festive air.  Mr. Saunderson was at the
+station, having reached it by some miracle without mistake, and was in
+a condition of abject nervousness about the handling and conveyance of
+his belongings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will be careful&mdash;exceeding careful," he implored; "if one of the
+boxes were allowed to descend hurriedly to the ground, the result to
+what is within would be disastrous.  I am much afraid that the weight
+is considerable, but I am ready to assist;" and he got ready.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dinna pit yirsel' intae a ferry tarry (commotion)," but Mains was
+distinctly pleased to see a little touch of worldliness, just enough to
+keep the new minister in touch with humanity.  "It 'll be queer stuff
+oor lads canna lift, an' a 'll gie ye a warranty that the' 'll no be a
+cup o' the cheeny broken," and then Saunderson conducted his
+congregation to the siding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dod, man," remarked Mains to the station-master, examining a truck
+with eight boxes; "the manse 'll no want for dishes at ony rate; but
+let's start on the furniture; whar hae ye got the rest o' the
+plenishing?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naething mair? havers, man, ye dinna mean tae say they pack beds an'
+tables in boxes; a' doot there 's a truck missin'."  Then Mains went
+over where the minister was fidgeting beside his possessions.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, no," said Saunderson, when the situation was put before him, "it's
+all here.  I counted the boxes, and I packed every box myself.  That
+top one contains the fathers&mdash;deal gently with it; and the Reformation
+divines are just below it.  Books are easily injured, and they feel it.
+I do believe there is a certain life in them, and&nbsp;&#8230; and&nbsp;&#8230; they
+don't like being ill-used," and Jeremiah looked wistfully at the
+ploughmen.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Div ye mean tae say," as soon as Mains had recovered, "that ye 've
+brocht naethin' for the manse but bukes, naither bed nor bedding?
+Keep's a'," as the situation grew upon him, "whar are ye tae sleep, and
+what are ye to sit on?  An' div ye never eat?  This croons a';" and
+Mains gazed at his new minister as one who supposed that he had taken
+Jeremiah's measure and had failed utterly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"<I>Mea culpa</I>&mdash;it's&nbsp;&#8230; my blame," and Saunderson was evidently
+humbled at this public exposure of his incapacity; "some slight
+furnishing will be expedient, even necessary, and I have a plan for
+book-shelves in my head; it is ingenious and convenient, and if there
+is a worker in wood&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Come awa' tae the dog-cart, sir," said Mains, realising that even
+Kilbogie did not know what a singular gift they had obtained, and that
+discussion on such sublunary matters as pots and pans was useless, not
+to say profane.  So eight carts got a box each; one, Jeremiah's ancient
+kist of moderate dimensions; and the tenth&mdash;that none might be left
+unrecognised&mdash;a handbag that had been on the twelve years' probation
+with its master.  The story grew as it passed westwards, and when it
+reached us we were given to understand that the Free Kirk minister of
+Kilbogie had come to his parish with his clothing in a paper parcel and
+twenty-four packing cases filled with books, in as many languages&mdash;half
+of them dating from the introduction of printing, and fastened by
+silver clasps&mdash;and that if Drumtochty seriously desired to hear an
+intellectual sermon at a time, we must take our way through Tochty
+woods.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Mrs. Pitillo took the minister into her hands, and compelled him to
+accompany her to Muirtown, where she had him at her will for some time,
+so that she equipped the kitchen (fully), a dining-room (fairly), a
+spare bedroom (amply), Mr. Saunderson's own bedroom (miserably), and
+secured a table and two chairs for the study.  This success turned her
+head.  Full of motherly forethought, and having a keen remembrance that
+probationers always retired in the afternoon at Mains to think over the
+evening's address, and left an impress of the human form on the bed
+when they came down to tea, Mrs. Pitillo suggested that a sofa would be
+an admirable addition to the study.  As soon as this piece of
+furniture, of a size suitable for his six feet, was pointed out to the
+minister, he took fright, and became quite unmanageable.  He would not
+have such an article in his study on any account, partly because it
+would only feed a tendency to sloth&mdash;which, he explained, was one of
+his besetting sins&mdash;and partly because it would curtail the space
+available for books, which, he indicated, were the proper furniture of
+any room, but chiefly of a study.  So great was his alarm that he
+repented of too early concessions about the other rooms, and explained
+to Mrs. Pitillo that every inch of space must be rigidly kept for the
+overflow from the study, which he expected&mdash;if he were spared&mdash;would
+reach the garrets.  Several times on their way back to Kilbogie,
+Saunderson looked wistfully at Mrs. Pitillo, and once opened his mouth
+as if to speak, from which she gathered that he was grateful for her
+kindness, but dared not yield any farther to the luxuries of the flesh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What this worthy woman endured in securing a succession of reliable
+housekeepers for Mr. Saunderson and overseeing the interior of that
+remarkable home, she was never able to explain to her own satisfaction,
+though she made many honest efforts, and one of her last intelligible
+utterances was a lamentable prophecy of the final estate of the Free
+Church manse of Kilbogie.  Mr. Saunderson himself seemed at times to
+have some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her
+name to Carmichael in feeling terms.  There had been some delay in
+providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles'
+walk from Drumtochty, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to
+take his meal standing for want of a chair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"While Mrs. Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting
+to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better
+ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree,
+and was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an
+unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange
+them after an artificial fashion.  This she called tidying, and, in its
+most extreme form, cleaning."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-146"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-146.jpg" ALT="&quot;She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="385" HEIGHT="605">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 385px">
+&quot;She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"With all her excellencies, there was also in her what I have noticed
+in most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I
+was making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of
+comely editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the
+garden and dusted.  It was the space of two years before I regained
+mastery of my library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on
+the service book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second
+edition, to say nothing of an original edition of Rutherford's <I>Lex
+Rex</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It does not become me, however, to reflect on the efforts of that
+worthy matron, for she was by nature a good woman, and if any one could
+be saved by good works, her place is assured.  I was with her before
+she died, and her last words to me were, 'Tell Jean tae dust yir bukes
+aince in the sax months, and for ony sake keep ae chair for sittin'
+on.'  It was not the testimony one would have desired in the
+circumstances, but yet, Mr. Carmichael, I have often thought that there
+was a spirit of&nbsp;&#8230; of unselfishness, in fact, that showed the
+working of grace."  Later in the same evening Mr. Saunderson's mind
+returned to his friend's spiritual state, for he entered into a long
+argument to show that while Mary was more spiritual, Martha must also
+have been within the Divine Election.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap11"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XI.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+IN THE GLOAMING.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-148.jpg" ALT="dropcap-a" BORDER="0" WIDTH="219" HEIGHT="276">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+ugust is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it
+pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie.  The softness of the
+gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the
+honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the
+fields&mdash;for harvest is earlier down there than with us&mdash;and the cattle
+chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed
+peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination.  Fancies
+he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except
+his mother and his aunt.  There had been times when he and his set
+declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to
+be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union.  It was
+never completed&mdash;and therefore never signed&mdash;because the brotherhood
+could not agree about the duration of the vows&mdash;the draftsman, who has
+been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity,
+while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in
+the Moderator of Assembly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure
+boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk,
+but Carmichael had more of a mind on the matter.  There was in him an
+ascetic bent, inherited from some Catholic ancestor, and he was almost
+convinced that a minister would serve God with more abandonment in the
+celibate state.  As an only child, and brought up by a mother given to
+noble thoughts, he had learned to set women in a place by themselves,
+and considered marriage for ordinary men to flavour of sacrilege.  His
+mother had bound it as a law upon him that he was never to exercise his
+tongue on a woman's failings, never to argue with a woman unto her
+embarrassment, never to regard her otherwise than as his superior.
+Women noticed that Carmichael bore himself to them as if each were a
+Madonna, and treated him in turn according to their nature.  Some were
+abashed, and could not understand the lad's shyness; those were saints.
+Some were amused, and suspected him of sarcasm; those were less than
+saints.  Some horrified him unto confusion of face because of the
+shameful things they said.  One middle-aged female, whose conversation
+oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to
+sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak
+about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described
+him as a prude.  It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some
+women because he thought more highly of them than they thought of
+themselves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael was much tried by the baser of his fellow-students,
+especially a certain class of smug, self-contented, unctuous men, who
+neither had endured hardship to get to college, nor did any work at
+college.  They were described in reports as the "fruits of the
+revival," and had been taken from behind counters and sent to the
+University, not because they had any love of letters, like Domsie's
+lads at Drumtochty, but because rich old ladies were much impressed by
+the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they
+would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could
+gain by their own merits.  As Carmichael grew older, and therefore more
+charitable, he discovered with what faulty tools the work of the world
+and even of kirks is carried on, and how there is a root of good in
+very coarse and common souls.  When he was a young judge&mdash;from whom may
+the Eternal deliver us all&mdash;he was bitter against the "fruits," as he
+called them, because they did their best to escape examinations, and
+spoke in a falsetto voice, and had no interest in dogs, and because
+they told incredible tales of their spiritual achievements.  But
+chiefly did Carmichael's gorge rise against those unfortunates because
+of the mean way they spoke of marriage, and on this account, being a
+high-spirited young fellow, he said things which could hardly be
+defended, and of which afterwards he honestly repented.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, religion is profitable for both worlds," one of them would exhort
+by the junior common-room fire, "and if you doubt it, look at me;
+five-and-twenty shillings a week as a draper's assistant was all I had,
+and no chance of rising.  Now I 'm a gentleman"&mdash;here Carmichael used
+to look at the uncleanly little man and snort&mdash;"and in two years I
+could ask any girl in religious society, and she would take me.  A
+minister can marry any woman, if he be evangelical.  Ah," he would
+conclude, with a fine strain of piety, "the Gospel is its own reward."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+What enraged Carmichael as he listened in the distance to these paeans
+of Pharisaism was the disgusting fact that the "fruits" did carry off
+great spoil in the marriage field, so that to a minister without
+culture, manners, or manliness, a middle-class family would give their
+pet daughter, when they would have refused her to a ten times better
+man fighting his way up in commerce.  If she died, then this
+enterprising buccaneer would achieve a second and third conquest, till
+in old age he would rival the patriarchs in the number of his wives and
+possessions.  As for the girl, Carmichael concluded that she was still
+under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a
+very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion.  This particular
+"fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness
+especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more
+illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made
+man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat
+disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry&mdash;a
+mysterious providence, as he often explained&mdash;but allowed him to enjoy
+life with a guarded satisfaction.  What Carmichael said to him about
+his ways and his Gospel was very unpleasant and quite unlike
+Carmichael's kindly nature, but the only revenge the victim took was to
+state his conviction that Scotland would have nothing to do with a man
+that was utterly worldly, and in after years to warn vacant churches
+against one who did not preach the Cross.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After one of those common-room encounters, Carmichael used to fling
+himself out into the east wind and greyness of Edinburgh, fuming
+against the simplicity of good people, against the provincialism of his
+college, against the Pharisaism of his church, against the Philistinism
+of Scottish life.  He would go down to Holyrood and pity Queen Mary,
+transported from the gay court of France to Knox's Scotland, divided
+between theology and bloodshed.  In the evening he would sweep his
+table clean of German books on the Pentateuch, and cover it with prints
+of the old masters, which he had begun to collect, and ancient books of
+Catholic devotion, and read two letters to his mother from her uncle,
+who had been a Vicar-General, and died in an old Scottish convent in
+Spain.  There was very little in the letters beyond good wishes, and an
+account of the Vicar-General's health, but they seemed to link a Free
+Kirk divinity student on to the Holy Catholic Church.  Mother Church
+cast her spell over his imagination, and he envied the lot of her
+priests, who held a commission no man denied and administered a
+world-wide worship, whom a splendid tradition sanctioned, whom each of
+the arts hastened to aid; while he was to be the minister of a local
+sect and work with the "fruits," who knew nothing of Catholic
+Christianity, but supposed their little eddy, whereon they danced like
+rotten sticks, to be the main stream.  Next day a reaction would set
+in, and Carmichael would have a fit of Bohemianism, and resolve to be a
+man of letters.  So the big books on theology would again be set aside,
+and he would write an article for <I>Ferrier's Journal</I>, that kindliest
+of all journals to the young author, which he would receive back in a
+week "with thanks."  The Sunday night came, and Carmichael sat down to
+write his weekly letter to his mother&mdash;she got notes between, he found
+them all in her drawers, not a scrap missing&mdash;and as he wrote, his
+prejudices, and petulances, and fancies, and unrest passed away.
+Before he had told her all that happened to him during the
+week&mdash;touching gently on the poor Revivalist&mdash;although his mother had a
+saving sense of humour, and was a quite wonderful mimic&mdash;and saying
+nothing of his evening with St. Francis de Sales&mdash;for this would have
+alarmed her at once&mdash;he knew perfectly well that he would be neither a
+Roman nor a reporter, but a Free Kirk minister, and was not utterly
+cast down; for notwithstanding the yeasty commotion of youth and its
+censoriousness, he had a shrewd idea that a man is likely to do his
+life-work best in the tradition of his faith and blood.  Next morning
+his heart warmed as he went in through the college gates, and he would
+have defended Knox unto the death, as the maker of Scotland.  His
+fellow-students seemed now a very honest set of men, as indeed they
+were, although a trifle limited in horizon, and he hoped that one of
+the "fruits" was "satisfied with his Sunday's work," which shows that
+as often as a man of twenty-one gets out of touch with reality, he
+ought straightway to sit down and write to his mother.  Carmichael
+indeed told me one evening at the Cottage that he never had any
+mystical call to the ministry, but only had entered the Divinity Hall
+instead of going to Oxford because his mother had this for her heart's
+desire, and he loved her.  As a layman it perhaps did not become me to
+judge mysteries, but I dared to say that any man might well be guided
+by his mother in religion, and that the closer he kept to her memory
+the better he would do his work.  After which both of us smoked
+furiously, and Carmichael, two minutes later, was moved to remark that
+some Turkish I had then was enough to lure a man up Glen Urtach in the
+month of December.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The young minister was stirred on the way to Kilbogie, and began to
+dream dreams in the twilight.  Love had come suddenly to him, and after
+an unexpected fashion.  Miss Carnegie was of another rank and another
+faith, nor was she even his ideal woman, neither conspicuously
+spiritual nor gentle, but frank, outspoken, fearless, self-willed.  He
+could also see that she had been spoiled by her father and his friends,
+who had given her <I>carte blanche</I> to say and do what she pleased.  Very
+likely&mdash;he could admit that even in the first blush of his emotion&mdash;she
+might be passionate and prejudiced on occasion, even a fierce hater.
+This he had imagined in the Tochty woods, and was not afraid, for her
+imperfections seemed to him a provocation and an attraction.  They were
+the defects of her qualities&mdash;of her courage, candour, generosity,
+affection.  Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of
+her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the
+fascination of her manner.  She was free from the affectations,
+gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known.
+St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his
+heart, but life might have been a trifle tiresome if a man were married
+to a saint.  The saints have no humour, and do not relax.  Life with a
+woman like Miss Carnegie would be effervescent and stimulating, full of
+surprises and piquancy.  No, she was not a saint, but he felt by an
+instinct she was pure, loyal, reverent, and true at the core.  She was
+a gallant lass, and&nbsp;&#8230; he loved her.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-153"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-153.jpg" ALT="Mother Church cast her spell over his imagination." BORDER="2" WIDTH="347" HEIGHT="433">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 347px">
+Mother Church cast her spell over his imagination.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+What an absurdity was this revery, and Carmichael laughed aloud at
+himself.  Twice he had met Miss Carnegie&mdash;on one occasion she had found
+him watering strange dogs out of his hat, and on the other he had given
+her to understand that women were little removed from fools.  He had
+made the worst of himself, and this young woman who had lived with
+smart people must have laughed at him.  Very likely she had made him
+into a story, for as a raconteur himself he knew the temptation to work
+up raw material, or perhaps Miss Carnegie had forgotten long ago that
+he had called.  Suppose that he should call to-morrow on his way home
+and say, "General Carnegie, I think it right to tell you that I admire
+your daughter very much, and should like your permission to pay my
+addresses.  I am Free Church minister in Drumtochty, and my stipend is
+200 pounds a year"&nbsp;&#8230; his laugh this time was rather bitter.  The
+Carnegies would be at once admitted into the county set, and he would
+only meet them at a time&nbsp;&#8230;  Lord Hay was a handsome and pleasant
+young fellow.  He would be at Glen Urtach House for the shooting in a
+few days&nbsp;&#8230; that was a likely thing to happen&nbsp;&#8230; the families
+were old friends&nbsp;&#8230; there would be great festivities in the
+Glen&nbsp;&#8230; perhaps he would be asked to propose the bride's
+health&nbsp;&#8230;  It really seemed a providence that Saunderson should come
+along the road when he was playing the fool like a puling boy, for if
+any man could give a douche to love-sickness it was the minister of
+Kilbogie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael was standing in the shadow as Saunderson came along the
+road, and the faint light was a perfect atmosphere for the dear old
+bookman.  Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but
+with much poring over books and meditation he had descended some three
+inches.  His hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to
+genius, but because he forgot to get it cut, and with his flowing,
+untrimmed beard, was now quite grey.  Within his clothes he was the
+merest skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out in
+sharp outline, and his hands were almost transparent.  The redeeming
+feature in Saunderson was his eyes, which were large and eloquent, of a
+trustful, wistful hazel, the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal.  Whether
+he was expounding doctrines of an incredible disbelief in humanity or
+exalting, in rare moments, the riches of a divine love in which he did
+not expect to share, or humbly beseeching his brethren to give him
+information on some point in scholarship no one knew anything about
+except himself, or stroking the hair of some little child sitting upon
+his knee, those eyes were ever simple, honest, and most pathetic.
+Young ministers coming to the Presbytery full of self-conceit and new
+views were arrested by their light shining through the glasses, and
+came in a year or two to have a profound regard for Saunderson,
+curiously compounded of amusement at his ways, which for strangeness
+were quite beyond imagination, admiration for his knowledge, which was
+amazing for its accuracy and comprehensiveness, respect for his
+honesty, which feared no conclusion, however repellent to flesh and
+blood, but chiefly of love for the unaffected and shining goodness of a
+man in whose virgin soul neither self nor this world had any part.  For
+years the youngsters of the Presbytery knew not how to address the
+minister of Kilbogie, since any one who had dared to call him
+Saunderson, as they said "Carmichael" and even "MacWheep," though he
+was elderly, would have been deposed, without delay, from the
+ministry&mdash;so much reverence at least was in the lads&mdash;and "Mister"
+attached to this personality would be like a silk hat on the head of an
+Eastern sage.  Jenkins of Pitrodie always considered that he was
+inspired when he one day called Saunderson "Rabbi," and unto the day of
+his death Kilbogie was so called.  He made protest against the title as
+being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be
+understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it on
+the ground of his slender attainments.  The lads saw the force of this
+objection, and admitted that the honourable word belonged by rights to
+MacWheep, but it was their fancy to assign it to Saunderson&mdash;whereat
+Saunderson yielded, only exacting a pledge that he should never be so
+called in public, lest all concerned be condemned for foolishness.
+When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to
+confer the degree of D. D. on him for his distinguished learning and
+great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was
+delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an
+ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone
+out in a body and compelled him to accept.  They also purchased a
+Doctor's gown and hood, and invested him with them in the name of
+Kilbogie two days before the capping.  One of them saw that he was duly
+brought to the Tolbooth Kirk, where the capping ceremonial in those
+days took place.  Another sent a list of Saunderson's articles to
+British and foreign theological and philological reviews, which filled
+half a column of the <I>Caledonian</I>, and drew forth a complimentary
+article from that exceedingly able and caustic paper, whose editor lost
+all his hair through sympathetic emotion the morning of the Disruption,
+and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of the Free Kirk with much
+frankness.  The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so spread abroad that a
+great cheer went up as he came in with the other Doctors elect, in
+which he cordially joined, considering it to be intended for his
+neighbour, a successful West-end clergyman, the author of a Life of
+Dorcas and other pleasing booklets.  For some time after his boys said
+"Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common
+title, and fell back on Rabbi, by which he was known unto the day of
+his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi was tasting some morsel of literature as he came along, and
+halted opposite Carmichael, whom he did not see in the shadow, that he
+might enjoy it aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is French verse, Rabbi, I think, but it sounds archaic; is it
+from a Huguenot poet?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Assuredly," replied the Rabbi, not one whit astonished that a man
+should come out from a hedge on Kilbogie road and recognise his
+quotation; "from Clement Marot, whom, as you remember, there is good
+evidence Queen Mary used to read.  It is you, John Carmichael."  The
+Rabbi awoke from the past, and held Carmichael's hand in both of his.
+"This was very mindful.  You were going home from Pitscowrie and turned
+aside to visit me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is unfortunate that I am hastening to a farm called the Mains, on
+the border of Pitscourie parish, to expound the Word; but you will go
+on to the Manse and straitly charge Barbara to give you food, and I
+will hasten to return."  And the Rabbi looked forward to the night with
+great satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I am not coming from Pitscowrie, and you are not going there, as
+far as one can see.  Why, you are on your way to Tochty woods; you are
+going west instead of east; Rabbi, tell the truth, have you been
+snuffing?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was a searching question, and full of history.  When the Rabbi
+turned his back against the wind to snuff with greater comfort, he was
+not careful to resume his original position, but continued cheerfully
+in the new direction.  This weakness was so well known that the school
+bairns would watch till he had started, and stand in a row on the road
+to block his progress.  Then there would be a parley, which would end
+in the Rabbi capitulating and rewarding the children with peppermints,
+whereupon they would see him fairly off again and go on their
+way&mdash;often looking back to see that he was safe, and somehow loving him
+all the more for his strange ways.  So much indeed was the Rabbi
+beloved that a Pitscowrie laddie, who described Saunderson freely as a
+"daftie" to Mains' grandson, did not see clearly for a week, and never
+recovered his lost front tooth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That," remarked young Mains, "'ll learn Pitscowrie tae set up
+impidence aboot the minister."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is no doubt, that I snuffed&mdash;it was at Claypots steading&mdash;but
+there was no wind that I should turn.  This is very remarkable, John,
+and&nbsp;&#8230; disconcerting.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"These humiliations are doubtless a lesson," resumed the Rabbi as they
+hurried to Mains, "and a rebuke.  Snuffing is in no sense a necessity,
+and I have long recognised that the habit requires to be
+restricted&mdash;very carefully restricted.  For some time I have had fixed
+times&mdash;once in the forenoon, once in the afternoon, and again in the
+evening.  Had I restrained myself till my work was over and I had
+returned home this misadventure would not have occurred, whereby I have
+been hindered and the people will have been kept waiting for their
+spiritual food.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is exactly twenty years to-night since I began this meeting in
+Mains," the Rabbi explained to Carmichael, "and I have had great
+pleasure in it and some profit.  My subject has been the Epistle to the
+Romans, and by the goodness of God we are approaching the last
+chapters.  The salutations will take about a year or so; Rufus, chosen
+in the Lord, will need careful treatment; and then I thought, if I were
+spared, of giving another year to a brief review of the leading points
+of doctrine; eh?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael indicated that the family at Mains would almost expect
+something of the sort, and inquired whether there might not be a few
+passages requiring separate treatment at fuller length than was
+possible in this hurried commentary.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Quite so, John, quite so; no one is more bitterly conscious of the
+defects of this exposition than myself&mdash;meagre and superficial to a
+degree, both in the patristic references and the experimental
+application; but we are frail creatures, John, and it is doubtful
+whether the exposition of any book should extend unto a generation.  It
+has always caused me regret that Mains&mdash;I mean the father of the
+present tenant&mdash;departed before we had come to the comfort of the
+eighth chapter."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi's mind was much affected by this thought, and twice in the
+kitchen his eye wandered to the chair where his friend had sat, with
+his wife beside him.  From Priscilla and Aquila he was led into the
+question of hospitality, on which he spoke afterwards till they came to
+the Manse, where he stationed Carmichael on the doorstep till he
+secured a light.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There is a parcel of books on the floor, partially opened, and the way
+of passing is narrow and somewhat dangerous in the darkness."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap12"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+KILBOGIE MANSE.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-162.jpg" ALT="dropcap-m" BORDER="0" WIDTH="215" HEIGHT="280">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+inisters there were in the great strath so orderly that they kept
+their sealing-wax in one drawer and their string in another, while
+their sermons were arranged under the books of the Bible, and tied with
+green silk.  Dr. Dowbiggin, though a dull man and of a heavy carriage,
+could find in an instant the original draft of a motion on instrumental
+music he made in the Presbytery of Muirtown in the year '59, and could
+also give the exact page in the blue-books for every word he had
+uttered in the famous case when he showed that the use of a harmonium
+to train MacWheep's choir was a return to the bondage of Old Testament
+worship.  His collection of pamphlets was supposed to be unique, and
+was a terror to controversialists, no man knowing when a rash utterance
+on the bottomless mystery of "spiritual independence" might not be
+produced from the Doctor's coat-tail pocket.  He retired to rest at
+10.15, and rose at six, settling the subject of his next sermon on
+Sabbath evening, and finishing the first head before breakfast on
+Monday morning.  He had three hats&mdash;one for funerals, one for
+marriages, one for ordinary occasions&mdash;and has returned from the
+Presbytery door to brush his coat.  Morning prayers in Dr. Dowbiggin's
+house were at 8.05, and the wrath of the Doctor was so dangerous that
+one probationer staying at the manse, and not quite independent of
+influence, did not venture to undress, but snatched a fearful doze
+sitting upright on a cane-bottomed chair, lest he should not be in at
+the psalm.  Young ministers of untidy habits regarded Dr. Dowbiggin's
+study with despair, and did not recover their spirits till they were
+out of Muirtown.  Once only did this eminent man visit the manse of
+Kilbogie, and in favourable moments after dinner he would give his
+choicer experiences.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my invariable custom to examine the bed to see that everything
+is in order, and any one sleeping in Kilbogie Manse will find the good
+of such a precaution.  I trust that I am not a luxurious person&mdash;it
+would ill become one who came out in '43&mdash;but I have certainly become
+accustomed to the use of sheets.  When I saw there were none on the
+bed, I declined to sleep without them, and I indicated my mind very
+distinctly on the condition of the manse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Would you believe it?" the Doctor used to go on.  "Saunderson
+explained, as if it were a usual occurrence, that he had given away all
+the spare linen in his house to a girl that had to marry in&nbsp;&#8230;
+urgent circumstances, and had forgotten to get more.  And what do you
+think did he offer as a substitute for sheets?"  No one could even
+imagine what might not occur to the mind of Saunderson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Towels, as I am an honourable man; a collection of towels, as he put
+it, 'skilfully attached together, might make a pleasant covering.'
+That is the first and last time I ever slept in the Free Church Manse
+of Kilbogie.  As regards Saunderson's study, I will guarantee that the
+like of it cannot be found within Scotland," and at the very thought of
+it that exact and methodical ecclesiastic realised the limitations of
+language.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His boys boasted of the Rabbi's study as something that touched genius
+in its magnificent disorderliness, and Carmichael was so proud of it
+that he took me to see it as to a shrine.  One whiff of its atmosphere
+as you entered the door gave an appetite and raised the highest
+expectations.  For any bookman can estimate a library by scent&mdash;if an
+expert he could even write out a catalogue of the books and sketch the
+appearance of the owner.  Heavy odour of polished mahogany, Brussels
+carpets, damask curtains and tablecloths; then the books are kept
+within glass, consist of sets of standard works in half calf, and the
+owner will give you their cost wholesale to a farthing.  Faint
+fragrance of delicate flowers, and Russia leather, with a hint of
+cigarettes; prepare yourself for a marvellous wall-paper, etchings,
+bits of oak, limited editions, and a man in a velvet coat.  Smell of
+paste and cloth binding and general newness means yesterday's books and
+a man racing through novels with a paper knife.  Those are only
+book-rooms by courtesy, and never can satisfy any one who has breathed
+the sacred air.  It is a rich and strong spirit, not only filling the
+room, but pouring out from the door and possessing the hall, redeeming
+an opposite dining-room from grossness, and a more distant drawing-room
+from frivolity, and even lending a goodly flavour to bedrooms on upper
+floors.  It is distilled from curious old duodecimos packed on high
+shelves out of sight, and blows over folios, with large clasps, that
+once stood in monastery libraries, and gathers a subtle sweetness from
+parchments that were illuminated in ancient scriptoriums, that are now
+grass grown, and is fortified with good old musty calf.  The wind was
+from the right quarter on the first day I visited Kilbogie Manse, and
+as we went up the garden walk the Rabbi's library already bade us
+welcome, and assured us of our reward for a ten miles' walk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saunderson was perfectly helpless in all manner of mechanics&mdash;he could
+not drive a tack through anything except his own fingers, and had given
+up shaving at the suggestion of his elders&mdash;and yet he boasted, with
+truth, that he had got three times as many books into the study as his
+predecessor possessed in all his house.  For Saunderson had shelved the
+walls from the floor to the ceiling, into every corner and over the
+doors, and above the windows, as well as below them.  The wright had
+wished to leave the space clear above the mantelpiece.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there, or maybe John Knox, and a bit
+clock 'll be handy for letting ye ken the 'oors on Sabbath."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-166"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-166.jpg" ALT="&quot;Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="339" HEIGHT="433">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 339px">
+&quot;Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi admitted that he had a Knox, but was full of a scheme for
+hanging him over his own history, which he considered both appropriate
+and convenient.  As regards time, it was the last thing of which that
+worthy man desired to be reminded&mdash;going to bed when he could no longer
+see for weariness, and rising as soon as he awoke, taking his food when
+it was brought to him, and being conducted to church by the beadle
+after the last straggler was safely seated.  He even cast covetous eyes
+upon the two windows, which were absurdly large, as he considered, but
+compromised matters by removing the shutters and filling up the vacant
+space with slender works of devotion.  It was one of his conceits that
+the rising sun smote first on an À Kempis, for this he had often
+noticed as he worked of a morning.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Book-shelves had long ago failed to accommodate Rabbi's treasures, and
+the floor had been bravely utilised.  Islands of books, rugged and
+perpendicular, rose on every side; long promontories reached out from
+the shore, varied by bold headlands; and so broken and varied was that
+floor that the Rabbi was pleased to call it the Aegean Sea, where he
+had his Lesbos and his Samos.  It is absolutely incredible, but it is
+all the same a simple fact, that he knew every book and its location,
+having a sense of the feel as well as the shape of his favourites.
+This was not because he had the faintest approach to orderliness&mdash;for
+he would take down twenty volumes and never restore them to the same
+place by any chance.  It was a sort of motherly instinct by which he
+watched over them all, even loved prodigals that wandered over all the
+study and then set off on adventurous journeys into distant rooms.  The
+restoration of an emigrant to his lawful home was celebrated by a feast
+in which, by a confusion of circumstances, the book played the part of
+the fatted calf, being read afresh from beginning to end.  During his
+earlier and more agile years the Rabbi used to reach the higher levels
+of his study by wonderful gymnastic feats, but after two falls&mdash;one
+with three Ante-Nicene fathers in close pursuit&mdash;he determined to call
+in assistance.  This he did after an impressive fashion.  When he
+attended the roup at Pitfoodles&mdash;a day of historical prices&mdash;and
+purchased in open competition, at three times its value, a small stack
+ladder, Kilbogie was convulsed, and Mains had to offer explanations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's cuttit aff seevin feet, and rins up it tae get his tapmaist
+bukes, but that's no a'," and then Mains gave it to be understood that
+the rest of the things the minister had done with that ladder were
+beyond words.  For in order that the rough wood might not scar the
+sensitive backs of the fathers, the Rabbi had covered the upper end
+with cloth, and for that purpose had utilised a pair of trousers.  It
+was not within his ability in any way to reduce or adapt his material,
+so that those interesting garments remained in their original shape,
+and, as often as the ladder stood reversed, presented a very impressive
+and diverting spectacle.  It was the inspiration of one of Carmichael's
+most successful stories&mdash;how he had done his best to console a woman on
+the death of her husband, and had not altogether failed, till she
+caught sight of the deceased's nether garments waving disconsolately on
+a rope in the garden, when she refused to be comforted.  "Toom (empty)
+breeks tae me noo," and she wept profusely, "toom breeks tae me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the great efforts of the Rabbi's life was to seat his visitors,
+since, beyond the one chair, accommodation had to be provided on the
+table, wheresoever there happened to be no papers, and on the ledges of
+the bookcases.  It was pretty to see the host suggesting from a long
+experience those coigns of vantage he counted easiest and safest,
+giving warnings also of unsuspected danger in the shape of restless
+books that might either yield beneath one's feet or descend on one's
+head.  Carmichael, however, needed no such guidance, for he knew his
+way about in the marvellous place, and at once made for what the boys
+called the throne of the fathers.  This was a lordly seat, laid as to
+its foundation in mediaeval divines of ponderous content, but
+excellently finished with the Benedictine edition of St. Augustine,
+softened by two cushions, one for a seat and another for a back.  Here
+Carmichael used to sit in great content, smoking and listening while
+the Rabbi hunted an idea through Scripture with many authorities, or
+defended the wildest Calvinism with strange, learned arguments; from
+this place he would watch the Rabbi searching for a lost note on some
+passage of Holy Writ amid a pile of papers two feet deep, through which
+he burrowed on all fours, or climbing for a book on the sky-line, to
+forget his errand and to expound some point of doctrine from the top of
+the ladder.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You 're comfortable, John, and you do not want to put off your boots
+after all that travelling to and fro? then I will search for Barbara,
+and secure some refreshment for our bodies," and Carmichael watched the
+Rabbi depart with pity, for he was going on a troublous errand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Housekeepers are, after beadles, the most wonderful functionaries in
+the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, and every species could be found
+within a day's journey of Drumtochty.  Jenkins, indeed, suggested that
+a series of papers on Church Institutions read at the clerical club
+should include one on housekeepers, and offered to supply the want,
+which was the reason why Dr. Dowbiggin refused to certify him to a
+vacancy, speaking of him as "frivolous and irresponsible."  The class
+ranged from Sarah of Drumtochty, who could cook and knew nothing about
+ecclesiastical affairs, to that austere damsel, Margaret Meiklewham of
+Pitscowrie, who had never prepared an appetising meal in her life, but
+might have sat as an elder in the Presbytery.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Among all her class, Barbara MacCluckie stood an easy worst, being the
+most incapable, unsightly, evil-tempered, vexatious woman into whose
+hands an unmarried man had ever been delivered.  MacWheep had his own
+trials, but his ruler saw that he had sufficient food and some comfort,
+but Barbara laid herself out to make the Rabbi's life a misery.  He
+only obtained his meals as a favour, and an extra blanket had to be won
+by a week's abject humiliation.  Fire was only allowed him at times,
+and he secured oil for his lamp by stratagems.  Latterly he was glad to
+send strange ministers to Mains, and his boys alone forced lodgment in
+the manse.  The settlement of Barbara was the great calamity of the
+Rabbi's life, and was the doing of his own good nature.  He first met
+her when she came to the manse one evening to discuss the unlawfulness
+of infant baptism and the duty of holding Sunday on Saturday, being the
+Jewish Sabbath.  His interest deepened on learning that she had been
+driven from twenty-nine situations through the persecution of the
+ungodly; and on her assuring him that she had heard a voice in a dream
+bidding her take charge of Kilbogie Manse, the Rabbi, who had suffered
+many things at the hands of young girls given to lovers, installed
+Barbara, and began to repent that very day.  A tall, bony, forbidding
+woman, with a squint and a nose turning red, as she stated, from
+chronic indigestion, let it be said for her that she did not fall into
+the sins of her predecessors.  It was indeed a pleasant jest in
+Kilbogie for four Sabbaths that she allowed a local Romeo, who knew not
+that his Juliet was gone, to make his adventurous way to her bedroom
+window, and then showed such an amazing visage that he was laid up for
+a week through the suddenness of his fall.  What the Rabbi endured no
+one knew, but his boys understood that the only relief he had from
+Barbara's tyranny was on Sabbath evening, when she stated her
+objections to the doctrine, and threatened henceforward to walk into
+Muirtown in order to escape from unsound doctrine.  On such occasions
+the Rabbi laid himself out for her instruction with much zest, and he
+knew when he had produced an impression, for then he went supperless to
+bed.  Between this militant spirit and the boys there was an undying
+feud, and Carmichael was not at all hurt to hear her frank references
+to himself.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-171"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-171.jpg" ALT="A tall, bony, forbidding woman." BORDER="2" WIDTH="291" HEIGHT="511">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 291px">
+A tall, bony, forbidding woman.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"What need he come stravagin' doon frae Drumtochty for? it wud set him
+better tae wait on his ain fouk.  A licht-headed fellow, they say as
+kens; an' as for his doctrine&mdash;weel, maybe it 'll dae for Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tea?  Did ye expect me tae hae biling water at this 'oor o' the nicht?
+My word, the money wud flee in this hoose gin a' wesna here.  Milk 'll
+dae fine for yon birkie: he micht be gled tae get onything, sorning on
+a respectable manse every ither week."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will pardon our humble provision"&mdash;this is how the Rabbi prepared
+Carmichael; "we have taken my worthy Abigail unawares, and she cannot
+do for us what in other circumstances would be her desire.  She has a
+thorn in the flesh which troubles her, and makes her do what she would
+not; but I am convinced that her heart is right."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+That uncompromising woman took no notice of Drumtochty, but busied
+herself in a search for the Rabbi's bag, which he insisted had been
+brought home from Muirtown that morning, and which was at last found
+covered with books.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not open it at present, Barbara; you can identify the contents
+later if it be necessary, but I am sure they are all right," and the
+Rabbi watched Barbara's investigations with evident anxiety.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maybe ye hae brocht back what ye started wi', but gin ye hev, it's the
+first time a' can mind.  Laist sacrament at Edinburgh ye pickit up twal
+books, ae clothes brush, an' a crochet cover for a chair, an' left
+a'thing that belonged tae ye."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was an inadvertence; but I obtained a drawer for my own use this
+time, and I was careful to pack its contents into the bag, leaving
+nothing."  But the Rabbi did not seem over-confident.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's nae question that ye hev filled the pack," said Barbara, with
+much deliberation and an ominous calmness; "but whether wi' yir ain
+gear or some ither body's, a'll leave ye tae judge yirsel'.  A 'll
+juist empty the bag on the bukes;" and Barbara selected a bank of
+Puritans for the display of her master's spoil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ae slipbody (bodice), well hemmed and gude stuff&mdash;ye didna tak' that
+wi' ye, at ony rate; twa pillow slips&mdash;they 'll come in handy, oor ain
+are wearin' thin; ae pair o' sheets&mdash;'ll juist dae for the next trimmie
+that ye want tae set up in her hoose; this 'll be a bolster slip, a 'm
+judgin'&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It must be the work of Satan," cried the poor Rabbi, who constantly
+saw the hand of the great enemy in the disorder of his study.  "I
+cannot believe that my hands packed such garments in place of my own."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 'll be satisfied when ye read the name; it's plain eneuch; ye
+needna gang dodderin' aboot here and there lookin' for yir glasses;
+there's twa pair on your head already;" for it was an hour of triumph
+to Barbara's genial soul.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's beyond understanding," murmured the Rabbi.  "I must have mistaken
+one drawer for another in the midst of meditation;" and then, when
+Barbara had swept out of the room with the varied linen on her arm,
+"this is very humiliating, John, and hard to bear."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nonsense, Rabbi; it's one of the finest things you have ever done.
+Half a dozen journeys of that kind would refurnish the manse; it's just
+a pity you can't annex a chair;" but he saw that the good man was
+sorely vexed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a good lad, John, and it is truly marvellous what charity I
+have received at the hands of young men who might have scorned and
+mocked me.  God knows how my heart has been filled with gratitude, and
+I&nbsp;&#8230; have mentioned your names in my unworthy prayers that God may
+do to you all according to the kindness ye have shown unto me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was plain that this lonely, silent man was much moved, and
+Carmichael did not speak.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"People consider that I am ignorant of my failings and weaknesses, and
+I can bear witness with a clear conscience that I am not angry when
+they smile and nod the head; why should I be?  But, John, it is known
+to myself only and Him before whom all hearts are open how great is my
+suffering in being among my neighbours as a sparrow upon the housetop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May you never know, John, what it is to live alone and friendless till
+you lose the ways of other men and retire within yourself, looking out
+on the multitude passing on the road as a hermit from his cell, and
+knowing that some day you will die alone, with none to&nbsp;&#8230; give you a
+draught of water."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rabbi, Rabbi"&mdash;for Carmichael was greatly distressed at the woe in the
+face opposite him, and his heart was tender that night&mdash;"why should you
+have lived like that?  Do not be angry, but&nbsp;&#8230; did God intend&nbsp;&#8230;
+it cannot be wrong&nbsp;&#8230;  I mean&nbsp;&#8230; God did give Eve to Adam."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Laddie, why do ye speak with fear and a faltering voice?  Did I say
+aught against that gracious gift or the holy mystery of love, which is
+surely the sign of the union betwixt God and the soul, as is set forth
+after a mystical shape in the Song of Songs?  But it was not for
+me&mdash;no, not for me.  I complain not, neither have I vexed my soul.  He
+doeth all things well."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But, dear Rabbi"&mdash;and Carmichael hesitated, not knowing where he stood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye ask me why"&mdash;the Rabbi anticipated the question&mdash;"and I will tell
+you plainly, for my heart has ever gone forth to you.  For long years I
+found no favour in the eyes of the Church, and it seemed likely I would
+be rejected from the ministry as a man useless and unprofitable.  How
+could I attempt to win the love of any maiden, since it did not appear
+to be the will of God that I should ever have a place of habitation?
+It consisted not with honour, for I do hold firmly that no man hath any
+right to seek unto himself a wife till he have a home."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Afterwards, you would say.  Ah, John, then had I become old and
+unsightly, not such a one as women could care for.  It would have been
+cruel to tie a maid for life to one who might only be forty years in
+age, but was as seventy in his pilgrimage, and had fallen into unlovely
+habits."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the Rabbi turned on Carmichael his gentle eyes, that were shining
+with tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will be otherwise with you, and so let it be.  May I live to see
+you rejoicing with the wife of your youth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So it came to pass that it was to this unlikely man Carmichael told his
+new-born love, and he was amazed at the understanding of the Rabbi, as
+well as his sympathy and toleration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A maid of spirit&mdash;and that is an excellent thing; and any excess will
+be tamed by life.  Only see to it that ye agree in that which lieth
+beneath all churches and maketh souls one in God.  May He prosper you
+in your wooing as He did the patriarch Jacob, and far more abundantly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very early in the morning Carmichael awoke, and being tempted by the
+sunrise, arose and went downstairs.  As he came near the study door he
+heard a voice in prayer, and knew that the Rabbi had been all night in
+intercession.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Thou hast denied me wife and child; deny me not Thyself.&#8230;  A
+stranger Thou hast made me among men; refuse me not a place in the
+City.&#8230;  Deal graciously with this lad who has been to me as a son
+in the Gospel.&#8230;  He has not despised an old man; put not his heart
+to confusion.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael crept upstairs again, but not to sleep, and at breakfast he
+pledged the Rabbi to come up some day and see Kate Carnegie.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap13"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-177.jpg" ALT="dropcap-e" BORDER="0" WIDTH="180" HEIGHT="229">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+nglish folk have various festivals in the religious year, as becometh
+a generous country, but in our austere and thrifty Glen there was only
+one high day, and that was Sacrament Sabbath.  It is rumoured&mdash;but one
+prefers not to believe scandals&mdash;that the Scottish Kirk nowadays is
+encouraging a monthly Sacrament, after which nothing remains in the way
+of historical declension except for people to remain for the Sacrament
+as it may occur to them, and for men like Drumsheugh to get up at
+meetings to give their religious experiences, when every one that has
+any understanding will know that the reserve has gone out of Scottish
+character, and the reverence from Scottish faith.  Dr. Davidson's
+successor, a boisterous young man of bourgeois manners, elected by
+popular vote, has got guilds, where Hillocks' granddaughter reads
+papers on Emerson and refers to the Free Kirk people as Dissenters, but
+things were different in the old days before the Revolution.  The
+Doctor had such unquestioning confidence in himself that he considered
+his very presence a sufficient defence for the Kirk, and was of such
+perfect breeding that he regarded other Kirks with unbroken charity.
+He was not the man to weary the parish with fussy little schemes, and
+he knew better than level down the Sacrament.  It was the summit of the
+year to which the days climbed, from which they fell away, and it was
+held in the middle of August.  Then nature was at her height in the
+Glen, and had given us of her fulness.  The barley was golden, and,
+rustling in the gentle wind, wearied for the scythe; the oats were
+changing daily, and had only so much greenness as would keep the
+feathery heads firm for the handling; the potatoes having received the
+last touch of the plough, were well banked up and flowering pleasantly;
+the turnips, in fine levels, like Hillocks', or gently sloping fields,
+like Menzies', were so luxuriant that a mere townsman could not have
+told the direction of the drills; the hay had been gathered into long
+stacks like unto the shape of a two-storied house, and the fresh
+aftermath on the field was yielding sweet morsels for the horses of an
+evening; the pasture was rich with the hardy white clover, and one
+could hear from the road the cattle taking full mouthfuls; young spring
+animals, like calves and lambs, were now falling into shape and
+beginning independent life, though with an occasional hankering after
+the past, when the lambs would fall a-bleating for their mothers, and
+calves would hang about the gate at evening, where they had often
+fought shamelessly to get a frothy nose once more into the milk-pail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Our little gardens were full a-blow, a very blaze and maze of colour
+and foliage, wherein the owner wandered of an evening examining flowers
+and fruit with many and prolonged speculations&mdash;much aided by the smoke
+of tobacco&mdash;as to the chance of gaining a second at our horticultural
+show with his stocks, or honourable mention for a dish of mixed fruit.
+The good wife might be seen of an afternoon about that time, in a
+sun-bonnet and a gown carefully tucked up, gathering her berry harvest
+for preserves, with two young assistants, who worked at a modest
+distance from their mother, very black as to their mouths, and
+preserving the currants, as they plucked them, by an instantaneous
+process of their own invention.  Next afternoon a tempting fragrance of
+boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same
+assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of
+black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of
+blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really
+the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome.
+Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live
+in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories.  Some man
+reading these pages will remember that red-letter day of the
+summer-time long ago, and the faithful hands that plucked the fruit,
+and the old kitchen, with its open beams, and the peat fire glowing
+red, and the iron arm that held the copper-lined pan&mdash;much lent round
+the district&mdash;and the smack of the hot, sweet berries, more grateful
+than any banquet of later days.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-179"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-179.jpg" ALT="Gathering her berry harvest." BORDER="2" WIDTH="307" HEIGHT="436">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 307px">
+Gathering her berry harvest.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The bees worked hard in this time of affluence, and came staggering
+home with spoil from the hills, but it was holiday season on the farms.
+Between the last labours on the roots and the beginning of harvest
+there was no exacting demand from the land, and managing farmers
+invented tasks to fill up the hours.  An effort was made to restore
+carts and implements to their original colour, which was abruptly
+interrupted by the first day of cutting, so that one was not surprised
+to see a harvest cart blue on one side and a rich crusted brown on the
+other.  Drumsheugh would even send his men to road-making, and
+apologise to the neighbours&mdash;"juist reddin' up aboot the doors"&mdash;while
+Saunders the foreman and his staff laboured in a shamefaced manner like
+grown-ups playing at a children's game.  Hillocks used to talk vaguely
+about going to see a married sister in Glasgow, and one year got as far
+as Kildrummie, where he met Piggie Walker, and returned to have a deal
+in potatoes with that enterprising man.  More than once Drumsheugh&mdash;but
+then his position was acknowledged&mdash;set off on the Monday for
+Carnoustie with a large carpet bag containing, among other things, two
+pounds of butter and two dozen eggs, and announced his intention of
+spending a fortnight at the "saut water."  The kirkyard would bid him
+good-bye, and give him a united guarantee that Sabbath would be kept at
+Drumtochty during his absence, but the fathers were never astonished to
+see the great man drop into Muirtown market next Friday on his way
+west&mdash;having found four days of unrelieved gaiety at that Scottish
+Monaco enough for flesh and blood.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This season of small affairs was redeemed by the Sacrament, and
+preparations began far off with the cleaning of the kirk.  As early as
+June our beadle had the face of one with something on his mind, and
+declined to pledge himself for roups of standing corn, where his
+presence was much valued, not on business grounds, but as an official
+sanction of the proceedings.  Drumtochty always felt that Dr. Davidson
+was fully represented by his man, and John could no longer disentangle
+the two in his own mind&mdash;taking a gloomy view of the parish when he was
+laid up by lumbago and the Doctor had to struggle on single-handed, and
+regarding the future when both would be gone with despair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, ay, Hillocks," he once remarked to that worthy, "this 'll be a
+queer-like place when me an' the Doctor 's awa'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Na, na, a' daurna promise for the roup, but ye can cairry it on
+whether a 'm there or no; prices dinna hang on a beadle, and they 're
+far mair than appearances.  A 'm juist beginning tae plan the reddin'
+up for the Saicrament, an' a 've nae speerit for pleesure; div ye ken,
+Hillocks, a' wud actually coont a funeral distrackin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye hev an awfu' responsibility, there 's nae doot o' that, John, but
+gin ye juist jined the fouk for ae field, it wud be an affset tae the
+day, an' the auctioneer wud be lifted."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With the beginning of July, John fairly broke ground in the great
+effort, and was engaged thereon for six weeks, beginning with the
+dusting of the pulpit and concluding with the beating of Drumsheugh's
+cushion.  During that time the Doctor only suggested his wants to John,
+and the fathers themselves trembled of a Sabbath morning lest in a
+moment of forgetfulness they might carry in some trace of their farms
+with them and mar the great work.  It was pretty to see Whinnie
+labouring at his feet in a grassy corner, while John watched him from
+the kirk door with an unrelenting countenance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The elders also had what might be called their cleaning at this season,
+examining into the cases of any who had made a "mistak'" since last
+August, and deciding whether they should be allowed to "gang forrit."
+These deliberations were begun at the door, where Drumsheugh and Domsie
+stood the last five minutes before the Doctor appeared, and were open
+to the congregation, who from their places within learned the
+offenders' prospects.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Doctor 'll dae as he considers richt, an' he 's juist ower easy
+pleased wi' onybody 'at starts a-greetin', but yon's ma jidgment,
+Dominie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I do not wish to dispute with you, Drumsheugh"&mdash;Domsie always spoke
+English on such occasions&mdash;"and the power of the keys is a solemn
+charge.  But we must temper a just measure of severity with a spirit of
+mercy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye may temper this or temper that," said Drumsheugh, going to the root
+of the matter, "but a' tell ye, Dominie, there's ower mony o' thae
+limmers in the country juist noo, an' a 'm for making an example o'
+Jean Ferguson."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Jean did not present herself for a token on the approaching
+Fast-day, and sat out with the children during the Sacrament with as
+becoming an expression of penitence as her honest, comely face could
+accomplish.  Nor did Jean or her people bear any grudge against the
+Doctor or the Session for their severity.  She had gone of her own
+accord to confess her fault, and was willing that her process of
+cleansing should be thorough before she received absolution.  When a
+companion in misfortune spoke of the greater leniency of Pitscowrie,
+Jean expressed her thankfulness that she was of Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nane o' yir loose wys for me&mdash;gie me a richt minister as dis his
+duty;" which showed that whatever might be her deflections in practice,
+Jean's ideas of morals were sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Preparations in the parish at large began two weeks before the
+Sacrament, when persons whose attendance had been, to say the least,
+irregular slipped in among the fathers without ostentation, and
+dropping into a conversation on the weather, continued, as it were,
+from last Sabbath, used it skilfully to offer an apology for past
+failures in church observance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's keepit up wonderfu' through the week, for a' never like ower
+bricht mornin's," old Sandie Ferguson would remark casually, whose
+arrival, swallow-like, heralded the approach of the great occasion.
+"The roads are graund the noo frae the heich (high glen); we 've hed an
+awfu' winter, neeburs, up oor wy&mdash;clean blockit up.  Them 'at lives
+ablow are michty favoured, wi' the kirk at their door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's maist extraordinar' hoo the seasons are changin'"&mdash;Jamie Soutar
+could never resist Sandie's effrontery&mdash;"A' mind when Mairch saw the
+end o' the snow, an' noo winter is hangin' aboot in midsummer.  A'm
+expeckin' tae hear, in another five year, that the drifts last through
+the Sacrament in August.  It 'll be a sair trial for ye, Sandie, a
+wullin' kirkgoer&mdash;but ye 'll hae the less responsibility."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Millhole 's here, at ony rate, the day, an' we 're gled tae see
+him"&mdash;for Drumsheugh's pride was to have a large Sacrament&mdash;and so
+Sandie would take his place at an angle to catch the Doctor's eye, and
+pay such rapt attention to the sermon that any one not knowing the
+circumstances might have supposed that he had just awaked from sleep.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Ploughmen who on other Sabbaths slept in the forenoon and visited their
+sweethearts the rest of the day, presented themselves for tokens on the
+Fast-day, and made the one elaborate toilette of the year on Saturday
+evening, when they shaved in turns before a scrap of glass hung outside
+the bothy door, and the foreman, skilled in the clipping of horses, cut
+their hair, utilising a porridge bowl with much ingenuity to secure a
+round cut.  They left early on the Sabbath morning, and formed
+themselves into a group against the gable of the kirk,&mdash;being reviewed
+with much satisfaction by Drumsheugh, who had a keen eye for absentees
+from the religious function of the year.  At the first sound of the
+bell the ploughmen went into kirk a solid mass, distributing themselves
+in the servants' pews attached to the farmers' pews, and maintaining an
+immovable countenance through every part of the service, any tendency
+to somnolence being promptly and effectually checked by the foreman,
+who allowed himself some ease when alone on other days, but on
+Sacrament Sabbath realised his charge and never closed an eye.  The
+women and children proceeded to their places on arrival, and the
+fathers followed them as the bell gave signs of ceasing.  Drumsheugh
+and Domsie then came in from the plate and the administration of
+discipline, and the parish waited as one man for the appearance of John
+with the Bible, the Doctor following, and envied those whose seat
+commanded the walk from the manse down which the procession came every
+Sabbath with dignity, but once a year with an altogether peculiar
+majesty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Drumtochty exiles meeting in London or other foreign places and
+recalling the Glen, never part without lighting on John and passing
+contempt on all officials beside him.  "Ye mind John?" one will say,
+wagging his head with an amazement that time and distance has in no
+wise cooled, and his fellow glensman will reply, "Ay, ye may traivel
+the warld ower or ye see his marrow."  Then they will fall into a
+thoughtful silence, and each knows that his neighbour is following John
+as he comes down the kirkyard on the great day.  "Comin' in at the door
+lookin' as if he didna ken there wes a body in the kirk, a' aye coontit
+best," but his friend has another preference.  "It wes fine, but, man,
+tae see him set the bukes doon on the pulpit cushion, and then juist
+gie ae glisk roond the kirk as much as tae say, 'What think ye o'
+that?' cowed a' thing."  It has been given to myself amid other
+privileges to see (and store in a fond memory) the walk of a University
+mace-bearer, a piper at the Highland gathering, a German stationmaster
+(after the war), and an alderman (of the old school), but it is bare
+justice to admit, although I am not of Drumtochty, but only as a
+proselyte of the gate, that none of those efforts is at all to be
+compared with John's achievement.  Within the manse the Doctor was
+waiting in pulpit array, grasping his father's snuff-box in a firm
+right hand, and it was understood that, none seeing them, and as a
+preparation for the strain that would immediately be upon them, both
+the minister and his man relaxed for a minute.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is there a respectable attendance, John?" and the Doctor would take a
+preliminary pinch.  "Drumsheugh does not expect many absentees."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naebody 's missin' that a' cud see, sir, except that ill gettit
+wratch, Tammie Ronaldson, and a' coont him past redemption.  A' gaed in
+as a' cam doon, and gin he wesna lyin' in his bed sleepin' an' snorin'
+like a heathen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, John, did you do your duty as an officer of the church?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A' stood ower him, Doctor, an' a' juist said tae masel', 'Shall a'
+smite wi' the sword?' but a' left him alane for this time."  And so
+they started&mdash;John in front with the books, and the Doctor a pace
+behind, his box now in the left hand, with a handkerchief added, and
+the other holding up his gown, both dignitaries bare-headed,
+unself-conscious, absorbed in their office.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The books were carried level with the top button of John's
+waistcoat&mdash;the Psalm-book being held in its place by the two extended
+thumbs&mdash;and neither were allowed to depart from the absolute horizontal
+by an eighth of an inch, even going up the pulpit stairs.  When they
+had been deposited in their place, and slightly patted, just to settle
+them, John descended to make way for the Doctor, who had been waiting
+beneath in a commanding attitude.  He then followed the minister up,
+and closed the door&mdash;not with a bang, but yet so that all might know he
+had finished his part of the work.  If any one had doubted how much
+skill went to this achievement, he had his eyes opened when John had
+the lumbago, and the smith arrived at the kirk door three yards ahead
+of the Doctor, and let the Psalm-book fall on the pulpit floor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 're thankfu' tae hae ye back, John," said Hillocks.  "Yon wes a
+temptin' o' Providence."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Once only had I the privilege of seeing John in this his glory, and the
+sight of him afflicted me with a problem no one has ever solved.  It
+might, indeed, be made a branch of scientific investigation, and would
+then be called the Genesis of Beadles.  Was a beadle ever a baby?  What
+like was he before he appeared in his office?  Was he lying as a
+cardinal in petto till the right moment, and then simply showed himself
+to be appointed as one born unto this end?  No one dared to hint that
+John had ever followed any other avocation, and an effort to connect
+John with the honourable trade of plumbing in the far past was justly
+regarded as a disgraceful return of Tammie Ronaldson's for much
+faithful dealing.  Drumtochty refused to consider his previous history,
+if he had any, and looked on John in his office as a kind of
+Melchizedek, a mysterious, isolated work of Providence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He was a mere wisp of a man, with a hard, keen face, iron-grey hair
+brushed low across his forehead, and clean-shaven cheeks.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-188"></A>
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-188.jpg" ALT="He was a mere wisp of a man." BORDER="2" WIDTH="169" HEIGHT="448">
+<H3 CLASS="h3left" STYLE="width: 169px">
+He was a mere wisp of a man.
+</H3>
+
+<P>
+"A 've naething tae say against a beard," on being once consulted, "an'
+a 'm no prepared tae deny it maun be in the plan o' Providence.  In
+fact, gin a' wes in a private capaucity, a' michtna shave, but in ma
+public capaucity, a 've nae alternative.  It wud be a fine story tae
+gang roond the Presbytery o' Muirtown that the Beadle o' Drumtochty hed
+a beard."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His authority was supreme under the Doctor, and never was disputed by
+man or beast save once, and John himself admitted that the
+circumstances were quite peculiar.  It was during the Doctor's famous
+continental tour, when Drumsheugh fought with strange names in the
+kirkyard, and the Presbytery supplied Drumtochty in turn.  The minister
+of St. David's, Muirtown, was so spiritual that he left his voice at
+the foot of the pulpit stairs, and lived in the Song of Solomon, with
+occasional excursions into the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and it was
+thoughtless not to have told Mr. Curlew that two or three dogs&mdash;of
+unexceptionable manners&mdash;attended our kirk with their masters.  They
+would no more have thought of brawling in church than John himself, and
+they knew the parts of the service as well as the Doctor, but dogs have
+been so made by our common Creator that they cannot abide falsetto, and
+Mr. Curlew tried them beyond endurance.  When he lifted up his voice in
+"Return, return, O Shulamite, return, return," a long wail in reply,
+from below a back seat where a shepherd was slumbering, proclaimed that
+his appeal had not altogether failed.  "Put out that dog," said the
+preacher in a very natural voice, with a strong suggestion of bad
+temper, "put that dog out immediately; it's most disgraceful that such&#8230;
+eh, conduct should go, on in a Christian church.  Where is the
+church officer?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A'm the Beadle o' Drumtochty"&mdash;standing in his place&mdash;"an' a'll dae
+yir pleesure;" and the occasion was too awful for any one, even the
+dog's master, to assist, far less to laugh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Laddie was conducted down the passage&mdash;a dog who would not
+condescend to resist&mdash;and led to the outer gate of the kirkyard, and
+John came in amid a dead silence&mdash;for Mr. Curlew had not yet got his
+pulpit note again&mdash;and faced the preacher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The dog 's oot, sir, but a' tak this congregation tae witness, ye
+begood (began) it yirsel'," and it was said that Mr. Curlew's pious and
+edifying chant was greatly restricted in country kirks from that day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not given to the beadle to sit with the elders in that famous
+court of morals which is called the Kirk Session, and of which strange
+stories are told by Southern historians, but it was his to show out and
+in the culprits with much solemnity.  He was able to denote the exact
+offence in the language of Kirk law, and was considered happy in his
+abbreviations for technical terms.  As a familiar of the Inquisition,
+he took oversight of the district, and saw that none escaped the
+wholesome discipline of the Church.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 're back," he said, arresting Peter Ferguson as he tried to escape
+down a byroad, and eyeing the prodigal sternly, who had fled from
+discipline to London, and there lost a leg; "the' 'll be a meetin' o'
+Session next week afore the Saicrament; wull a' tell the Doctor ye're
+comin'?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, ye 'll dae naething o' the kind, for a 'll no be there.  A 've nae
+suner got hame aifter ma accident but ye're tormentin' me on the verra
+road wi' yir Session.  Ye drave me awa' aince, an' noo ye wud harry
+(hunt) me aft again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A weel, a weel"&mdash;and John was quite calm&mdash;"dinna pit yirsel' in a
+feery farry (excitement); ye 'll gang yir ain wy and earn yir ain
+jidgment.  It wes for yir gude a' spoke, and noo a 've dune ma pairt,
+an' whatever comes o't, ye 'll no hae me or ony ither body tae blame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What think ye 'll happen?"&mdash;evidently sobered by John's tone, yet
+keeping up a show of defiance.  "Ye wud think the Session wes the
+Sheriff o' Perthshire tae hear ye blawin' and threatenin'."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's no for me tae say what may befa' ye, Peter Ferguson, for a 'm no
+yir jidge, but juist a frail mortal, beadle though I be; but a' may hev
+ma thochts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye refused the summons sax month syne, and took yir wys tae
+London&mdash;that wes contumacy added tae yir ither sin.  Nae doot ye made
+certain ye hed escapit, but hed ye?  A' leave it tae yirsel', for the
+answer is in yir body," and John examined Peter's wooden leg with an
+austere interest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, ay, ma man," he resumed&mdash;for Peter was now quite silenced by this
+uncompromising interpretation of the ways of Providence&mdash;"ye aff tae
+London, an' the Lord aifter ye, an' whuppit aff ae leg.  Noo ye declare
+ye 'll be as countermacious as ever, an' a 'm expeckin' the Lord 'll
+come doon here an' tak the ither leg, an' gin that disna dae, a' that
+remains is tae stairt on yir airms; and, man Peter, ye 'll be a
+bonnie-like sicht before a' 's dune."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was very faithful dealing, and it had its desired effect, for
+Peter appeared at next meeting, and in due course was absolved, as
+became an obedient son of the Church.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+John did not, however, always carry the sword, but bore himself gently
+to young people so long as they did not misbehave in church, and he had
+a very tender heart toward probationers, as being callow members of
+that great ecclesiastical guild in which he was one of the heads.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When one of those innocents came to take the Doctor's place, John used
+to go in to visit them in the dining-room on Saturday evening, partly
+to temper the severity of his wife, Dr. Davidson's housekeeper, who
+dealt hardly with the lads, and partly to assist them with practical
+hints regarding pulpit deportment and the delivery of their sermons.
+One unfortunate was so nervous and clinging that John arranged his
+remarks for him into heads&mdash;with an application to two classes&mdash;and
+then, having suggested many points, stopped under the yew arch that
+divided the kirkyard from the manse garden, and turned on the shaking
+figure which followed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ae thing mair; aifter ye 're dune wi' yir sermon, whether ye 're
+sweatin' or no, for ony sake fa' back in yir seat and dicht (wipe) yir
+broo," which being done by the exhausted orator, made a great
+impression on the people, and was so spread abroad that a year
+afterwards it won for him the parish of Pitscowrie.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap14"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIV.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+A MODERATE.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-192.jpg" ALT="dropcap-a" BORDER="0" WIDTH="147" HEIGHT="248">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+s a matter of fact, Dr. Davidson, minister of Drumtochty, stood
+exactly five feet nine in his boots, and was therefore a man of quite
+moderate height; but this is not what you had dared to state to any
+loyal and self-respecting person in the parish.  For "the Doctor"&mdash;what
+suggestions of respect and love were in that title on a Drumtochty
+tongue&mdash;was so compactly made and bore himself with such dignity, both
+in walk and conversation, that Drumsheugh, although not unaccustomed to
+measurement and a man of scrupulous accuracy, being put into the
+witness-box, would have sworn that Dr. Davidson was "aboot sax feet aff
+and on&mdash;maybe half an inch mair, standin' at his full hicht in the
+pulpit."  Which fond delusion seemed to declare abroad, as in a
+parable, the greatness of the Doctor.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Providence had dealt bountifully with Dr. Davidson, and had bestowed on
+him the largest benefit of heredity.  He was not the first of his house
+to hold this high place of parish minister&mdash;the only absolute monarchy
+in the land&mdash;and he must not receive over-praise for not falling into
+those personal awkwardnesses and petty tyrannies which are the
+infallible signs of one called suddenly to the throne.  His were the
+pride of blood, the inherent sense of authority, the habit of rule, the
+gracious arts of manner, the conviction of popular devotion, the grasp
+of affairs, the interest in the people's life, which are the marks and
+aids of a royal caste.  It was not in the nature of things that the
+Doctor should condescend to quarrel with a farmer or mix himself up
+with any vulgar squabble, because his will was law in ninety cases in a
+hundred, and in the other ten he skilfully anticipated the people's
+wishes.  When the minister of Nether Pitfoodles&mdash;who had sermons on
+"Love, Courtship, and Marriage," and was much run after in
+Muirtown&mdash;quarrelled with his elders about a collection, and asked the
+interference of the Presbytery, Dr. Davidson dealt severely with him in
+open court as one who had degraded the ministry and discredited
+government.  It was noticed also that the old gentleman would afterward
+examine Nether Pitfoodles curiously for minutes together in the
+Presbytery, and then shake his head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Any man," he used to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as
+they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle
+with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a
+fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of
+Scotland."  And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry
+over their wine in Kildrummie Manse&mdash;being both of the same school,
+cultured, clean-living, kind-hearted, honourable, but not extravagantly
+evangelical clergymen.  They agreed in everything except the matter of
+their after-dinner wine, Dr. Davidson having a partiality for port,
+while the minister of Kildrummie insisted that a generous claret was
+the hereditary drink of a Scottish gentleman.  This was only, however,
+a subject of academic debate, and was not allowed to interfere with
+practice&mdash;the abbe of Drumtochty taking his bottle of claret, in an
+appreciative spirit, and the cure of Kildrummie disposing of his two or
+three glasses of port with cheerful resignation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+If Drumtochty exalted its minister above his neighbours, it may be
+urged in excuse that Scottish folk are much affected by a man's birth,
+and Dr. Davidson had a good ancestry.  He was the last of his line, and
+represented a family that for two centuries had given her sons to the
+Kirk.  Among those bygone worthies, the Doctor used to select one in
+especial for honourable mention.  He was a minister of Dunleith, whose
+farmers preferred to play ball against the wall of the kirk to hearing
+him preach, and gave him insolence on his offering a pious
+remonstrance.  Whereupon the Davidson of that day, being, like all his
+race, short in stature, but mighty in strength, first beat the champion
+player one Sabbath morning at his own game to tame an unholy pride, and
+then thrashed him with his fist to do good to his soul.  This happy
+achievement in practical theology secured an immediate congregation,
+and produced so salutary an effect on the schismatic ball-player that
+he became in due course an elder, and was distinguished for his
+severity in dealing with persons absenting themselves from public
+worship, or giving themselves overmuch to vain amusements.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the close of the last century the Doctor's grandfather was minister
+of the High Kirk, Muirtown, where he built up the people in loyalty to
+Kirk and State, and himself recruited for the Perthshire Fencibles.  He
+also delivered a sermon entitled "The French Revolution the just
+judgment of the Almighty on the spirit of insubordination," for which
+he received a vote of thanks from the Lord Provost and Bailies of
+Muirtown in council assembled, as well as a jewel from the Earl of
+Kilspindie, the grandfather of our lord, which the Doctor inherited and
+wore on the third finger of his left hand.  Had Carmichael or any other
+minister decked himself after this fashion, it had not fared well with
+him, but even the Free Kirk appreciated a certain pomp in Dr. Davidson,
+and would have resented his being as other men.  He was always pleased
+to give the history of the ring, and generally told a story of his
+ancestor, which he had tasted much more frequently than the sermon.  A
+famous judge had asked him to dinner as he made his circuit, and they
+had disputed about the claret, till at last its excellence compelled
+respect at the close of the first bottle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Now, Reverend Sir,' said the judge, 'this wine has been slandered and
+its fair fame taken away without reason.  I demand that you absolve it
+from the scandal.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'My Lord,' said my worthy forbear, 'you are a great criminal lawyer,
+but you are not well read in Kirk law, for no offender can be absolved
+without three appearances.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My grandfather," the Doctor used to conclude, "had the best of that
+jest besides at least two bottles of claret, for in those days a
+clergyman took more wine than we would now think seemly, although, mark
+you, the old gentleman always denounced drunkenness on two grounds:
+first, because it was an offence against religion, and second, because
+it was a sign of weakness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Some old folk could remember the Doctor's father, who never attained to
+the Doctorate, but was a commanding personage.  He published no
+sermons, but as the first Davidson in Drumtochty, he laid the
+foundations of good government.  The Kilspindie family had only
+recently come into the parish&mdash;having purchased the larger part of the
+Carnegies' land&mdash;and Drumtochty took a thrawn fit, and among other acts
+of war pulled down time after time certain new fences.  The minister
+was appealed to by his lordship, and having settled the rights of the
+matter, he bade the factor wait in patience till the Sacrament, and
+Drumsheugh's father used to tell unto the day of his death, as a
+historical event, how the Doctor's father stood at the communion-table
+and debarred from the Sacrament evil livers of all kinds, and that day
+in especial all who had broken Lord Kilspindie's fences,&mdash;which was an
+end of the war.  There was a picture of him in the Doctor's study,
+showing a very determined gentleman, who brought up both his parish and
+his family upon the stick, and with undeniable success.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With such blood in his veins it was not to be expected that our Doctor
+should be after the fashion of a modern minister.  No one had ever seen
+him (or wished to see him) in any other dress than black cloth, and a
+broad-brimmed silk hat, with a white stock of many folds and a bunch of
+seals depending from some mysterious pocket.  His walk, so assured, so
+measured, so stately, was a means of grace to the parish, confirming
+every sound and loyal belief, and was crowned, so to say, by his stick,
+which had a gold head, and having made history in the days of his
+father, had reached the position of a hereditary sceptre.  No one could
+estimate the aid and comfort that stick gave to the Doctor's visits,
+but one quite understood the force of the comparison Hillocks once
+drew, after the Doctor's death, between the coming to his house of the
+Doctor and a "cry" from his energetic successor under the new <I>régime</I>.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 's a hard-workin' body, oor new man, aye rin rinnin', fuss fussin'
+roond the pairish, an' he 's a pop'lar hand in the pulpit, but it's a
+puir business a veesit frae him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's juist in an' oot like a cadger buyin' eggs, nae peace an' nae
+solemnity.  Of coorse it's no his blame that he 's naethin' tae look
+at, for that's the wy he wes made, an' his father keepit a pig (china)
+shop, but at ony rate he micht get a wise-like stick.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Noo, there wes the Doctor 'at's dead an' gone; he didna gang
+scrammelin' an' huntin' aifter the fouk frae Monday tae Saiturday.  Na,
+na, he didna lower himsel' preachin' an' paiterin' like a missionary
+body.  He announced frae the pulpit whar he wes gaein' and when he wes
+comin'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'It's my purpose,'" and Hillocks did his best to imitate the Doctor,
+"'to visit the farm of Hillocks on Wednesday of this week, and I desire
+to meet with all persons living thereon;' it wes worth callin' an
+intimation, an' gied ye pleesure in yir seat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On Tuesday aifternoon John wud juist drap in tae see that a'thing wes
+ready, and the next aifternoon the Doctor comes himsel', an' the first
+thing he dis is tae lay the stick on the table an' gin he hed never
+said a word, tae see it lyin' there wes a veesitation.  But he 's a
+weel-meanin' bit craturie, Maister Peebles, an' handy wi' a magic
+lantern.  Sall," and then Hillocks became incapable of speech, and you
+knew that the thought of Dr. Davidson explaining comic slides had quite
+overcome him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This visitation counted as an event in domestic life, and the Doctor's
+progress through the Glen was noted in the kirkyard, and any special
+remark duly reported.  Nothing could be more perfect than his manner on
+such occasions, being leisurely, comprehensive, dignified, gracious.
+First of all he saluted every member of the family down to the bairns
+by name, for had he not at least married the heads of the household,
+and certainly baptised all the rest?  Unto each he made some kindly
+remark also&mdash;to the good man a commendation of his careful farming, to
+the good-wife a deserved compliment on her butter; the eldest daughter
+was praised for the way in which she was sustaining the ancient
+reputation of Hillocks' dairy; there was a word to Hillocks' son on his
+masterly ploughing; and some good word of Dominie Jamieson's about the
+little lassie was not forgotten.  After which the Doctor sat
+down&mdash;there was some difficulty in getting the family to sit in his
+presence&mdash;and held a thorough review of the family history for the last
+year, dwelling upon the prospects of Charlie, for whom the Doctor had
+got a situation, and Jean, the married daughter, whose husband might
+one day have a farm with four pair of horses in the carse of Gowrie.
+The Doctor would then go out to give his opinion on the crops, which
+was drawn from keen practical knowledge&mdash;his brochure on "The Potato
+Disease: Whence it Came and How it is to be Met" created much stir in
+its day&mdash;and it was well known that the Doctor's view on bones or guano
+as a preferable manure was decisive.  On his return the servants came
+in&mdash;to whom also he said a word&mdash;and then from the head of the table he
+conducted worship&mdash;the ploughmen looking very uneasy and the children
+never taking their eyes off his face, while the gude-wife kept a
+watchful eye on all.  At the prayer she was careful to be within arm's
+reach of Hillocks, since on one memorable occasion that excellent man
+had remained in an attitude of rapt devotion after the others had risen
+from their knees, which sight profoundly affected the family, and led
+the Doctor to remark that it was the only time he had seen Hillocks
+play the Pharisee in public.  The Doctor's favourite passages were the
+eulogium on the model housewife in Proverbs, the parable of the Good
+Samaritan, and the 12th chapter of Romans, from which he deduced many
+very searching and practical lessons on diligence, honesty, mercy, and
+hospitality.  Before he left, and while all were under the spell of his
+presence, the Doctor would approach the delicate subject of Hillocks'
+"tout-mout" (dispute) with Gormack over a purchase at a roup, in which
+it was freely asserted that Gormack had corrupted the Kildrummie
+auctioneer, a gentleman removed above pecuniary bribes, but not
+unaffected by liquid refreshment.  So powerfully did the Doctor appeal
+to Hillocks' neighbourliness that he took snuff profusely, and
+authorised the Doctor to let it be understood at Gormack that the
+affair was at an end, which treaty was confirmed by the two parties in
+Kildrummie train, when Hillocks lent Gormack his turnip-sowing machine
+and borrowed in turn Gormack's water-cart.  Mr. Curlew had more than
+once hinted in the Presbytery of Muirtown that Dr. Davidson was not so
+evangelical as might be desired, and certainly Mr. Curlew's visitation
+was of a much more exciting nature; but St. David's congregation was
+never without a quarrel, while the Doctor created an atmosphere in
+Drumtochty wherein peace and charity flourished exceedingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Whatever might be urged in praise of his visitation, surely the Doctor
+could never be more stately or fatherly than on Sacrament Sabbath, as
+he stood in his place to begin service.  His first act was to wipe
+elaborately those gold eye-glasses, without which nothing would have
+been counted a sermon in Drumtochty Kirk, and then, adjusting them with
+care, the Doctor made a deliberate survey of the congregation,
+beginning at his right hand and finishing at his left.  Below him sat
+the elders in their blacks, wearing white stocks that had cost them no
+little vexation that morning, and the precentor, who was determined no
+man, neither Saunders Baxter nor another, should outsing him that day
+in Coleshill.  Down the centre of the kirk ran a long table, covered
+with pure white linen, bleached in the June showers and wonderfully
+ironed, whereon a stain must not be found, for along that table would
+pass the holy bread and wine.  Across the aisle on either side, the
+pews were filled with stalwart men, solemn beyond their wonted gravity,
+and kindly women in simple finery, and rosy-cheeked bairns.  The women
+had their tokens wrapped in snowy handkerchiefs, and in their Bibles
+they had sprigs of apple-ringy and mint, and other sweet-scented
+plants.  By-and-by there would be a faint fragrance of peppermint in
+the kirk&mdash;the only religious and edifying sweet, which flourishes
+wherever sound doctrine is preached and disappears before new views,
+and is therefore now confined to the Highlands of Wales and Scotland,
+the last home of our fathers' creed.  The two back seats were of black
+oak, richly carved.  In the one sat the General and Kate, and across
+the passage Viscount Hay, Lord Kilspindie's eldest son, a young man of
+noble build and carriage, handsome and debonair, who never moved during
+the sermon save twice, and then he looked at the Carnegies' pew.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the Doctor had satisfied himself that none were missing of the
+people, he dropped his eye-glass&mdash;each act was so closely followed that
+Drumsheugh below could tell where the Doctor was&mdash;and took snuff after
+the good old fashion, tapping the box twice, selecting a pinch,
+distributing it evenly, and using first a large red bandana and then a
+delicate white cambric handkerchief.  When the cambric disappeared,
+each person seized his Bible, for the Doctor would say immediately with
+a loud, clear voice, preceded by a gentlemanly clearance of the throat,
+"Let us compose our minds for the worship of Almighty God by singing to
+His praise the first Psalm.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'That man hath perfect blessedness<BR>
+Who walketh not astray&mdash;'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+Then Peter Rattray, of the high Glen, would come in late, and the
+Doctor would follow him with his eye till the unfortunate man reached
+his pew, where his own flesh and blood withdrew themselves from him as
+if he had been a leper, and Peter himself wished that he had never been
+born.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Five minutes earlier, Peter, would have prevented this unseemly
+interruption&mdash;ahem.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'In counsel of ungodly men,<BR>
+Nor stands in sinners' way.'"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Before the Sacrament the Doctor gave one of his college sermons on some
+disputed point in divinity, and used language that was nothing short of
+awful.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Grant me those premises," he would say, while the silence in the kirk
+could be felt, "and I will show to any reasonable and unprejudiced
+person that those new theories are nothing but a resuscitated and
+unjustifiable Pelagianism."  Such passages produced a lasting
+impression in the parish, and once goaded Drumsheugh's Saunders into
+voluntary speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yon wes worth ca'in' a sermon.  Did you ever hear sic words out o' the
+mouth o' a man?  Noo that bleatin' cratur Curlew 'at comes frae
+Muirtown is jist pittin' by the time.  Sall, ae sermon o' the Doctor's
+wud last yon body for a year."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+After the sermon the people sang,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"'T was on that night when doomed to know,"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+and the elders, who had gone out a few minutes before, entered the kirk
+in procession, bearing the elements, and set them before the Doctor,
+now standing at the table.  The people came from their pews and took
+their seats, singing as they moved, while the children were left to
+their own devices, tempered by the remembrance that their doings could
+be seen by the Doctor, and would receive a just recompense of reward
+from their own kin in the evening.  Domsie went down one side and
+Drumsheugh the other, collecting the tokens, whose clink, clink in the
+silver dish was the only sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there be any other person who desires to take the Sacrament at this
+the first table" (for the Sacrament was given then to detachments),
+"let him come without delay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let us go, dad," whispered Kate.  "He is a dear old padre, and&nbsp;&#8230;
+they are good people and our neighbours."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But they won't kneel, you know, Kit; will you&nbsp;&#8230; ?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We 'll do as they do; it is not our Sacrament."  So the father and
+daughter went up the kirk and took their places on the Doctor's left
+hand.  A minute later Lord Hay rose and went up his aisle, and sat down
+opposite the Carnegies, looking very nervous, but also most modest and
+sincere.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor gave the cup to the General, who passed it to Kate, and from
+her it went to Weelum MacLure, and another cup he gave to Hay, whom he
+had known from a child, and he handed it to Marget Howe, and she to
+Whinnie, her man; and so the two cups passed down from husband to wife,
+from wife to daughter, from daughter to servant, from lord to tenant,
+till all had shown forth the Lord's death in common fellowship and love
+as becometh Christian folk.  In the solemn silence the sunshine fell on
+the faces of the communicants, and the singing of the birds came in
+through the open door with the scent of flowers and ripe corn.  Before
+the congregation left, the Doctor addressed a few words of most
+practical advice, exhorting them, in especial, to live in the spirit of
+the Sermon on the Mount, and to be good neighbours.  It was on one of
+those occasions that he settled a dispute between masters and
+men&mdash;whether the cutting of grass for the horses' breakfast should be
+included in the day's work&mdash;and ended the only bitterness known in
+Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the kirk gate Hay introduced himself to his father's friend, and the
+General looked round to find his daughter, but Kate had disappeared.
+She had seen the face of Marget Howe after the Sacrament as the face of
+one in a vision, and she had followed Marget to the road.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you let me walk with you for a little?  I am General Carnegie's
+daughter, and I would like to speak to you about the Sacrament; it was
+lovely."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-204"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-204.jpg" ALT="&quot;Will you let me walk with you for a little?&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="379" HEIGHT="492">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 379px">
+&quot;Will you let me walk with you for a little?&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Ye dae me much honour, Miss Carnegie," and Marget slightly flushed,
+"an' much pleasure, for there is naething dearer tae me than keeping
+the Sacrament; it is my joy every day and muckle comfort in life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But I thought you had it only once a year?" questioned Kate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"With bread and wine in outward sign that is once, and maybe eneuch,
+for it makes ane high day for us all, but div ye not think, Miss
+Carnegie, that all our life should be ane Sacrament?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tell me," said Kate, looking into Marget's sweet, spiritual face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it no the picture of His Luve, who thocht o' everybody but Himsel',
+an' saved everybody but Himsel', an' didna He say we maun drink His cup
+and live His life?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate only signed that Marget should go on.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Noo a 'm judgin' that ilka ane o's is savit juist as we are baptised
+intae the Lord's death, and ilka time ane o's keeps back a hot word, or
+humbles a proud heart, or serves anither at a cost, we have eaten the
+Body and drunk the Blood o' the Lord."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are a good woman," cried Kate, in her impulsive way, so quick to
+be pleased or offended.  "May I come to see you some day?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dinna think me better than I am: a woman who had many sins tae fecht
+and needit many trials tae chasten her; but ye will be welcome at
+Whinny Knowe for yir ain sake and yir people's, an' gin it ever be in
+ma pooer tae serve ye, Miss Carnegie, in ony wy, it wull be ma joy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Twice as she came through the woods Kate stopped; once she bit her lip,
+once she dashed a tear from her eye.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Where did you go to, lassie?" and the General met Kate at the gateway.
+"Lord Hay came to the drive with me, and was quite disappointed not to
+meet you&mdash;a very nice lad indeed, manly and well-mannered."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never mind Lord Hay, dad; I 've been with the most delightful woman I
+'ve ever seen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean she was in kirk?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, sitting across the table&mdash;she is a farmer's wife, and a better
+lady than we saw in India.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh, dad," and Kate kissed her father, "I wish I had known my mother;
+it had been better for me, and&nbsp;&#8230; happier for you."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap15"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XV.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+JOINT POTENTATES.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-207.jpg" ALT="dropcap-a" BORDER="0" WIDTH="197" HEIGHT="263">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+mong all the houses in a Scottish parish the homeliest and kindliest
+is the manse, for to its door some time in the year comes every
+inhabitant, from the laird to the cottar woman.  Within the familiar
+and old-fashioned study, where the minister's chair and writing-table
+could not be changed without discomposing the parish, and where there
+are fixed degrees of station, so that the laird has his chair and the
+servant lass hers, the minister receives and does his best for all the
+folk committed to his charge.  Here he consults with the factor about
+some improvement in the arrangements of the little commonwealth, he
+takes counsel with a farmer about his new lease and promises to say a
+good word to his lordship, he confirms the secret resolution of some
+modest gifted lad to study for the holy ministry, he hears the
+shamefaced confession of some lassie whom love has led astray, he gives
+good advice to a son leaving the Glen for the distant dangerous world,
+he comforts the mother who has received bad news from abroad.
+Generations have come in their day to this room, and generations still
+unborn will come in their joys and sorrows, with their trials and their
+affairs, while the manse stands and human life runs its old course.
+And when, as was the case with Dr. Davidson in Drumtochty, the minister
+is ordained to the parish in his youth, and, instead of hurrying hither
+and thither, preaching in vacancies, scheming and intriguing, he dwells
+all his days among his own people, he himself knows three generations,
+and accumulates a store of practical wisdom for the help of his people.
+What may be the place of the clergyman in an English parish, and what
+associations of sympathy and counsel the rectory may have for the
+English farm-labourer, it is not permitted to a northern man to know,
+but it is one good thing at least in our poor land that the manse is
+another word for guidance and good cheer, so that Jean advises Jock in
+their poor little perplexity about a new place to "slip doon an' see
+the Doctor," and Jock, although appearing to refuse, does "gie a cry at
+the manse," and comes home to the gude-wife mightily comforted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The manse builders of the ancient days were men of a shrewd eye and
+much wisdom.  If anywhere the traveller in the north country sees a
+house of moderate size peeping from among a clump of trees in the lap
+of a hill where the north-easter cannot come and the sun shines full
+and warm, then let him be sure that is the manse, with the kirk and
+God's acre close beside, and that the fertile little fields around are
+the glebe, which the farmers see are ploughed and sown and reaped first
+in the parish.  Drumtochty Manse lay beneath the main road, so that the
+cold wind blowing from the north went over its chimneys, and on the
+east it was sheltered by the Tochty woods.  Southwards it overlooked
+the fields that sloped towards the river, and westwards, through some
+ancient trees, one study window had a peep of the west, although it was
+not given to the parish manse to lie of an evening in the glory of the
+setting sun, as did the Free Kirk.  Standing at the gate and looking
+down beneath the beeches that stood as sentinels on either side of the
+little drive, one caught a pleasant glimpse of the manse garden, with
+its close-cut lawn and flower-beds and old summer-house and air of
+peace.  No one troubled the birds in that place, and they had grown
+shameless in their familiarity with dignities&mdash;a jackdaw having once
+done his best to steal the Doctor's bandana handkerchief and the robins
+settling on his hat.  Irreverence has limits, and in justice to a
+privileged friend it ought to be explained that the Doctor wore on
+these occasions an aged wide-awake and carried no gold-headed stick.
+His dog used to follow him step by step as he fed the birds and
+pottered among the flowers, and then it always ended in the old man
+sitting down on a seat at the foot of the lawn, with Skye at his feet,
+and looking across the Glen where he had been born and where for nearly
+half a century he had ministered.  Kate caught him once in this
+attitude, and was so successful in her sketch that some have preferred
+it to the picture in oils that was presented to the Doctor by the
+Presbytery of Muirtown, and was painted by an R. A. who spent a
+fortnight at the manse and departed with some marvellous heads, still
+to be identified in certain councillors and nobles of the past.  Both
+are hanging in the same house now, far from Drumtochty, and there they
+call one "Public Capaucity" and the other "Private Capaucity," and you
+require to have seen both to know our kindly, much-loved Moderate.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-210"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-210.jpg" ALT="&quot;Private Capaucity.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="358" HEIGHT="465">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 358px">
+&quot;Private Capaucity.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+As John grew old with his master and mellowed, he would make believe to
+work close by, so that at times they might drop into talk, recalling
+names that had died out of the Glen, shrewd sayings that fell from lips
+now turned to dust, curious customs that had ceased forever, all in
+great charity.  Then there would come a pause, and John would say, "Ay,
+ay," and go away to the bees.  Under the influence of such
+reminiscences John used to become depressed, and gently prepare Rebecca
+for the changes that were not far off, when Drumtochty would have a new
+minister and a new beadle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Doctor's failin', Becca, an' it's no tae be expeckit that a 'll be
+lang aifter him; it wudna be fittin', an' a 'm no wantin' 't.  Aifter
+ye 've carried the bukes afore ae minister for five and thirty year,
+ye're no anxious for a change; naebody 'll ever come doon the kirkyaird
+like the Doctor, an' a' cudna brak ma step; na, na, there's no mony
+things a' michtna learn, but a' cudna brak ma step."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rebecca went on with her dinner in silence; even capable men had
+weaknesses somewhere, and she was accustomed to those moralisings.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A 'm the auldest beadle in the Presbytery o' Muirtown&mdash;though a' say
+it as sudna&mdash;an' the higher the place the mair we 'll hae tae answer
+for, Becca.  Nae man can hold the poseetion a 'm in withoot anxieties.
+Noo there wes the 'Eruption' in '43"&mdash;it could not be ignorance which
+made John cling to this word, and so we supposed that the word was
+adopted in the spirit of historical irony&mdash;"that wes a crisis.  Did a'
+ever tell ye, Rebecca, that there wes juist ae beadle left the next
+morning tae cairry on the Presbytery of Muirtown?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, forty times an' mair," replied that uncompromising woman, "an' it
+wud set ye better tae be servin' the Doctor's lunch than sittin'
+haverin' an' blawin' there."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No sane person in Drumtochty would have believed that any human being
+dared to address John after this fashion, and it is still more
+incredible that the great man should have risen without a word and gone
+about his duty.  Such a surprising and painful incident suggests the
+question whether a beadle or any other person in high position ought to
+be married, and so be exposed to inevitable familiarities.  Hillocks
+took this view strongly in the kirkyard at the time of John's
+marriage&mdash;although neither he nor any one knew with how much
+reason&mdash;and he impressed the fathers powerfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Becca cam frae Kilspindie Castle near thirty year syne, and John's
+took the bukes aboot the same time; they've agreed no that ill for sic
+a creetical poseetion a' that time, him oot an' her in, an' atween them
+the Doctor's no been that ill-servit; they micht hae lat weel alane.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She 's no needin' a man tae keep her," and Hillocks proceeded to
+review the situation, "for Becca's hed a gude place, an' she disna
+fling awa' her siller on dress.  As for John, a' canna mak him oot, for
+he gets his stockin's darned and his white stock dune as weel an' maybe
+better than if he wes mairried."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The kirkyard could see no solution of the problem, and Hillocks grew
+pessimistic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It 'll be a doon-come tae him, a 'm judgin', an' 'll no be for the
+gude o' the parish.  He 's never been crossed yet, an' he 'll no tak
+weel wi' contradickin'&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wudna daur," broke in Whinny, "an' him the beadle."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye ken little aboot weemen," retorted Hillocks, "for yir gude-wife is
+by hersel' in the pairish, an' micht be a sanct; the maist o' them are
+a camsteary lot.  A 'm no sayin'," he summed up, "that Becca 'll gie
+the beadle the word back or refuse to dae his biddin', but she 'll be
+pittin' forrit her ain opeenions, an' that's no what he 's been
+accustomed tae in Drumtochty."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They were married one forenoon in the study, with Drumsheugh and Domsie
+for witnesses&mdash;the address given by the Doctor could hardly be
+distinguished from an ordination charge&mdash;and John announced his
+intention of accompanying his master that afternoon to the General
+Assembly, while Rebecca remained in charge of the manse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wudna be wise-like for us twa," exclaimed the beadle, "tae be
+stravagin' ower the country for three or fower days like wild geese,
+but the pairish micht expect something.  Noo, a 've hed ma share o' a
+Presbytery an' a Synod, tae say naethin' o' Kirk Sessions, but a 've
+never seen an Assembly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gin you cud get a place, a' wud spend ma time considering hoo the
+officer comes in, and hoo he lays doon the buke an' sic-like; a' micht
+get a hint," said John, with much modesty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So John went alone for his wedding tour, and being solemnly introduced
+to Thomas, the chief of all beadles, discussed mysteries with him unto
+great edification; but he was chiefly impressed by the Clerk of the
+Free Kirk Assembly&mdash;into which he had wandered on an errand of
+exploration&mdash;who was a fiery-faced old gentleman with a stentorian
+voice and the heart of a little child.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye never heard him cry, 'Officer, shut the door,' afore a vote?" he
+inquired of the Doctor.  "Weel, ye 've missed a real pleesure, sir; gin
+ye stude on Princes Street, wi' the wind frae the richt airt, ye micht
+hear him.  A' never heard onything better dune; hoo ony man wi' sic a
+face and voice cud be content ootside the Auld Kirk passes me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+John was so enamoured of this performance that after much cogitation he
+unburdened his mind to the Doctor, and showed how such a means of grace
+might be extended to Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Noo, if there wes nae objection in order, aifter ye hed settled in the
+pulpit, an' hed yir first snuff, ye micht say, 'Officer, shut the
+door.'  Then a' wud close the kirk door deleeberately in sicht o' the
+hale congregation an' come back tae ma place, an' Peter Rattray himsel'
+wudna daur tae show his face aifter that.  Ye hae the voice an' the
+manner, Doctor, an' it's no richt tae wyste them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+In public John defended the Doctor's refusal as a proof of his
+indulgence to the prodigals of the parish, but with his intimates he
+did not conceal his belief that the opportunity had been lost of
+bringing the service in Drumtochty Kirk to absolute perfection.  John's
+own mind still ran on the mighty utterance, and so it came to pass that
+the question of mastery in the kitchen of the manse under the new
+<I>régime</I> was settled within a week after his ecclesiastical honeymoon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rebecca"&mdash;this with a voice of thunder from the fireplace, where the
+beadle was reading the <I>Muirtown Advertiser</I>&mdash;"shut the door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The silence was so imperative that John turned round, and saw his
+spouse standing with a half-dried dish in her hand.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-215"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-215.jpg" ALT="Standing with a half-dried dish in her hand." BORDER="2" WIDTH="358" HEIGHT="543">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 358px">
+Standing with a half-dried dish in her hand.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Ma name is Rebecca," as she recovered her speech, "an' there 's nae
+ither wumman in the hoose, but a 'm judgin' ye werena speakin' tae me
+or"&mdash;with awful severity&mdash;"ye 've made a mistak', an' the suner it's
+pit richt the better for baith you an' me an' the manse o' Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For near thirty year ye 've gane traivellin' in an' oot o' this
+kitchen withoot cleanin' yir feet, and ye 've pit yir shoon on the
+fender, an' hung up yir weet coat on the back o' the door, an'
+commandit this an' that as if ye were the Doctor himsel', an' a' cud
+dae naethin', for ye were beadle o' Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So a' saw there wes nae ither wy o't but tae mairry ye an' get some
+kind of order in the hoose; noo ye 'll understand the poseetion an' no
+need anither tellin'; ootside in the kirk an' pairish ye 're maister,
+an' a 'll never conter ye, for a' ken ma place as a kirk member an' yir
+place as beadle; inside in this hoose a 'm maister, an' ye 'll dae what
+ye 're bid, always in due submission tae the Doctor, wha 's maister
+baith in an' oot.  Tak yir feet aff that steel bar this meenut"&mdash;this
+by way of practical application; and when after a brief pause, in which
+the fate of an empire hung in the balance, John obeyed, the two chief
+officials in the parish had made their covenant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they carefully kept their bounds,
+so that Becca would no more have thought of suggesting a new attitude
+to John as he stood at the foot of the pulpit stair waiting for the
+Doctor's descent than John would have interfered with the cooking of
+the Doctor's dinner.  When the glass was set at fair, they even
+exchanged compliments, the housekeeper expressing her sense of
+unworthiness as she saw John in his high estate, while he would
+indicate that the Doctor's stock on Sacrament Sabbath reached the
+highest limits of human attainment.  The Doctor being left to the
+freedom of his own will, laboured at a time to embroil the powers by
+tempting them to cross one another's frontiers, but always failed,
+because they foresaw the consequences with a very distinct imagination.
+If he asked Rebecca to convey a message to Drumsheugh, that cautious
+woman would send in John to receive it from the Doctor's own lips, and
+if the Doctor gave some directions regarding dinner to John, Rebecca
+would appear in a few minutes to learn what the Doctor wanted.  It was
+an almost complete delimitation of frontiers, and the Doctor used to
+say that he never quite understood the Free Kirk theory of the relation
+between Church and State till he considered the working agreement of
+his two retainers.  It was, he once pleasantly said to the minister of
+Kildrummie, a perfect illustration of "co-ordinate jurisdiction with
+mutual subordination."  It is just possible that some one may not fully
+grasp those impressive words, in which case let him appreciate other
+people's accomplishments and mourn his ignorance, for they were common
+speech in Drumtochty, and were taught at their porridge to the Free
+Kirk children.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It is an unfortunate circumstance, however, that even a scientific
+frontier wavers at places, and leaves a piece of doubtful territory
+that may at any moment become a cause of war.  Surely there is not on
+the face of the Scottish earth a more unoffending, deferential,
+conciliatory person than a "probationer," who on Saturdays can be seen
+at every country junction, bag in hand, on his patient errand of
+"supply," and yet it was over his timid body the great powers of the
+manse twice quarrelled disastrously.  As a guest in the manse, to be
+received on Saturday evening, to be conducted to his room, to be fed
+and warmed, to go to his bed at a proper hour&mdash;ten on Saturday and
+ten-thirty on Sabbath&mdash;to be sent away on Monday morning in good time
+for the train, he was within the province of Rebecca.  As a minister to
+be examined, advised, solemnised, encouraged, to be got ready on
+Sabbath morning and again disrobed, to be edified with suitable
+conversation and generally made as fit as possible for his work, he was
+evidently within John's sphere of influence.  It was certainly the
+beadle's business to visit the dining-room on Saturday evening, where
+the young man was supposed to be meditating against the ordeal of the
+morrow, to get the Psalms for the precentor, to answer strictly
+professional questions, and generally to advise the neophyte about the
+sermon that would suit Drumtochty, and the kind of voice to be used.
+One thing John knew perfectly well he ought not to do, and that was to
+invite a probationer to spend the evening in the Doctor's study, for on
+this point Rebecca was inexorable.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A' dinna say that they wud read the Doctor's letters, an' a' dinna say
+they wud tak a buke as a keepsake, but a' can never forget ane o'
+them&mdash;he hed a squint and red hair&mdash;comin' oot frae the cupboard as a'
+opened the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'There 's juist ae wy oot o' the room, an' it's by the door ye cam in
+at,' a' said; 'maybe ye wud like tae come an' sit in the dinin'-room;
+ye 'll be less distrackit.'"  And Rebecca charged John that no
+probationer should in future be allowed to enter the Doctor's sanctum
+on any consideration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+John's excuse for his solitary fault was that the lad thought that he
+could study his sermon better with books round him, and so Rebecca
+found the young gentleman seated in the Doctor's own chair and working
+with the Doctor's own pen, unblushing and shameless.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gin ye want Cruden's <I>Concordance</I>"&mdash;this was when Rebecca had led him
+out a chastened man&mdash;"or Matthew Henry tae fill up yir sermon, the
+books 'll be brocht by the church officer."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rebecca's intrusion, in turn, into John's sphere was quite without
+excuse, and she could only explain her conduct by a general reference
+to the foolishness of the human heart.  It came out through the
+ingenuousness of the probationer, who mentioned casually that he was
+told Drumtochty liked four heads in the sermon.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"May I ask the name of yir adviser?" said the beadle, with awful
+severity.  "The hoosekeeper?  A' thocht so, an' a' wud juist gie ye due
+intimation that the only person qualified an' entitled tae gie ye
+information on sic subjects is masel', an' ony ither is unjustified an'
+unwarranted.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fower heads?  Three an' an application is the Doctor's invariable
+rule, an' gin a probationer gied oot a fourth, a' winna undertake tae
+say what michtna happen.  Drumtochty is no a pairish tae trifle wi',
+an' it disna like new-fangled wys.  Power!" and the scorn for this
+unorthodox division was withering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Rebecca realised the gravity of the situation in the kitchen, and
+humbled herself greatly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wes as a hearer that he askit ma opinion, an' no as an authority.
+He said that the new wy wes tae leave oot heads, an' a' saw a' the hay
+spread oot across the field, so a' told him tae gither it up intae
+'coles' (hay-cocks), an' it wud be easier lifted.  Maybe a' mentioned
+fower&mdash;a 'll no deny it; but it's the first time a' ever touched on
+heads, an' it 'll be the laist."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Upon those terms of penitence, John granted pardon, but it was noticed
+on Sabbath that when Becca got in the way of the retiring procession to
+the manse, the beadle was heard in the kirkyard, "Oot o' ma road,
+wumman," in a tone that was full of judgment, and that Rebecca withdrew
+to the grass as one justly punished.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This excellent woman once accomplished her will, however, in spite of
+John, and had all her days the pleasant relish of a secret triumph.
+Her one unfulfilled desire was to see the Doctor in his court dress
+which he wore as Moderator of the Kirk of Scotland during the Assembly
+time, and which had lain ever since in a box with camphor and such
+preservatives amid the folds.  It was aggravating to hear Drumsheugh
+and Hillocks&mdash;who had both gone to the Assembly that year for the sole
+purpose of watching the Doctor enter and bow to the standing
+house&mdash;enlarging on his glory in velvet and lace and silver buckles,
+and growing in enthusiasm with the years.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's little better than a sin," she used to insist, "tae see the
+bonnie suit gien the Doctor by the Countess o' Kilspindie, wi' dear
+knows hoo much o' her ain auld lace on 't, lyin' useless, wi' naebody
+tae get a sicht o't on his back.  Dinna ye think, man"&mdash;this with much
+persuasiveness&mdash;"that ye cud get the Doctor tae pit on his velvets on
+an occasion, maybe a Saicrament?  The pairish wud be lifted; an' ye wud
+look weel walkin' afore him in his lace."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dinna plead wi' me, wumman; a' wud gie a half-year's wages tae see him
+in his grandeur; but it 's offeecial, div ye no see, an' canna be used
+except by a Moderator.  Na, na, ye can dust and stroke it, but ye 'll
+never see yon coat on the Doctor."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This was little less than a challenge to a woman of spirit, and Rebecca
+simply lived from that day to clothe the Doctor in embroidered
+garments.  Her opportunity arrived when Kate's birthday came round, and
+the Doctor insisted on celebrating it by a party of four.  By the
+merest accident his housekeeper met Miss Carnegie on the road, and
+somehow happened to describe the excellent glory of the Doctor's full
+dress, whereupon that wilful young woman went straight to the manse,
+nor left till the Doctor had promised to dine in ruffles, in which case
+she pledged herself that the General would come in uniform, and she
+would wear the family jewels, so that everything would be worthy of the
+Doctor's dinner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hoo daur ye," began John, coming down from the Doctor's room, where
+the suit was spread upon the bed; but his wife did not allow him to
+continue, explaining that the thing was none of her doing, and that it
+was only becoming that honour should be shown to Miss Carnegie when she
+dined for the first time at the manse of Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap16"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVI.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+DRIED ROSE LEAVES.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-222.jpg" ALT="dropcap-t" BORDER="0" WIDTH="185" HEIGHT="259">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+ownspeople are so clever, and know so much, that it is only just
+something should be hidden from their sight, and it is quite certain
+that they do not understand the irresistible and endless fascination of
+the country.  They love to visit us in early autumn, and are vastly
+charmed with the honeysuckle in the hedges, and the corn turning
+yellow, and the rivers singing in the sunlight, and the purple on the
+hill-side.  It is then that the dweller in cities resolves to retire,
+as soon as may be, from dust and crowds and turmoil and hurry, to some
+cottage where the scent of roses comes in at the open window, and one
+is wakened of a morning by the birds singing in the ivy.  When the corn
+is gathered into the stack-yard, and the leaves fall on the road, and
+the air has a touch of frost, and the evenings draw in, then the
+townsman begins to shiver and bethink him of his home.  He leaves the
+fading glory with a sense of relief, like one escaping from approaching
+calamity, and as often as his thoughts turn thither, he pities us in
+our winter solitude.  "What a day this will be in Drumtochty," he says,
+coming in from the slushy streets, and rubbing his hands before the
+fire.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This good man is thankful to Providence for very slight mercies, since
+he knows only one out of the four seasons that make our glorious year.
+He had been wise to visit us in the summer-time, when the light hardly
+dies out of the Glen, and the grass and young corn presents six shades
+of green, and the scent of the hay is everywhere, and all young
+creatures are finding themselves with joy.  Perhaps he had done better
+to have come north in our spring-time, when nature, throwing off the
+yoke of winter, bursts suddenly into an altogether indescribable
+greenery, and the primroses are blooming in Tochty woods, and every
+cottage garden is sweet with wallflowers, and the birds sing of love in
+every wood, and the sower goes forth to sow.  And though this will
+appear quite incredible, it had done this comfortable citizen much good
+to have made his will, and risked his life with us in the big snowstorm
+that used to shut us up for fourteen days every February.  One might
+well endure many hardships to stand on the side of Ben Urtach, and see
+the land one glittering expanse of white on to the great strath on the
+left, and the hills above Dunleith on the right, to tramp all day
+through the dry, crisp snow, and gathering round the wood fire of an
+evening, tell pleasant tales of ancient days, while the wind powdered
+the glass with drift, and roared in the chimney.  Then a man thanked
+God that he was not confined to a place where the pure snow was trodden
+into mire, and the thick fog made it dark at mid-day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This very season of autumn, which frightened the townsfolk, and sent
+them home in silence, used to fill our hearts with peace, for it was to
+us the crown and triumph of the year.  We were not dismayed by the
+leaves that fell with rustling sound in Tochty woods, nor by the bare
+stubble fields from which the last straw had been raked by thrifty
+hands, nor by the touch of cold in the northwest wind blowing over Ben
+Urtach, nor by the greyness of the running water.  The long toil of the
+year had not been in vain, and the harvest had been safely gathered.
+The clump of sturdy little stacks, carefully thatched and roped, that
+stood beside each homestead, were the visible fruit of the long year's
+labour, and the assurance of plenty against winter.  Let it snow for a
+week on end, and let the blast from the mouth of Glen Urtach pile up
+the white drift high against the outer row of stacks, the horses will
+be put in the mill-shed, and an inner stack will be forked into the
+threshing loft, and all day long the mill will go with dull, rumbling
+sound that can be heard from the road, while within the grain pours
+into the corn-room, and the clean yellow straw is piled in the barn.
+Hillocks was not a man given to sentiment, yet even he would wander
+among the stacks on an October evening, and come into the firelight
+full of moral reflections.  A vague sense of rest and thankfulness
+pervaded the Glen, as if one had come home from a long journey in
+safety, bringing his possessions with him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The spirit of October was on the Doctor as he waited for his guests in
+the drawing-room of the manse.  The Doctor had a special affection for
+the room, and would often sit alone in it for hours in the gloaming.
+Once Rebecca came in suddenly, and though the light was dim and the
+Doctor was seated in the shadow by the piano, she was certain that he
+had been weeping.  He would not allow any change to be made in the
+room, even the shifting of a table, and he was very particular about
+its good keeping.  Twice a year Rebecca polished the old-fashioned
+rosewood furniture, and so often a man came from Muirtown to tune the
+piano, which none in the district could play, and which the Doctor kept
+locked.  Two little pencil sketches, signed with a childish hand, Daisy
+Davidson, the minister always dusted himself, as also a covered picture
+on the wall, and the half-yearly cleaning of the drawing-room was
+concluded when he arranged on the backs of two chairs one piece of
+needlework showing red and white roses, and another whereon was wrought
+a posy of primroses.  The room had a large bay window opening on the
+lawn, and the Doctor had a trick of going out and in that way, so that
+he often had ten minutes in its quietness; but no visitor was taken
+there, except once a year, when the wife of the Doctor's old friend,
+Lord Kilspindie, drove up to lunch, and the old man escorted her
+ladyship round the garden and brought her in by the window.  On that
+occasion, but only then, the curtain was lifted from the picture, and
+for a brief space they stood in silence.  Then he let the silken veil
+fall and gently arranged its folds, and offering her his arm with a
+very courtly bow, led the Countess into the dining-room, where Rebecca
+had done her best, and John waited in fullest Sabbath array.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-226"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-226.jpg" ALT="The old man escorted her ladyship." BORDER="2" WIDTH="377" HEIGHT="543">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 377px">
+The old man escorted her ladyship.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor wandered about the room&mdash;looking out on the garden,
+mysterious in the fading light, changing the position of a chair,
+smoothing the old-fashioned needlework with caressing touch, breaking
+up a log in the grate.  He fell at last into a revery before the
+fire&mdash;which picked out each bit of silver on his dress and shone back
+from the black velvet&mdash;and heard nothing, till John flung open the door
+and announced with immense majesty, "General Carnegie and Miss
+Carnegie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Welcome, Kate, to the house of your father's friend, and welcome for
+your own sake, and many returns of this day.  May I say how that white
+silk and those rubies become you?  It is very kind to put on such
+beautiful things for my poor little dinner.  As for you, Jack, you are
+glorious," and the Doctor must go over Carnegie's medals till that
+worthy and very modest man lost all patience.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more of this nonsense; but, Sandie, that is a desperately becoming
+get-up of yours; does n't he suit it well, Kit?  I never saw a better
+calf on any man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are both 'rael bonnie,' and ought to be very grateful to me for
+insisting on full dress.  I 'm sorry that there is only one girl to
+admire two such handsome men; it's a poor audience, but at any rate it
+is very appreciative and grateful," and Kate courtsied to each in turn,
+for all that evening she was in great good-humour.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"By the way, there will be one more to laugh at us, for I 've asked the
+Free Kirk minister to make a fourth for our table.  He is a nice young
+fellow, with more humanity than most of his kind; but did not I hear
+that he called at the Lodge to pay his respects?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Certainly he did," said the General, "and I rather took a fancy to
+him.  He has an honest eye and is not at all bad-looking, and tells a
+capital story.  But Kit fell upon him about something, and I had to
+cover him.  It's a wonder that he ever came near the place again."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He has been at the Lodge eight times since then," explained Kate, with
+much composure; "but he will on no account be left alone with the head
+of the household.  The General insulted him on politics, and I had to
+interfere; so he looks on me as a kind of protector, and I walk him out
+to the Beeches lest he be massacred."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Take care, my dear Catherine," for the Doctor was a shrewd old
+gentleman; "protecting comes perilously near loving, and Carmichael's
+brown eyes are dangerous."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They are dark blue."  Kate was off her guard, and had no sooner spoken
+than she blushed, whereat the Doctor laughed wickedly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You need not be afraid for Kate," said the General, cheerfully; "no
+man can conquer her; and as for the poor young padres, she made their
+lives miserable."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They were so absurd," said Kate, "so innocent, so ignorant, so
+authoritative, that it was for their good to be reduced to a proper
+level.  But I rather think your guest has forgotten his engagement.  He
+will be so busy with his book that even a manse dinner will have no
+attraction."  The Doctor looked again at Kate, but now she wore an air
+of great simplicity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was surely not Carmichael's blame that he was late for Dr.
+Davidson's dinner, since he had thought of nothing else since he rose,
+which was at the unearthly hour of six.  He went out for a walk, which
+consisted of one mile east and another west from the village, and, with
+pauses, during which he rested on gates and looked from him, lasted two
+hours.  On his return he explained to Sarah that his health had
+received much benefit, and that she was not to be surprised if he went
+out every morning at or before daybreak.  He also mentioned casually
+that he was to dine at the manse that day, and Sarah, who had been
+alarmed lest this unexpected virtue might mean illness, was at rest.
+His habit was to linger over breakfast, propping a book against the
+sugar basin, and taking it and his rasher slice about, which was, he
+insisted, the peculiar joy of a bachelor's breakfast; but this morning
+Sarah found him at ten o'clock still at table, gazing intently at an
+untouched cutlet, and without any book.  He swallowed two mouthfuls
+hurriedly and hastened to the study, leaving her to understand that he
+had been immersed in a theological problem.  It seemed only reasonable
+that a man should have one pipe before settling down to a forenoon of
+hard study, but there is no doubt that the wreaths of smoke, as they
+float upwards, take fantastic shapes, and lend themselves to visions.
+Twelve o'clock&mdash;it was outrageous&mdash;six hours gone without a stroke of
+work.  Sarah is informed that, as he has a piece of very stiff work to
+do, luncheon must be an hour later, and that the terrier had better go
+out for a walk.  Then Carmichael cleared his table and set himself down
+to a new German critic, who was doing marvellous things with the
+Prophet Isaiah.  In three thick volumes&mdash;paper bound and hideous to
+behold&mdash;and in a style of elaborate repulsiveness, Schlochenboshen
+showed that the book had been written by a syndicate, on the principle
+that each member contributed one verse in turn, without reference to
+his neighbours.  It was, in fact, the simple plan of a children's game,
+in which you write a noun and I an adjective, and the result greatly
+pleases the company; and the theory of the eminent German was
+understood to throw a flood of light on Scripture.  Schlochenboshen had
+already discovered eleven alternating authors, and as No. 4 would
+occasionally, through pure perversity and just contrary to rules, pool
+his contribution with No. 6, several other interesting variations were
+introduced.  In such circumstances one must fix the list of authors in
+his head, and this can be conveniently done by letters of the alphabet.
+Carmichael made a beginning with four, KATE, and then he laid down his
+pen and went out for a turn in the garden.  When he came in with a
+resolute mind, he made a précis of the Professor's introduction, and it
+began, "Dear Miss Carnegie," after which he went to lunch and ate three
+biscuits.  As for some reason his mind could not face even the most
+fascinating German, Carmichael fell back on the twelve hundredth book
+on Mary Queen of Scots, which had just come from the library, and which
+was to finally vindicate that very beautiful, very clever, and very
+perplexing young woman.  An hour later Carmichael was on the moor, full
+of an unquenchable pity for Chatelard, who had loved the sun and
+perished in his rays.  The cold wind on the hill braced his soul, and
+he returned in a heroic mood.  He only was the soldier of the Cross,
+who denied himself to earthly love and hid a broken heart.  And now he
+read À Kempis and the <I>Christian Year</I>.  Several passages in the latter
+he marked in pencil with a cross, and when his wife asked him the
+reason only last week, he smiled, but would give no answer.  Having
+registered anew his vow of celibacy, he spent an hour in dressing, an
+operation, he boasted, which could be performed in six minutes, and
+which, on this occasion, his housekeeper determined to review.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With all the women in the Glen, old and young, she liked the lad, for a
+way that he had and the kindness of his heart, and was determined that
+he should be well dressed for once in his life.  It was Sarah, indeed,
+that kept Carmichael late, for she not only laid out his things for him
+with much care and judgment, but on sight of the wisp of white round
+his neck she persuaded him to accept her services, and at last she was
+satisfied.  He also lost a little time as he came near the manse, for
+he grew concerned lest his tie was not straight, and it takes time to
+examine yourself in the back of your watch, when the light is dimming
+and it is necessary to retire behind a hedge lest some keen Drumtochty
+eye should detect the roadside toilet.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+John had brought in the lamp before Carmichael entered, and his
+confusion was pardonable, for he had come in from the twilight, and
+none could have expected such a sight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Glad to see you, Carmichael"&mdash;the Doctor hastened to cover his
+embarrassment.  "It is very good of you to honour my little party by
+your presence.  You know the General, I think, and Miss Carnegie, whose
+first birthday in Drumtochty we celebrate to-night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No wonder you are astonished," for Carmichael was blushing furiously;
+"and I must make our defence, eh, Carnegie? else it will be understood
+in Free Kirk circles that the manse is mad.  We seem, in fact, a pair
+of old fools, and you can have your jest at us; but there is an excuse
+even for our madness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is long since we have had a young lady in our Glen, and now that
+she has come to live among us&mdash;why, sir, we must just do her bidding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our Queen has but a little court, but her courtiers are leal and true;
+and when she ordered full dress, it was our joy to obey.  And if you
+choose to laugh, young sir&mdash;why, you may; we are not ashamed with such
+a Queen, and I do her homage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor stooped and kissed Kate's hand in the grand manner which is
+now lost, after which he drew out his snuff-box and tapped it
+pleasantly, as one who had taken part in a state function; but there
+was the suspicion of a tear in his eye, for these things woke old
+memories.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kate 's a wilfu' lassie," said the General, fondly, "and she has long
+ruled me, so I suppose her father must do likewise."  And the General
+also kissed Kate's hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are both perfectly absurd to-night," said Kate, confused and red,
+"but no Queen ever had truer hearts to love her, and if I cannot make
+you knights, I must reward you as I can."  And Kate, ignoring
+Carmichael, kissed first her father and then the Doctor.  Then she
+turned on him with a proud air, "What think you of my court, Mr.
+Carmichael?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is the best in Christendom, Miss Carnegie"&mdash;and his voice trembled
+with earnestness&mdash;"for it has the fairest Queen and two gentlemen of
+Christ for its servants."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very prettily said"&mdash;the Doctor thought the little scene had gone far
+enough&mdash;"and as a reward for that courteous speech you shall take Her
+Majesty in to dinner, and we old battered fellows shall follow in
+attendance."  There was a moment's silence, and then Carmichael spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I had only known, Miss Carnegie, that I might have&nbsp;&#8230; put on
+something to do you honour too, but I have nothing except a white silk
+hood.  I wish I had been a Militiaman or&nbsp;&#8230; a Freemason."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is your second remarkable wish in my hearing," and Kate laughed
+merrily; "last time you wished you were a dog on Muirtown platform.
+Your third will be your last, I suppose, and one wonders what it will
+be."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is already in my heart"&mdash;Carmichael spoke low&mdash;"and some day I will
+dare to tell it to you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hush," replied Kate quickly, lifting her hand; "the padre is going to
+say grace."  As this was an official function in John's eyes, that
+worthy man allowed himself to take a general view, and he was pleased
+to express his high approval of the company, enlarging especially on
+Carmichael, whom, as a Free Kirkman, he had been accustomed rather to
+belittle.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of coorse," he explained loyally, "he's no tae be compared wi' the
+Doctor, for there's nae minister ootside the Auld Kirk can hae sic an
+air, and he 's no set up like the General, but he lookit weel an'
+winsome.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His hair wes flung back frae his forehead, his een were fair dancin',
+an' there wes a bit o' colour in his cheek.  He hes a wy wi' him, a 'll
+no deny, 'at taks wi' fouk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A 'm no sure that he 's been at mony denners though, Becca, for he
+hardly kent what he wes daein'.  A' juist pit the potatoes on his
+plate, for he never lat on he saw me; an' as for wine, a' cudna get a
+word oot o' him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 're lilted above ordinary concerns, John, an' it's no tae be
+expeckit that a beadle sud notice the way o' a lad wi' a lass," and
+Becca nodded her head with much shrewdness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Div ye mean that, Rebecca?  That cowes a'; but it's no possible.  The
+General's dochter an' a Free Kirk minister, an' her an Esculopian&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Love kens naither rank nor creeds; see what ye did yersel', and you
+beadle o' Drumtochty;" and John&mdash;every man has some weak
+point&mdash;swallowed the compliment with evident satisfaction.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile they had fallen on this very subject of creeds in the
+dining-room, and Kate was full of curiosity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you two padres do me a favour?  I knew you would.  Well, I want
+to know for certain what is the difference between the two Kirks in
+Drumtochty.  Now which of you will begin?" and Kate beamed on them both.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whatever you wish we will do, Kate," said the Doctor; "but you will
+have me excused in this matter, if you please, and hear my friend.  I
+am tired of controversy, and he has a fair mind, and, as I know well, a
+pleasant wit.  Tell Miss Carnegie how your people left the Kirk of
+Scotland."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, the dispute began"&mdash;and Carmichael faced his task
+manfully&mdash;"about the appointment of clergymen, whether it should lie
+with a patron or the people.  Lord Kilspindie had the nomination of
+Drumtochty, and if every patron had been as wise as our house, then
+there had been no Disruption."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor bowed, and motioned to Carnegie to fortify himself with port.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Other patrons had no sense, and put in unsuitable men, and the people
+rebelled, since it is a sad thing for a country parish to have a
+minister who is not&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A gentleman? or straight?  Quite so," chimed in Kate; "it must be
+beastly."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So a party fought for the rights of the people," resumed Carmichael,
+"and desired that the parish should have a voice in choosing the man
+who was to take charge of&nbsp;&#8230; their souls."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Isn't that like soldiers electing their officers?" inquired the
+General, doubtfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go on, Carmichael; you are putting your case capitally; don't plunge
+into theology, Jack, whatever you do&nbsp;&#8230; it is Sandeman's&mdash;a sound
+wine."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then what happened?" and Kate encouraged Carmichael with her eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Four hundred clergymen threw up their livings one day and went out to
+begin a Free Kirk, where there are no patrons.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have no idea&mdash;for I suppose you never heard of this before&mdash;how
+ministers suffered, living and dying in miserable cottages&mdash;and the
+people met for service on the sea-shore or in winter storms&mdash;all for
+conscience sake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael was glowing, and the Doctor sipped his port approvingly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps they ought not to have seceded, and perhaps their ideas were
+wrong; but it was heroism, and a good thing for the land."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was splendid!"  Kate's cheek flushed.  "And Drumtochty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, something happened here that was by itself in Scotland.  Will you
+ask Dr. Davidson not to interrupt or browbeat me?  Thank you; now I am
+safe.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Some one of influence went to old Lord Kilspindie, who had no love to
+the Free Kirk, and told him that a few of his Drumtochty men wanted to
+get a site for a Free Kirk, and that he must give it.  And he did."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now, Carmichael," began the Doctor, who had scented danger; but Kate
+held up her hand with an imperious gesture, and Carmichael went on:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The same person used to send to the station for the Free Kirk
+probationer, and entertain him after a lordly fashion&mdash;with port, if he
+were worthy&mdash;and send him on his way rejoicing&mdash;men have told me.
+But," concluded Carmichael, averting his face from the foot of the
+table, "wild horses will not compel me to give that good Samaritan's
+name."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Was it you, Davidson, that sanctioned such a proceeding?  Why, it was
+mutiny."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of course he did, dad," cried Kate; "just the very thing he would do;
+and so, I suppose, the Free Kirk love him as much as they do yourself,
+sir?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As much? far more&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Had I known what downright falsehood the Free Kirk minister of
+Drumtochty was capable of, I would never have allowed him to open his
+mouth."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, I am satisfied, at any rate," said Kate, "and I propose to
+retire to the drawing-room, and I know who would love a rubber of whist
+by-and-by.  We are just the number."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A minute later Carmichael asked leave to join Kate, as he believed she
+was to have him for partner, and he must understand her game.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How adroit he is to-night, Jack;" but the General rather pitied the
+lad, with whom he imagined Kate was playing as a cat with a mouse.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have you ever seen the face below the veil?" for they did not talk
+long about whist in the drawing-room.  "I do not think it would be
+wrong to look, for the padre told me the story.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, a very winning face.  His only sister, and he simply lived for
+her.  She was only twelve when she died, and he loves her still,
+although he hardly ever speaks of her."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+They stood together before the happy girl-face enshrined in an old
+man's love.  They read the inscription: "My dear sister Daisy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I never had a sister," and Carmichael sighed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And I have now no brother."  Their hands met as they gently lowered
+the veil.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, have you arranged your plans?" and the Doctor came in intent on
+whist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Only one thing.  I am going to follow Miss Carnegie's lead, and she is
+always to win," said the Free Kirk minister of Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap17"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+SMOULDERING FIRES.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-238.jpg" ALT="dropcap-i" BORDER="0" WIDTH="167" HEIGHT="283">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+t is the right of every Scot&mdash;secured to him by the Treaty of Union
+and confirmed by the Disruption&mdash;to criticise his minister with much
+freedom, but this privilege is exercised with a delicate charity.  When
+it is not possible for a conscientious hearer to approve a sermon, he
+is not compelled to condemnation.  "There wes naething wrang wi' the
+text," affords an excellent way of escape, and it is open to suggest
+efficiency in another department than the pulpit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mister MacWheep michtna be a special preacher, but there 's nae doot
+he wes a graund veesitor."  Before Carmichael left the West Kirk,
+Edinburgh, where he served his apprenticeship as an assistant, a worthy
+elder called to bid him good-bye, and spoke faithfully, to the lad's
+great delight.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have been very acceptable, wonderfully so for a young man, and we
+shall follow your career with much interest.  It is right, however, to
+add, and you will accept this in a right spirit, that it was not by
+preaching that you commended yourself to our people, but by your
+visiting.  Your sermons are what I might call&nbsp;&#8230; hazy&mdash;you will get
+a hold of the truth by-and-by, no doubt&mdash;but you have a gift for
+visitation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The exact quality and popularity of this gift was excellently stated by
+the wife of a working man, who referred with enthusiasm to the edifying
+character of the assistant's conversation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Tammas misses Maister Carmichael juist terrible, for he wud come in on
+a forenicht an' sit, an' smoke, an' haver wi' the gude man by the 'oor.
+He wes the maist divertin' minister a' ever saw in the West Kirk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It will be evident that Carmichael's visitation belonged to a different
+department of art from that of Dr. Davidson.  He arrived without
+intimation by the nearest way that he could invent, clothed in a
+shooting jacket and a soft hat, and accompanied by at least two dogs.
+His coming created an instant stir, and Carmichael plunged at once into
+the life of the household.  It is kept on fond record, and still told
+by the surviving remnant of his flock, that on various occasions and in
+the course of pastoral visitation he had turned the hay in summer, had
+forked the sheaves in harvest-time, had sacked the corn for market, and
+had driven a gude wife's churn.  After which honourable toil he would
+eat and drink anything put before him except boiled tea, against which
+he once preached with power&mdash;and then would sit indefinitely with the
+family before the kitchen fire, telling tales of ancient history,
+recalling the old struggles of Scottish men, describing foreign sights,
+enlarging on new books, till he would remember that he had only dropped
+in for an hour, and that two meals must be waiting for him at the
+manse.  His visits were understood to be quite unfinished, and he left
+every house pledged to return and take up things at the point where he
+had been obliged to break off, and so he came at last in this matter of
+visitation into a condition of hopeless insolvency.  His adventures
+were innumerable and always enjoyable&mdash;falling off the two fir trees
+that made a bridge over our deeper burns, and being dried at the next
+farm-house&mdash;wandering over the moor all night and turning up at a
+gamekeeper's at daybreak, covered with peat and ravening with
+hunger&mdash;fighting his way through a snowstorm to a marriage, and digging
+the bridegroom out of a drift&mdash;dodging a herd of Highland cattle that
+thought he had come too near their calves, or driving off Drumsheugh's
+polled Angus bull with contumely when he was threatening Mrs.
+Macfadyen.  If he met the bairns coming from school, the Glen rang with
+the foolery.  When Willie Harley broke his leg, Carmichael brought his
+dog Jackie&mdash;I could tell things of that dog&mdash;and devised dramatic
+entertainments of such attraction that Jamie Soutar declared them no
+better than the theatre, and threatened Carmichael with a skep of honey
+as a mark of his indignation.  As for the old women of the Glen, he got
+round them to that extent that they would gossip with him by the hour
+over past days, and Betty Macfarlane was so carried by the minister's
+sympathy that she brought out from hidden places some finery of her
+youth, and Carmichael was found by Miss Carnegie arranging a faded
+Paisley shawl on Betty's shoulders.  And was it not this same gay Free
+Kirkman who trained an eleven to such perfection on a field of
+Drumsheugh's that they beat the second eleven of Muirtown gloriously?
+on which occasion Tammas Mitchell, by the keenness of his eye and the
+strength of his arm, made forty-four runs; and being congratulated by
+Drumtochty as he carried his bat, opened his mouth for the first time
+that day, saying, "Awa wi' ye."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-241"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-241.jpg" ALT="Would gossip with him by the hour." BORDER="2" WIDTH="328" HEIGHT="368">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 328px">
+Would gossip with him by the hour.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+So it came to pass that notwithstanding his unholy tendency to Biblical
+criticism and other theological pedantry, Drumtochty loved Carmichael
+because he was a man; and Dr. Davidson, lighting upon him in Hillocks'
+garden, with the family round him full of joy, would threaten him with
+a prosecution for poaching under the ecclesiastical Game Laws, and end
+by insisting upon him coming to dinner at the manse, when he might
+explain his conduct.  Drumtochty loved him for his very imperfections,
+and follows his career unto this day with undying interest, recalling
+his various escapades with huge delight, and declaring to strangers
+that even in his callow days they had discovered that Carmichael was a
+preacher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael had occasional fits of order, when he repented of his
+desultory ways, and began afresh with much diligence, writing out the
+names of the congregation with full details&mdash;he once got as far as
+Menzies before he lost the book&mdash;mapping the parish into districts, and
+planning an elaborate visitation.  It may have been an accident that
+the district he chose for experiment embraced Tochty Lodge&mdash;where the
+Carnegies had just settled&mdash;but it was natural that his first effort
+should be thorough.  There were exactly ten Free Kirk families from
+Tochty Lodge eastwards, and some of these still speak with feeling of
+the attention they received, which exceeded all they had ever known
+before or since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wesna that he sat sae lang as a 've heard o' him daein' in the
+heich Glen, but it wes the times he cam'," Mrs. Stirton used to
+expatiate, "maybe twice a week for a month.  He hed a wy o' comin'
+through Tochty Wood&mdash;the shade helpit him tae study, he said&mdash;an'
+jumpin' the dyke.  Sall, gin he dinna mak a roadie for himsel' through
+the field that year.  A' wudna say," she used to add in a casual tone,
+"but that he micht hae gi'en a cry at the Lodge, but he cudna dae less,
+passin' the door."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael was astonished himself at the number of times he was obliged
+to see General Carnegie on business, of one kind or another.  Sometimes
+it was about the Flower Show, of which the General had become a patron;
+sometimes it was the Highland Games, when the General's help would be
+of so much use; sometimes it was the idea of repairing the old bridge;
+sometimes&mdash;and Carmichael blushed when it came to this&mdash;to get the
+General's opinion on a military question in the Bible.  The least he
+could do in laying such a tax on a good-natured man was to bring a book
+for his daughter's reading, or a curious flower he had picked up on the
+hill, or a story he had heard in his visiting.  Miss Carnegie was
+generally gracious, and would see him on his way if the day were fine,
+or show him some improvements in the "Pleasaunce," or accompany him to
+Janet's cottage to have a taste of that original woman's conversation
+together.  It came upon Carmichael at a time that he was,
+inadvertently, calling too frequently at the Lodge, and for a week he
+would keep to the main, road, or even pass the corner of the Lodge with
+an abstracted air&mdash;for he loathed the thought of being deflected from
+the path of duty by any personal attraction&mdash;and used to change the
+subject of conversation after Janet had spoken for half an hour on Kate.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+People were speculating in a guarded manner regarding the possibility
+of news, and Janet had quarrelled furiously with Donald for laughing
+such unworthy rumours to scorn, when the parish was almost convulsed by
+the historic scene in the Free Kirk, and all hope of a romantic
+alliance was blasted.  Archie Moncur, elder, and James Macfadyen,
+deacon, were counting the collection in the vestibule, and the
+congregation within were just singing the last verse of their first
+psalm, when General Carnegie and his daughter appeared at the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Has service begun?" whispered Kate, while her father reverently bared
+his head.  "I 'm so sorry we are late, but you will let us in, won't
+you, and we shall be as quiet as mice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A 'll open the door," and Archie explained the geography of the
+situation, "an' ye 'll juist slip intae the manse pew; it's in the
+corner, wi' curtains roond it, an' naebody 'll see ye, naither minister
+nor people;" and so Carmichael went through the service, and had almost
+reached the end of his sermon before he knew that Kate was in the
+church.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was very conscious of him and keenly observant of every detail&mdash;his
+white silk hood thrown into relief by the black Geneva gown, his fair,
+flushed face touched with tenderness and reverence, a new accent of
+affection in his voice as one speaking to his charge, and especially
+she noted in this Free Kirkman a certain fervour and high hope, a
+flavour also of subtle spirituality, that were wanting in Dr. Davidson.
+His hair might have been better brushed, and his whiskers were
+distinctly ragged&mdash;but those things could be easily put right; then she
+tossed her head in contempt of herself.  It had come to a fine pass
+when a girl that had carried her heart untouched through Simla should
+be concerned about the appearance of a Highland minister.  The General
+was well acquainted with that proud motion, and began to regret that
+they had come.  It was Davidson's blame, who had sent them to hear a
+good sermon for once, as he said, and now Kate would only find material
+for raillery.  He tugged his moustache and wished that they were again
+in the open air.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the sermon came, the occupants of the manse pew composed
+themselves for fifteen minutes' patient endurance, after the well-bred
+fashion of their Church, each selecting a corner with a skill born of
+long experience.  They were not, however, to rest in peace and
+detachment of mind till the doxology (or its corresponding formula in
+the Scottish Kirk) summoned them back, for this was to be a quite
+memorable sermon for them and their fellow-hearers and all Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael had been lecturing through Old Testament history, and having
+come to the drama of Elijah and Jezebel, had laid himself out for its
+full and picturesque treatment.  He was still at that age when right
+seems to be all on one side, and a particular cause can be traced down
+the centuries in all lands and under all conditions.  For the most part
+of two days he had wandered over the moor in the bright, cold November
+weather reconstructing the scene in Israel on Scottish lines, and he
+entered the pulpit that morning charged with the Epic of Puritanism.
+Acute critics, like Elspeth Macfadyen, could tell from Carmichael's
+walk down the church that he was in great spirits, and even ordinary
+people caught a note of triumph in his voice as he gave out the first
+Psalm.  For the first few sentences of his sermon he spoke quietly, as
+one reserving and restraining himself, and gave a historical
+introduction which allowed the General to revive some ancient memories
+of India without interruption.  But Kate caught the imperial tone of
+one who had a message to deliver and was already commanding people to
+listen.  She was conscious of a certain anxiety, and began to wish that
+she were in front and could see his face, instead of only the side of
+his head.  Then Carmichael threw back his hair with the air of one
+taking off his coat, and plunged the congregation into the midst of the
+battle, describing Elijah's forgetfulness of self, profound conviction
+of righteousness, high purpose for his nation and devotion to the cause
+of Jehovah, till Burnbrae and the Free Kirkmen straightened themselves
+visibly in their pews, and touching so skilfully on the Tyrian princess
+in her beauty, her culture, her bigotry, her wiles, her masterfulness,
+that several women&mdash;greatly delighting in the exposure of such a
+"trimmie"&mdash;nodded approval.  Kate had never given herself to the study
+of Old Testament history, and would have had some difficulty in
+identifying Elijah&mdash;there was a mare called Jezebel of vicious
+temper&mdash;but she caught the contagion of enthusiasm.  If the supreme
+success of a sermon be to stimulate the hearer's mind, then Carmichael
+ought to have closed at this point.  His people would have been all the
+week fighting battles for conscience sake, and resisting smooth,
+cunning temptation to the farthest limits of their lives and in
+unimaginable ways.  Kate herself, although a person quite unaffected by
+preaching, had also naturalised the sermon in her life with much
+practical and vivid detail.  Carmichael was Elijah, the prophet of the
+common people, with his simple ways and old-fashioned notions and love
+of hardness, only far more gentle and courteous and amusing than that
+uncompromising Jew; and she&mdash;why, she would be Jezebel just for the
+moment, who had come from&nbsp;&#8230; India into the Glen, and could bring
+Elijah to her feet if she chose, and make him do her will, and
+then&nbsp;&#8230;  The girls in the choir before the pulpit noticed the look
+on Kate's face, and wondered whether the Carnegies would join the Free
+Kirk.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael had an instinct that he ought to fling over the remaining
+four pages of his sermon and close the service with a war Psalm, and he
+told me when I was staying with him last week that he sacrifices the
+last head of his sermon almost every Sunday in his city pulpit.  But he
+was only a lad in Drumtochty, and besides was full of a historical
+parallel, which after a scientific illustration is most irresistible to
+a young minister.  No one had ever seen it before, but of course Elijah
+was John Knox, and Jezebel was Queen Mary of Scots, and then Carmichael
+set to work afresh, with something less than conspicuous success.
+Scottish people are always ready for a eulogium on John Knox in church,
+or on Robert Burns out of church, but the Reformer is rather the object
+of patriotic respect and personal devotion.  Netherton snuffed in quite
+a leisurely way, and the women examined the bonnet of the manse
+housekeeper, while Knox stood in the breach for the liberties of
+Scotland, and when Carmichael began to meddle with Mary, he distinctly
+lost the sympathies of his audience and entered on dangerous ground.
+Scots allow themselves, at times, the rare luxury of being illogical,
+and one of the occasions is their fondness for Queen Mary.  An austere
+Puritan may prove that this young woman was French in her ways, an
+enemy to the Evangel, a born and practised flirt, and art and part in
+the murder of Darnley.  A Scot will not deny the evidence, and if he be
+thrust into the box he may bring in the prisoner guilty, but his heart
+is with the condemned, and he has a grudge against the prosecutor.  For
+he never forgets that Mary was of the royal blood and a thorough
+Stewart, that her face turned men's heads in every country she touched,
+that she had the courage of a man in her, that she was shamefully used,
+and if she did throw over that ill-conditioned lad, well&nbsp;&#8230;  "Puir
+lassie, she hed naebody tae guide her, but sall, she focht her battle
+weel," and out of this judgment none can drive an honest Scot.  "Yon
+wes a graund discoorse the day, gude wife," Jeems hazarded to Elspeth
+on the way home, "but a' thocht the minister wes a wee hard on Queen
+Mary; there 's nae doot she wes a papist, an' micht hae gien Knox a bit
+twist wi' the screws gin she cud hae gruppit him, but a' dinna like her
+misca'd."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A 've heard him wi' ma ain ears crackin' her up by the 'oor, an' a'
+canna mak' oot what set him against her the day; but he 's young,"
+remarked Elspeth, sagely, "an' wi' his age it's either saint or deevil,
+an' ae day the one an' the next day the ither; there 's nae medium.
+Noo, maist fouk are juist half an' between, an' Mary hed her faults.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma word, Jeems," continued Elspeth with much relish, "Mary wud sune
+hae settled the minister gin she hed been in the kirk the day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, ay," inquired Jeems, "noo what wud the hizzie hae dune?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wud juist hae sent for him an' lookit wi' her een, an' askit him
+what ill he hed at her, an' gin that wesna eneuch she wud hae pit her
+handkerchief tae her face."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Of coorse he cudna hae stude that; a' micht hae gien in masel',"
+admitted Jeems, "but Knox wes stiff."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Maister Carmichael is no a Knox, naither are ye, Jeems, an' it's a
+mercy for me ye arena.  Mary wud hae twistit Maister Carmichael roond
+her finger, but a 'm judgin' he 'll catch it as it is afore mony days,
+or ma name 's no Elspeth Macfadyen.  Did ye see Miss Carnegie rise an'
+gae oot afore he feenished?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Div ye mean that, Elspeth?" and her husband was amazed at such
+penetration.  "Noo a' thocht it hed been the heat; a' never held wi'
+that stove; it draws up the air.  Hoo did ye jalouse yon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She wes fidgetin' in her seat when he yokit on Mary, an' the meenut he
+named her 'our Scottish Jezebel' the Miss rose an' opened the seat door
+that calm, a' knew she wes in a tantrum, and she gied him a look afore
+she closed the kirk door that wud hae brocht ony man tae his senses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Jeems," went on Elspeth with solemnity, "a' coont this a doonricht
+calamity, for a' wes houpin' he wud hae pleased them the day, an' noo a
+'m sair afraid that the minister hes crackit his credit wi' the Lodge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Div ye think, Elspeth, he saw her gang oot an' suspeckit the cause?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's maist michty tae hear ye ask sic a question, Jeems.  What gared
+him mak' a hash o' the baptism prayer, and return thanks that there wes
+a leevin' father, instead o' mither, and gie oot the 103rd Paraphrase?
+Tak' ma word for't, he 's wishin' by this time that he 'd lat puir Mary
+alane."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was just above Hillocks' farm that the General overtook Kate, who
+was still blazing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever hear such vulgar abuse and&nbsp;&#8230; abominable language from
+a pulpit?  He 's simply a raging fanatic, and not one bit better than
+his Knox.  And I&nbsp;&#8230; we thought him quite different&nbsp;&#8230; and a
+gentleman.  I 'll never speak to him again.  Scottish Jezebel: I
+suppose he would call me Jezebel if it occurred to him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very likely he would," replied the General, dryly, "and I must say his
+talk about Queen Mary seemed rather bad taste.  But that's not the
+question, Kate, which is your conduct in leaving a place of worship in
+such an&nbsp;&#8230; unladylike fashion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What?" for this was new talk from her father.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"As no Carnegie ought to have done.  You have forgotten yourself and
+your house, and there is just one thing for you to do, and the sooner
+the better."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father, I 'll never look at him again&nbsp;&#8230; and after that evening at
+Dr. Davidson's, and our talking&nbsp;&#8230; about Queen Mary, and&nbsp;&#8230; lots
+of things."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whether you meet Mr. Carmichael again or not is your own affair, but
+this touches us both, and you&nbsp;&#8230; must write a letter of apology."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And if I don't?" said Kate, defiantly.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then I shall write one myself for you.  A Carnegie must not insult any
+man, be he one faith or the other, and offer him no amends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+So Donald handed in this letter at the Free Kirk Manse that evening,
+and left without an answer.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="salutation">
+TOCHTY LODGE.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+SIR,&mdash;Your violent and insolent attack on a martyred Queen caused me to
+lose self-control in your church to-day, and I was unable to sit longer
+under such language.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+It has been pointed out to me that I ought not to have left church as I
+did, and I hereby express regret.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+The books you were so good as to lend me I have sent back by the
+messenger.&mdash;Yours truly,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="closing">
+CATHERINE CARNEGIE.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+When Carmichael called next day, Donald informed him with unconcealed
+satisfaction that Lord Hay was lunching with the family, and that the
+General and Miss Carnegie were going to Muirtown Castle to-morrow for a
+visit; but Janet had not lost hope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not be taking this to heart, my dear, for I will be asking a
+question.  What will be making Miss Kate so very angry? it is not every
+man she would be minding, though he spoke against Queen Mary all the
+day.  When a woman does not care about a man she will not take the
+trouble to be angry.  That is what I am thinking; and it is not Lord
+Hay that has the way, oh no, though he be a proper man and good at
+shooting."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap18"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+LOVE SICKNESS.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-252.jpg" ALT="dropcap-c" BORDER="0" WIDTH="164" HEIGHT="266">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+ollege friends settled in petty lowland towns, and meeting Carmichael
+on sacramental occasions, affected to pity him, inquiring curiously
+what were his means of conveyance after the railway ceased, what time a
+letter took to reach him, whether any foot ever crossed his door from
+October to May, whether the great event of the week was not the arrival
+of the bread cart.  Those were exasperating gibes from men who could
+not take a walk without coming on a coal pit, nor lift a book in their
+studies without soiling their hands, whose windows looked on a street
+and commanded the light of a grocer's shop instead of a sunset.  It ill
+became such miserables to be insolent, and Carmichael taught them
+humility when he began to sound the praises of Drumtochty; but he could
+not make townspeople understand the unutterable satisfaction of the
+country minister, who even from old age and great cities looks back
+with fond regret to his first parish on the slope of the Grampians.
+Some kindly host wrestles with him to stay a few days more in
+civilisation, and pledges him to run up whenever he wearies of his
+exile, and the ungrateful rustic can hardly conceal the joy of his
+escape.  He shudders on the way to the station at the drip of the dirty
+sleet and the rags of the shivering poor, and the restless faces of the
+men and the unceasing roar of the traffic.  Where he is going the white
+snow is falling gently on the road, a cart full of sweet-smelling roots
+is moving on velvet, the driver stops to exchange views with a farmer
+who has been feeding his sheep, within the humblest cottage the fire is
+burning clearly.  With every mile northwards the Glenman's heart lifts;
+and as he lands on his far-away little station, he draws a deep breath
+of the clean, wholesome air.  It is a long walk through the snow, but
+there is a kindly, couthy smell from the woods, and at sight of the
+squares of light in his home, weariness departs from a Drumtochty man.
+Carmichael used to say that a glimpse of Archie Moncur sitting with his
+sisters before the fire as he passed, and the wild turmoil of his dogs
+within the manse as the latch of the garden gate clicked, and the flood
+of light pouring out from the open door on the garden, where every
+branch was feathered with snow, and to come into his study, where the
+fire of pine logs was reflected from the familiar titles of his loved
+books, gave him a shock of joy such as he has never felt since, even in
+the days of his prosperity.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-254"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-254.jpg" ALT="The driver stops to exchange views." BORDER="2" WIDTH="325" HEIGHT="465">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 325px">
+The driver stops to exchange views.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"The city folk are generous with their wealth," he was saying to me
+only last week, when I was visiting him in his West End manse and we
+fell a-talking of the Glen, "and they have dealt kindly by me; they are
+also full of ideas, and they make an inspiring audience for a preacher.
+If any man has a message to deliver from the Eternal, then he had
+better leave the wilderness and come to the city, and if he has plans
+for the helping of his fellow men, let him come where he can get his
+work and his labourers.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, I do not repent leaving the Glen, for the Divine Hand thrust me
+forth and has given me work to do, and I am not ungrateful to the
+friends I have made in the city; but God created me a countryman,
+and"&mdash;here Carmichael turned his back to me&mdash;"my heart goes back to
+Drumtochty, and the sight of you fills me with&nbsp;&#8230; longing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ah, how this desiderium, as the Rabbi would have said, comes over one
+with the seasons as they come and go.  In spring they send me the first
+snowdrops from the Glen, but it is a cruel kindness, for I want to be
+where they are growing in Clashiegar den.  When summer comes people
+praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have
+not seen Tochty woods in their glory.  Each autumn carries me to the
+harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel
+the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain.  And in winter I see the sun
+shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to
+paper in this dreary room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What nonsense this is," pulling himself together; "yes, that is the
+very chair you sat in, and this is the table we stuck between us with
+our humble flask of Moselle of a winter's night&nbsp;&#8230; let's go to bed;
+we 'll have no more good talk to-night."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When he had left me, I flung open my window in search of air, for it
+seemed as if the city were choking me.  A lamp was flaring across the
+street, two cabs rattled past with revellers singing a music-hall song,
+a heavy odour from many drains floated in, the multitude of houses
+oppressed one as with a weight.  How sweet and pure it was now at the
+pool above Tochty mill, where the trout were lying below the stones and
+the ash boughs dipping into the water.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael once, however, lost all love of the Glen, and that was after
+Kate flung herself out of the Free Kirk and went on a visit to Muirtown
+Castle.  He was completely disenchanted and saw everything at its
+poorest.  Why did they build the manse so low that an able-bodied man
+could touch the ceiling of the lower rooms with an effort and the upper
+rooms easily?  What possessed his predecessor to put such an impossible
+paper on the study and to stuff the room with book-shelves?  A row of
+Puritan divines offended him&mdash;a wooden, obsolete theology&mdash;but he also
+pitched a defence of Queen Mary into a cupboard&mdash;she had done enough
+mischief already.  The garden looked squalid and mean, without flowers,
+with black patches peeping through the thin covering of snow, with a
+row of winter greens opposite the southern window.  He had never
+noticed the Glen so narrow and bare before, nor how grey and unlovely
+were the houses.  Why had not the people better manners and some
+brightness? they were not always attending funerals and making
+bargains.  What an occupation for an educated man to spend two hours in
+a cabin of a vestry with a dozen labouring men, considering how two
+pounds could be added to the Sustentation Fund, or preaching on Sunday
+to a handful of people who showed no more animation than stone gods
+except when the men took snuff audibly.  Carmichael was playing the
+spoiled child&mdash;not being at all a mature or perfect character, then or
+now&mdash;and was ready to hit out at anybody.  His bearing was for the
+first and only time in his life supercilious, and his sermons were a
+vicious attack on the doctrines most dear to the best of his people.
+His elders knew not what had come over him, although Elspeth Macfadyen
+was mysteriously apologetic, and in moments of sanity he despised
+himself.  One day he came to a good resolution suddenly, and went down
+to see Rabbi Saunderson&mdash;the very thought of whose gentle, patient,
+selfless life was a rebuke and a tonic.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When two tramps held conference on the road, and one indicated to the
+other visibly that any gentleman in temporary distress would be treated
+after a Christian fashion at a neighbouring house, Carmichael, who had
+been walking in a dream since he passed the lodge, knew instantly that
+he must be near the Free Kirk manse of Kilbogie.  The means of
+communication between the members of the nomadic profession is almost
+perfect in its frequency and accuracy, and Saunderson's manse was a
+hedge-side word.  Not only did all the regular travellers by the north
+road call on their going up in spring and their coming down in autumn,
+but habitués of the east coast route were attracted and made a circuit
+to embrace so hospitable a home, and even country vagrants made their
+way from Dunleith and down through Glen Urtach to pay their respects to
+the Rabbi.  They had particular directions to avoid Barbara&mdash;expressed
+forcibly on five different posts in the vicinity and enforced in
+picturesque language, of an evening&mdash;and they were therefore careful to
+waylay the Rabbi on the road, or enter his study boldly from the front.
+The humbler members of the profession contented themselves with
+explaining that they had once been prosperous tradesmen, and were now
+walking to Muirtown in search of work&mdash;receiving their alms, in
+silence, with diffidence and shame; but those in a higher walk came to
+consult the Rabbi on Bible difficulties, which were threatening to
+shake their faith, and departed much relieved&mdash;with a new view of Lot's
+wife, as well as a suit of clothes the Rabbi had only worn three times.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-257"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-257.jpg" ALT="Two tramps held conference." BORDER="2" WIDTH="342" HEIGHT="506">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 342px">
+Two tramps held conference.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"You have done kindly by me in calling"&mdash;the vagabond had finished his
+story and was standing, a very abject figure, among the books&mdash;"and in
+giving me the message from your friend.  I am truly thankful that he is
+now labouring&mdash;in iron, did you say? and I hope he may be a cunning
+artificer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will not set it down to carelessness that I cannot quite recall
+the face of your friend, for, indeed, it is my privilege to see many
+travellers, and there are times when I may have been a minister to them
+on their journeys, as I would be to you also if there be anything in
+which I can serve you.  It grieves me to say that I have no clothing
+that I might offer you; it happens that a very worthy man passed here a
+few days ago most insufficiently clad and&nbsp;&#8230; but I should not have
+alluded to that; my other garments, save what I wear, are&nbsp;&#8230; kept in
+a place of&nbsp;&#8230; safety by my excellent housekeeper, and she makes
+their custody a point of conscience; you might put the matter before
+her.&#8230;  Assuredly it would be difficult, and I crave your pardon
+for putting you in an&nbsp;&#8230; embarrassing position; it is my misfortune
+to have to-day neither silver nor gold," catching sight of Carmichael
+in the passage, "this is a Providence.  May I borrow from you, John,
+some suitable sum for our brother here who is passing through
+adversity?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not be angry with me, John"&mdash;after the tramp had departed, with
+five shillings in hand and much triumph over Carmichael on his
+face&mdash;"nor speak bitterly of our fellow men.  Verily theirs is a hard
+lot who have no place to lay their head, and who journey in weariness
+from city to city.  John, I was once a stranger and a wayfarer,
+wandering over the length and breadth of the land.  Nor had I a friend
+on earth till my feet were led to the Mains, where my heart was greatly
+refreshed, and now God has surrounded me with young men of whose
+kindness I am not worthy, wherefore it becometh me to show mercy unto
+others," and the Rabbi looked at Carmichael with such sweetness, that
+the lad's sullenness began to yield, although he made no sign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Moreover," and the Rabbi's voice took a lower tone, "as often as I
+look on one of those men of the highways, there cometh to me a vision
+of Him who was an outcast of the people, and albeit some may be as
+Judas, peradventure one might beg alms of me, a poor sinful man, some
+day, and lo it might be&nbsp;&#8230; the Lord Himself in a saint," and the
+Rabbi bowed his head and stood awhile much moved.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rabbi," after a pause, during which Carmichael's face had changed,
+"you are incorrigible.  For years we have been trying to make you a
+really good and wise man, both by example and precept, and you are
+distinctly worse than when we began&mdash;more lazy, miserly, and
+uncharitable.  It is very disheartening.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Can you receive another tramp and give him a bed, for I am in low
+spirits, and so, like every other person in trouble, I come to you, you
+dear old saint, and already I feel a better man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Receive you, John?  It is doubtless selfish, but it is not given to
+you to know how I weary to see your faces, and we shall have much
+converse together&mdash;there are some points I would like your opinion
+on&mdash;but first of all, after a slight refreshment, we must go to Mains:
+behold the aid to memory I have designed"&mdash;and the Rabbi pointed to a
+large square of paper hung above Chrysostom, with "Farewell, George
+Pitillo, 3 o'clock."  "He is the son's son of my benefactor, and he
+leaves his father's house this day to go into a strange land across the
+sea: I had a service last night at Mains, and expounded the departure
+of Abraham, but only slightly, being somewhat affected through the
+weakness of the flesh.  There was a covenant made between the young man
+and myself, that I should meet him at the crossing of the roads to-day,
+and it is in my mind to leave a parable with him against the power of
+this present world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the Rabbi fell into a meditation till the dog-cart came up, Mains
+and his wife in the front and George alone in the back, making a brave
+show of indifference.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"George," said the Rabbi, looking across the field and speaking as to
+himself, "we shall not meet again in this world, and in a short space
+they will bury me in Kilbogie kirkyard, but it will not be in me to lie
+still for thinking of the people I have loved.  So it will come to pass
+that I may rise&mdash;you have ears to understand, George&mdash;-and I will
+inquire of him that taketh charge of the dead about many and how it
+fares with them."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And George Pitillo, what of him, Andrew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oh, it's a peety you didna live langer, Mr. Saunderson, for George
+hes risen in the warld and made a great fortune.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How does it go with his soul, Andrew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Well, you see, Mister Saunderson, George hes hed many things to think
+about, and he maybe hasna hed time for releegion yet, but nae doot he
+'ll be turnin' his mind that wy soon.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Poor George, that I baptised and admitted to the sacrament and&nbsp;&#8230;
+loved: exchanged his soul for the world."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sun was setting fast, and the landscape&mdash;bare stubble fields,
+leafless trees, still water, long, empty road&mdash;was of a blood-red
+colour fearsome to behold, so that no one spake, and the horse chafing
+his bit made the only sound.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the Rabbi began again.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And George Pitillo&mdash;tell me, Andrew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Weel, ye see, Mister Saunderson, ye wud be sorry for him, for you and
+he were aye chief; he's keepit a gude name an' workit hard, but hesna
+made muckle o' this warld.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And his soul, Andrew?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Oo, that's a' richt; gin we a' hed as gude a chance for the next
+warld as George Pitillo we micht be satisfied.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is enough for his old friend; hap me over again, Andrew, and I'll
+rest in peace till the trumpet sound."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael turned aside, but he heard something desperately like a sob
+from the back of the dog-cart, and the Rabbi saying, "God be with you,
+George, and as your father's father received me in the day of my sore
+discouragement, so may the Lord God of Israel open a door for you in
+every land whithersoever you go, and bring you in at last through the
+gates into the city."  The Rabbi watched George till the dog-cart faded
+away into the dusk of the winter's day, and they settled for the night
+in their places among the books before the Rabbi spoke.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was with a wistful tenderness that he turned to Carmichael and
+touched him slightly with his hand, as was a fashion with the Rabbi.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will not think me indifferent to your welfare because I have not
+inquired about your affairs, for indeed this could not be, but the
+going forth of this lad has tried my heart.  Is there aught, John, that
+it becometh you to tell me, and wherein my years can be of any avail?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not about doctrine I wished to speak to you, Rabbi, although I
+am troubled thus also, but about&nbsp;&#8230; you remember our talk."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"About the maid, surely; I cannot forget her, and indeed often think of
+her since the day you brought me to her house and made me known unto
+her, which was much courtesy to one who is fitter for a book-room than
+a woman's company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She is fair of face and hath a pleasant manner, and surely beauty and
+a winsome way are from God; there seemed also a certain contempt of
+baseness and a strength of will which are excellent.  Perhaps my
+judgment is not even because Miss Carnegie was gracious to me, and you
+know, John, it is not in me to resist kindness, but this is how she
+seems to me.  Has there been trouble between you?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not misunderstand me, Rabbi; I have not spoken one word of love to&nbsp;&#8230;
+Miss Carnegie, nor she to me; but I love her, and I thought that
+perhaps she saw that I loved her.  But now it looks as if&nbsp;&#8230; what I
+hoped is never to be," and Carmichael told the Queen Mary affair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it not marvellous," mused the Rabbi, looking into the fire, "how
+one woman who was indeed at the time little more than a girl did carry
+men, many of them wise and clever, away as with a flood, and still
+divideth scholars and even&nbsp;&#8230; friends?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was not fitting that Miss Carnegie should have left God's house in
+heat of temper, and it seemeth to us that she hath a wrong reading of
+history, but it is surely good that she hath her convictions, and
+holdeth them fast like a brave maid.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Is it not so, John, that friends and doubtless also&nbsp;&#8230; lovers have
+been divided by conscience and have been on opposite sides in the great
+conflict, and doth not this show how much of conscience there is among
+men?
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may be this dispute will not divide you&mdash;being now, as it were,
+more an argument of the schools than a matter of principle, but if it
+should appear that you are far apart on the greater matters of faith,
+then&nbsp;&#8230; you will have a heavy cross to carry.  But it is my mind
+that the heart of the maiden is right, and that I may some day see her&nbsp;&#8230;
+in your home, whereat my eyes would be glad."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi was so taken up with the matter that he barely showed
+Carmichael a fine copy of John of Damascus he had secured from London,
+and went out of his course at worship to read, as well as to expound
+with much feeling, the story of Ruth the Moabitess, showing
+conclusively that she had in her a high spirit, and that she was
+designed of God to be a strength to the house of David.  He was also
+very cheerful in the morning, and bade Carmichael good-bye at Tochty
+woods with encouraging words.  He also agreed to assist his boy at the
+Drumtochty sacrament.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was evident that the Rabbi's mind was much set on this visit, but
+Carmichael did not for one moment depend upon his remembering the day,
+and so Burnbrae started early on the Saturday with his dog-cart to
+bring Saunderson up and deposit him without fail in the Free Kirk manse
+of Drumtochty.  Six times that day did the minister leave his "action"
+sermon and take his way to the guest room, carrying such works as might
+not be quite unsuitable for the old scholar's perusal, and arranging a
+lamp of easy management, that the night hours might not be lost.  It
+was late in the afternoon before the Rabbi was delivered at the manse,
+and Burnbrae gave explanations next day at the sacramental dinner.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It wes just ten when a' got tae the manse o' Kilbogie, an' his
+hoosekeeper didna ken whar her maister wes; he micht be in Kildrummie
+by that time, she said, or half wy tae Muirtown.  So a' set oot an'
+ransackit the parish till a' got him, an' gin he wesna sittin' in a
+bothie takin' brose wi' the plowmen an' expoundin' Scripture a' the
+time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He startit on the ancient martyrs afore we were half a mile on the
+road, and he gied ae testimony aifter anither, an' he wesna within
+sicht o' the Reformation when we cam tae the hooses; a 'll no deny that
+a' let the mare walk bits o' the road, for a' cud hae heard him a'
+nicht; ma bluid 's warmer yet, freends."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi arrived in great spirits, and refused to taste meat till he
+had stated the burden of his sermon for the morrow.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If the Lord hath opened our ears the servant must declare what has
+been given him, but I prayed that the message sent through me to your
+flock, John, might be love.  It hath pleased the Great Shepherd that I
+should lead the sheep by strange paths, but I desired that it be
+otherwise when I came for the first time to Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Two days did I spend in the woods, for the stillness of winter among
+the trees leaveth the mind disengaged for the Divine word, and the
+first day my soul was heavy as I returned, for this only was laid upon
+'vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction.'  And, John, albeit God would
+doubtless have given me strength according to His will, yet I was loath
+to bear this awful truth to the people of your charge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Next day the sun was shining pleasantly in the wood and it came to me
+that clouds had gone from the face of God, and as I wandered among the
+trees a squirrel sat on a branch within reach of my hand and did not
+flee.  Then I heard a voice, 'I have loved thee with an everlasting
+love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was, in an instant, my hope that this might be God's word by me,
+but I knew not it was so till the Evangel opened up on all sides, and I
+was led into the outgoings of the eternal love after so moving a
+fashion that I dared to think that grace might be effectual even with
+me&nbsp;&#8230; with me.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God opened my mouth on Sabbath on this text unto my own flock, and the
+word was not void.  It is little that can be said on sovereign love in
+two hours and it may be a few minutes; yet even this may be more than
+your people are minded to bear.  So I shall pretermit certain notes on
+doctrine; for you will doubtless have given much instruction on the
+purposes of God, and very likely may be touching on that mystery in
+your action sermon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the evening the Rabbi was very genial&mdash;tasting Sarah's viands
+with relish, and comparing her to Rebecca, who made savoury meat,
+urging Carmichael to smoke without scruple, and allowing himself to
+snuff three times, examining the bookshelves with keen appreciation,
+and finally departing with three volumes of modern divinity under his
+arm, to reinforce the selection in his room, "lest his eyes should be
+held waking in the night watches."  He was much overcome by the care
+that had been taken for his comfort, and at the door of his room blest
+his boy: "May the Lord give you the sleep of His beloved, and
+strengthen you to declare all His truth on the morrow."  Carmichael sat
+by his study fire for a while and went to bed much cheered, nor did he
+dream that there was to be a second catastrophe in the Free Kirk of
+Drumtochty which would be far sadder than the first, and leave in one
+heart life-long regret.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap19"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XIX.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE FEAR OF GOD.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-268.jpg" ALT="dropcap-i" BORDER="0" WIDTH="188" HEIGHT="274">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+t was the way of the Free Kirk that the assisting minister at the
+Sacrament should sit behind the Communion Table during the sermon, and
+the congregation, without giving the faintest sign of observation,
+could estimate its effect on his face.  When Doctor Dowbiggin composed
+himself to listen as became a Church leader of substantial build&mdash;his
+hands folded before him and his eyes fixed on the far window&mdash;and was
+so arrested by the opening passage of Cunningham's sermon on
+Justification by Faith that he visibly started, and afterward sat
+sideways with his ears cocked, Drumtochty, while doubtful whether any
+Muirtown man could appreciate the subtlety of their minister, had a
+higher idea of the Doctor; and when the Free Kirk minister of
+Kildrummie&mdash;a stout man and given to agricultural pursuits&mdash;went fast
+asleep under a masterly discussion of the priesthood of Melchisedek,
+Drumtochty's opinion of the intellectual condition of Kildrummie was
+confirmed beyond argument.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During his ministry of more than twenty years the Rabbi had never
+preached at Drumtochty&mdash;being fearful that he might injure the minister
+who invited him, or might be so restricted in time as to lead astray by
+ill-balanced statements&mdash;and as the keenest curiosity would never have
+induced any man to go from the Glen to worship in another parish, the
+Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie was still unjudged in Drumtochty.  They
+were not sorry to have the opportunity at last, for they had suffered
+not a little at the hands of Kilbogie in past years, and the coming
+event disturbed the flow of business at Muirtown market.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 're tae hae the Doctor at laist," Mains said to Netherton&mdash;letting
+the luck-penny on a transaction in seed-corn stand over&mdash;"an' a 'm
+jidgin' the time 's no been lost.  He's plainer an' easier tae follow
+then he wes at the affgo.  Ma word"&mdash;contemplating the exercise before
+the Glen&mdash;"but ye 'll aye get eneuch here and there tae cairry hame."
+Which shows what a man the Rabbi was, that on the strength of his
+possession a parish like Kilbogie could speak after this fashion to
+Drumtochty.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He 'll hae a fair trial, Mains"&mdash;Netherton's tone was distinctly
+severe&mdash;"an' mony a trial he's hed in his day, they say: wes't three
+an' twenty kirks he preached in, afore ye took him?  But mind ye,
+length 's nae standard in Drumtochty; na, na, it's no hoo muckle wind a
+man hes, but what like is the stuff that comes.  It's bushels doon bye,
+but it's wecht up bye."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Any prejudice against the Rabbi, created by the boasting of a foolish
+parish not worthy of him, was reduced by his venerable appearance
+before the pulpit, and quite dispelled by his unfeigned delight in
+Carmichael's conduct of the "preliminaries."  Twice he nodded approval
+to the reading of the hundredth Psalm, and although he stood with
+covered face during the prayer, he emerged full of sympathy.  As his
+boy read the fifty-third of Isaiah the old man was moved well-nigh to
+tears, and on the giving out of the text from the parable of the
+Prodigal Son, the Rabbi closed his eyes with great expectation, as one
+about to be fed with the finest of the wheat.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael has kept the sermon unto this day, and as often as he finds
+himself growing hard or supercilious, reads it from beginning to end.
+It is his hair shirt, to be worn from time to time next his soul for
+the wrongness in it and the mischief it did.  He cannot understand how
+he could have said such things on a Sacrament morning and in the
+presence of the Rabbi, but indeed they were inevitable.  When two tides
+meet there is ever a cruel commotion, and ships are apt to be dashed on
+the rocks, and Carmichael's mind was in a "jabble" that day.  The new
+culture, with its wider views of God and man, was fighting with the
+robust Calvinism in which every Scot is saturated, and the result was
+neither peace nor charity.  Personally the lad was kindly and
+good-natured, intellectually he had become arrogant, intolerant, acrid,
+flinging out at old-fashioned views, giving quite unnecessary
+challenges, arguing with imaginary antagonists.  It has ever seemed to
+me, although I suppose that history is against me, that if it be laid
+on any one to advocate a new view that will startle people, he ought of
+all men to be conciliatory and persuasive; but Carmichael was, at least
+in this time of fermentation, very exasperating and pugnacious, and so
+he drove the Rabbi to the only hard action of his life, wherein the old
+man suffered most, and which may be said to have led to his death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael, like the Rabbi, had intended to preach that morning on the
+love of God, and thought he was doing so with some power.  What he did
+was to take the Fatherhood of God and use it as a stick to beat
+Pharisees with, and under Pharisees he let it be seen that he included
+every person who still believed in the inflexible action of the moral
+laws and the austere majesty of God.  Many good things he no doubt
+said, but each had an edge, and it cut deeply into people of the old
+school.  Had he seen the Rabbi, it would not have been possible for him
+to continue, but he only was conscious of Lachlan Campbell, with whom
+he had then a feud, and who, he imagined, had come to criticise him.
+So he went on his rasping way that Sacrament morning, as when one
+harrows the spring earth with iron teeth, exciting himself with every
+sentence to fresh crudities of thought and extravagances of opposition.
+But it only flashed on him that he had spoken foolishly when he came
+down from the pulpit, and found the Rabbi a shrunken figure in his
+chair before the Holy Table.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Discerning people, like Elspeth Macfadyen, saw the whole tragedy from
+beginning to end, and felt the pity of it keenly.  For a while the
+Rabbi waited with fond confidence&mdash;for was not he to hear the
+best-loved of his boys&mdash;and he caught eagerly at a gracious expression,
+as if it had fallen from one of the fathers.  Anything in the line of
+faith would have pleased the Rabbi that day, who was as a little child
+and full of charity, in spite of his fierce doctrines.  By-and-by the
+light died away from his eyes as when a cloud comes over the face of
+the sun and the Glen grows cold and dreary.  He opened his eyes and was
+amazed&mdash;looking at the people and questioning them what had happened to
+their minister.  Suddenly he flushed as a person struck by a friend,
+and then, as one blow followed another, he covered his face with both
+hands, sinking lower and lower in his chair, till even that decorous
+people were almost shaken in their attention.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Carmichael gave him the cup in the Sacrament the Rabbi's hand
+shook and he spilled some drops of the wine upon his beard, which all
+that day showed like blood on the silvery whiteness.  Afterwards he
+spake in his turn to the communicants, and distinguished the true
+people of God from the multitude&mdash;to whom he held out no hope&mdash;by so
+many and stringent marks, that Donald Menzies refused the Sacrament
+with a lamentable groan.  And when the Sacrament was over and the time
+came for Carmichael to shake hands with the assisting minister in the
+vestry, the Rabbi had vanished, and he had no speech with him till they
+went through the garden together&mdash;very bleak it seemed in the winter
+dusk&mdash;unto the sermon that closed the services of the day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God's hand is heavy in anger on us both this day, John," and
+Carmichael was arrested by the awe and sorrow in the Rabbi's voice,
+"else&nbsp;&#8230; you had not spoken as you did this forenoon, nor would
+necessity be laid on me to speak&nbsp;&#8230; as I must this night.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"His ways are all goodness and truth, but they are oftentimes
+encompassed with darkness, and the burden He has laid on me is&nbsp;&#8230;
+almost more than I can bear; it will be heavy for you also.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will drink the wine of astonishment this night, and it will be
+strange if you do not&nbsp;&#8230; turn from the hand that pours it out, but
+you will not refuse the truth or&nbsp;&#8230; hate the preacher," and at the
+vestry door the Rabbi looked wistfully at Carmichael.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+During the interval the lad had been ill at ease, suspecting from the
+Rabbi's manner at the Table, and the solemnity of his address, that he
+disapproved of the action sermon, but he did not for a moment imagine
+that the situation was serious.  It is one of the disabilities of
+good-natured and emotional people, without much deepness of earth, to
+belittle the convictions and resolutions of strong natures, and to
+suppose that they can be talked away by a few pleasant, coaxing words.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi had often yielded to Carmichael and his other boys in the
+ordinary affairs of life&mdash;in meat and drink and clothing, even unto the
+continuance of his snuffing.  He had been most manageable and
+pliable&mdash;as a child in their hands&mdash;and so Carmichael was quite
+confident that he could make matters right with the old man about a
+question of doctrine as easily as about the duty of a midday meal.
+Certain bright and superficial people will only learn by some solitary
+experience that faith is reserved in friendship, and that the most
+heroic souls are those which count all things loss&mdash;even the smile of
+those they love&mdash;for the eternal.  For a moment Carmichael was shaken
+as if a new Rabbi were before him; then he remembered the study of
+Kilbogie and all things that had happened therein, and his spirits rose.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How dare you suggest such wickedness, Rabbi, that any of us should
+ever criticise or complain of anything you say?  Whatever you give us
+will be right, and do us good, and in the evening you will tell me all
+I said wrong."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Saunderson looked at Carmichael for ten seconds as one who has not been
+understood, and sighed.  Then he went down the kirk after the beadle,
+and the people marked how he walked like a man who was afraid he might
+fall, and, turning a corner, he supported himself on the end of a pew.
+As he crept up the pulpit stairs Elspeth gave James a look, and,
+although well accustomed to the slowness of his understanding, was
+amazed that he did not catch the point.  Even a man might have seen
+that this was not the same minister that came in to the Sacrament with
+hope in his very step.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A 'm no here tae say 'that a' kent what wes comin''"&mdash;Elspeth, like
+all experts, was strictly truthful&mdash;"for the like o' that wes never
+heard in Drumtochty, and noo that Doctor Saunderson is awa, will never
+be heard again in Scotland.  A' jaloused that vials wud be opened an'
+a' wesna wrang, but ma certes"&mdash;and that remarkable woman left you to
+understand that no words in human speech could even hint at the
+contents of the vials.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the Rabbi gave out his text, "Vessels of wrath," in a low,
+awestruck voice, Carmichael began to be afraid, but after a little he
+chid himself for foolishness.  During half an hour the Rabbi traced the
+doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty through Holy Scripture with a
+characteristic wealth of allusion to Fathers ancient and reforming, and
+once or twice he paused as if he would have taken up certain matters at
+greater length, but restrained himself, simply asserting the Pauline
+character of St. Augustine's thinking, and exposing the looseness of
+Clement of Alexandria with a wave of the hand as one hurrying on to his
+destination.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear old Rabbi"&mdash;Carmichael congratulated himself in his pew&mdash;"what
+need he have made so many apologies for his subject?  He is going to
+enjoy himself, and he is sure to say something beautiful before he is
+done."  But he was distinctly conscious all the same of a wish that the
+Rabbi were done and all&nbsp;&#8230; well, uncertainty over.  For there was a
+note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi's voice, and he had not
+let the Fathers go so lightly unless under severe constraint.  What was
+it?  Surely he would not attack their minister in face of his
+people.&#8230;  The Rabbi do that, who was in all his ways a gentleman?
+Yet&nbsp;&#8230; and then the Rabbi abruptly quitted historical exposition and
+announced that he would speak on four heads.  Carmichael, from his
+corner behind the curtains, saw the old man twice open his mouth as if
+to speak, and when at last he began he was quivering visibly, and he
+had grasped the outer corners of the desk with such intensity that the
+tassels which hung therefrom&mdash;one of the minor glories of the Free
+Kirk&mdash;were held in the palm of his hand, the long red tags escaping
+from between his white wasted fingers.  A pulpit lamp came between
+Carmichael and the Rabbi's face, but he could see the straining hand,
+which did not relax till it was lifted in the last awful appeal, and
+the white and red had a gruesome fascination.  It seemed as if one had
+clutched a cluster of full, rich, tender grapes and was pressing them
+in an agony till their life ran out in streams of blood, and dripped
+upon the heads of the choir sitting beneath, in their fresh, hopeful
+youth.  And it also came to Carmichael with pathetic conviction even
+then that every one was about to suffer, but the Rabbi more than them
+all together.  While the preacher was strengthening his heart for the
+work before him, Carmichael's eye was attracted by the landscape that
+he could see through the opposite window.  The ground sloped upwards
+from the kirk to a pine-wood that fringed the great moor, and it was
+covered with snow on which the moon was beginning to shed her faint,
+weird light.  Within, the light from the upright lamps was falling on
+the ruddy, contented faces of men and women and little children, but
+without it was one cold, merciless whiteness, like unto the justice of
+God, with black shadows of judgment.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This is the message which I have to deliver unto you in the name of
+the Lord, and even as Jonah was sent to Nineveh after a strange
+discipline with a word of mercy, so am I constrained against my will to
+carry a word of searching and trembling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"First"&mdash;and between the heads the Rabbi paused as one whose breath had
+failed him&mdash;"every man belongs absolutely to God by his creation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Second.  The purpose of God about each man precedes his creation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Third.  Some are destined to Salvation, and some to Damnation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fourth"&mdash;here the hard breathing became a sob&mdash;"each man's lot is unto
+the glory of God."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was not only skilled theologians like Lachlan Campbell and Burnbrae,
+but even mere amateurs, who understood that they were that night to be
+conducted to the farthest limit of Calvinism, and that whoever fell
+behind through the hardness of the way, their guide would not flinch.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the Rabbi gave the people a brief space wherein to grasp his heads
+in their significance, Carmichael remembered a vivid incident in the
+Presbytery of Muirtown, when an English evangelist had addressed that
+reverend and austere court with exhilarating confidence&mdash;explaining the
+extreme simplicity of the Christian faith, and showing how a minister
+ought to preach.  Various good men were delighted, and asked many
+questions of the evangelist&mdash;who had kept a baby-linen shop for twenty
+years, and was unspoiled by the slightest trace of theology&mdash;but the
+Rabbi arose and demolished his "teaching," convicting him of heresy at
+every turn, till there was not left one stone upon another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But surely fear belongs to the Old Testament dispensation," said the
+unabashed little man to the Rabbi afterwards.  "'Rejoice,' you know, my
+friend, 'and again I say rejoice.'"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it be the will of God that such a man as I should ever stand on the
+sea of glass mingled with fire, then this tongue will be lifted with
+the best, but so long as my feet are still in the fearful pit it
+becometh me to bow my head."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then you don't believe in assurance?" but already the evangelist was
+quailing before the Rabbi.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Verily there is no man that hath not heard of that precious gift, and
+none who does not covet it greatly, but there be two degrees of
+assurance"&mdash;here the Rabbi looked sternly at the happy, rotund little
+figure&mdash;"and it is with the first you must begin, and what you need to
+get is assurance of your damnation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+One of the boys read an account of this incident&mdash;thinly veiled&mdash;in a
+reported address of the evangelist, in which the Rabbi&mdash;being, as it
+was inferred, beaten in scriptural argument&mdash;was very penitent and
+begged his teacher's pardon with streaming tears.  What really happened
+was different, and so absolutely conclusive that Doctor Dowbiggin gave
+it as his opinion "that a valuable lesson had been read to unauthorised
+teachers of religion."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael recognised the same note in the sermon and saw another man
+than he knew, as the Rabbi, in a low voice, without heat or
+declamation, with frequent pauses and laboured breathing, as of one
+toiling up a hill, argued the absolute supremacy of God and the utter
+helplessness of man.  One hand ever pressed the grapes, but with the
+other the old man wiped the perspiration that rolled in beads down his
+face.  A painful stillness fell on the people as they felt themselves
+caught in the meshes of this inexorable net and dragged ever nearer to
+the abyss.  Carmichael, who had been leaning forward in his place, tore
+himself away from the preacher with an effort, and moved where he could
+see the congregation.  Campbell was drinking in every word as one for
+the first time in his life perfectly satisfied.  Menzies was huddled
+into a heap in the top of his pew as one justly blasted by the anger of
+the Eternal.  Men were white beneath the tan, and it was evident that
+some of the women would soon fall a-weeping.  Children had crept close
+to their mothers under a vague sense of danger, and a girl in the choir
+watched the preacher with dilated eyeballs, like an animal fascinated
+by terror.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is as a sword piercing the heart to receive this truth, but it is a
+truth and must be believed.  There are hundreds of thousands in the
+past who were born and lived and died and were damned for the glory of
+God.  There are hundreds of thousands in this day who have been born
+and are living and shall die and be damned for the glory of God.  There
+are hundreds of thousands in the future who shall be born and shall
+live and shall die and shall be damned for the glory of God.  All
+according to the will of God, and none dare say nay nor change the
+purpose of the Eternal."  For some time the oil in the lamps had been
+failing&mdash;since the Rabbi had been speaking for nigh two hours&mdash;and as
+he came to an end of this passage the light began to flicker and die.
+First a lamp at the end of Burnbrae's pew went out and then another in
+the front.  The preacher made as though he would have spoken, but was
+silent, and the congregation watched four lamps sink into darkness at
+intervals of half a minute.  There only remained the two pulpit lamps,
+and in their light the people saw the Rabbi lift his right hand for the
+first time.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Shall&nbsp;&#8230; not&nbsp;&#8230; the&nbsp;&#8230; Judge&nbsp;&#8230; of all the earth&nbsp;&#8230;
+do&nbsp;&#8230; right?"  The two lamps went out together and a great sigh rose
+from the people.  At the back of the kirk a child wailed and somewhere
+in the front a woman's voice&mdash;it was never proved to be Elspeth
+Macfadyen&mdash;said audibly, "God have mercy upon us."  The Rabbi had sunk
+back into the seat and buried his face in his hands, and through the
+window over his head the moonlight was pouring into the church like
+unto the far-off radiance from the White Throne.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When Carmichael led the Rabbi into the manse he could feel the old man
+trembling from head to foot, and he would touch neither meat nor drink,
+nor would he speak for a space.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you there, John?"&mdash;and he put out his hand to Carmichael, who had
+placed him in the big study chair, and was sitting beside him in
+silence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I dare not withdraw nor change any word that I spake in the name of
+the Lord this day, but&nbsp;&#8230; it is my infirmity&nbsp;&#8230; I wish I had
+never been born."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It was awful," said Carmichael, and the Rabbi's head again fell on his
+breast.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John,"&mdash;and Saunderson looked up,&mdash;"I would give ten thousand worlds
+to stand in the shoes of that good man who conveyed me from Kilbogie
+yesterday, and with whom I had very pleasant fellowship concerning the
+patience of the saints.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It becometh not any human being to judge his neighbour, but it seemed
+to me from many signs that he was within the election of God, and even
+as we spoke of Polycarp and the martyrs who have overcome by the blood
+of the Lamb, it came unto me with much power, 'Lo, here is one beside
+you whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and who shall
+enter through the gates into the city;' and grace was given me to
+rejoice in his joy, but I&nbsp;&#8230;"&mdash;and Carmichael could have wept for
+the despair in the Rabbi's voice.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dear Rabbi!"&mdash;for once the confidence of youth was smitten at the
+sight of a spiritual conflict beyond its depth&mdash;"you are surely&nbsp;&#8230;
+depreciating yourself&nbsp;&#8230;  Burnbrae is a good man, but compared with
+you&nbsp;&#8230; is not this like to the depression of Elijah?"  Carmichael
+knew, however, he was not fit for such work, and had better have held
+his peace.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may be that I understand the letter of Holy Scripture better than
+some of God's children, although I be but a babe even in this poor
+knowledge, but such gifts are only as the small dust of the balance.
+He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John," said the Rabbi suddenly, and with strong feeling, "was it your
+thought this night as I declared the sovereignty of God that I judged
+myself of the elect, and was speaking as one himself hidden for ever in
+the secret place of God?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I&nbsp;&#8230; did not know," stammered Carmichael, whose utter horror at the
+unrelenting sermon had only been tempered by his love for the preacher.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You did me wrong, John, for then had I not dared to speak at all after
+that fashion; it is not for a vessel of mercy filled unto overflowing
+with the love of God to exalt himself above the vessels&nbsp;&#8230; for whom
+there is no mercy.  But he may plead with them who are in like case
+with himself to&nbsp;&#8230; acknowledge the Divine Justice."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then the pathos of the situation overcame Carmichael, and he went over
+to the bookcase and leant his head against certain volumes, because
+they were weighty and would not yield.  Next day he noticed that one of
+them was a Latin Calvin that had travelled over Europe in learned
+company, and the other a battered copy of Jonathan Edwards that had
+come from the house of an Ayrshire farmer.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Forgive me that I have troubled you with the concerns of my soul,
+John"&mdash;the Rabbi could only stand with an effort&mdash;"they ought to be
+between a man and his God.  There is another work laid to my hand for
+which there is no power in me now.  During the night I shall ask
+whether the cup may not pass from me, but if not, the will of God be
+done."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael slept but little, and every time he woke the thought was
+heavy upon him that on the other side of a narrow wall the holiest man
+he knew was wrestling in darkness of soul, and that he had added to the
+bitterness of the agony.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-280"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-280.jpg" ALT="Wrestling in darkness of soul." BORDER="2" WIDTH="342" HEIGHT="570">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 342px">
+Wrestling in darkness of soul.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap20"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XX.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-283.jpg" ALT="dropcap-w" BORDER="0" WIDTH="184" HEIGHT="265">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+inter has certain mornings which redeem weeks of misconduct, when the
+hoar frost during the night has re-silvered every branch and braced the
+snow upon the ground, and the sun rises in ruddy strength and drives
+out of sight every cloud and mist, and moves all day through an expanse
+of unbroken blue, and is reflected from the dazzling whiteness of the
+earth as from a mirror.  Such a sight calls a man from sleep with
+authority, and makes his blood tingle, and puts new heart in him, and
+banishes the troubles of the night.  Other mornings winter joins in the
+conspiracy of principalities and powers to daunt and crush the human
+soul.  No sun is to be seen, and the grey atmosphere casts down the
+heart, the wind moans and whistles in fitful gusts, the black clouds
+hang low in threatening masses, now and again a flake of snow drifts in
+the wind.  A storm is near at hand, not the thunder-shower of summer,
+with warm rain and the kindly sun in ambush, but dark and blinding
+snow, through which even a gamekeeper cannot see six yards, and in
+which weary travellers lie down to rest and die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The melancholy of this kind of day had fallen on Saunderson, whose face
+was ashen, and who held Carmichael's hand with such anxious affection
+that it was impossible to inquire how he had slept, and it would have
+been a banalité to remark upon the weather.  After the Rabbi had been
+compelled to swallow a cup of milk by way of breakfast, it was evident
+that he was ready for speech.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it, Rabbi?" as soon as they were again settled in the study.
+"If you did not&nbsp;&#8230; like my sermon, tell me at once.  You know that I
+am one of your boys, and you ought to&nbsp;&#8230; help me."  Perhaps it was
+inseparable from his youth, with its buoyancy and self-satisfaction,
+and his training in a college whose members only knew by rumour of the
+existence of other places of theological learning, that Carmichael had
+at that moment a pleasing sense of humility and charity.  Had it been a
+matter of scholastic lore, of course neither he nor more than six men
+in Scotland could have met the Rabbi in the gate.  With regard to
+modern thought, Carmichael knew that the good Rabbi had not read <I>Ecce
+Homo</I>, and was hardly, well&nbsp;&#8230; up to date.  He would not for the
+world hint such a thing to the dear old man, nor even argue with him;
+but it was flattering to remember that the attack could be merely one
+of blunderbusses, in which the modern thinker would at last intervene
+and save the ancient scholar from humiliation.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Rabbi?" and Carmichael tried to make it easy.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Before I say what is on my heart, John, you will grant an old man who
+loves you one favour.  So far as in you lies you will bear with me if
+that which I have to say, and still more that which my conscience will
+compel me to do, is hard to flesh and blood."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did n't we settle that last night in the vestry?" and Carmichael was
+impatient; "is it that you do not agree with the doctrine of the Divine
+Fatherhood?  We younger men are resolved to base Christian doctrine on
+the actual Scriptures, and to ignore mere tradition."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"An excellent rule, my dear friend," cried the Rabbi, wonderfully
+quickened by the challenge, "and with your permission and for our
+mutual edification we shall briefly review all passages bearing on the
+subject in hand&mdash;using the original, as will doubtless be your wish,
+and you correcting my poor recollection."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+About an hour afterwards, and when the Rabbi was only entering into the
+heart of the matter, Carmichael made the bitter discovery&mdash;without the
+Rabbi having even hinted at such a thing&mdash;that his pet sermon was a
+mass of boyish crudities, and this reverse of circumstances was some
+excuse for his pettishness.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It does not seem to me that it is worth our time to haggle about the
+usage of Greek words or to count texts: I ground my position on the
+general meaning of the Gospels and the sense of things," and Carmichael
+stood on the hearthrug in a very superior attitude.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Let that pass then, John, and forgive me if I appeared to battle about
+words, as certain scholars of the olden time were fain to do, for in
+truth it is rather about the hard duty before me than any imperfection
+in your teaching I would speak," and the Rabbi glanced nervously at the
+young minister.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"We are both Presbyters of Christ's Church, ordained after the order of
+primitive times, and there are laid on us certain heavy charges and
+responsibilities from which we may not shrink, as we shall answer to
+the Lord at the great day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael's humiliation was lost in perplexity, and he sat down,
+wondering what the Rabbi intended.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If any Presbyter should see his brother fall into one of those faults
+of private life that do beset us all in our present weakness, then he
+doth well and kindly to point it out unto his brother; and if his
+brother should depart from the faith as they talk together by the way,
+then it is a Presbyter's part to convince him of his error and restore
+him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi cast an imploring glance, but Carmichael had still no
+understanding.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But if one Presbyter should teach heresy to his flock in the hearing
+of another&nbsp;&#8230; even though it break the other's heart, is not the
+path of duty fenced up on either side, verily a straight, narrow way,
+and hard for the feet to tread?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You have spoken to me, Rabbi, and&nbsp;&#8230; cleared yourself"&mdash;Carmichael
+was still somewhat sore&mdash;"and I 'll promise not to offend you again in
+an action sermon."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Albeit you intend it not so, yet are you making it harder for me to
+speak.&#8230;  See you not&nbsp;&#8230; that I&nbsp;&#8230; that necessity is laid on
+me to declare this matter to my brother Presbyters in court
+assembled&nbsp;&#8230; but not in hearing of the people?"  Then there was a
+stillness in the room, and the Rabbi, although he had closed his eyes,
+was conscious of the amazement on the young man's face.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to say," speaking very slowly, as one taken utterly aback,
+"that our Rabbi would come to my&nbsp;&#8230; to the Sacrament and hear me
+preach, and&nbsp;&#8230; report me for heresy to the Presbytery?  Rabbi, I
+know we don't agree about some things, and perhaps I was a little&nbsp;&#8230;
+annoyed a few minutes ago because you&nbsp;&#8230; know far more than I do,
+but that is nothing.  For you to prosecute one of your boys and be the
+witness yourself.&#8230;  Rabbi, you can't mean it.&#8230;  Say it's a
+mistake."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man only gave a deep sigh.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If it were Dowbiggin or&nbsp;&#8230; any man except you, I would n't care one
+straw, rather enjoy the debate, but you whom we have loved and looked
+up to and boasted about, why, it's like&nbsp;&#8230; a father turning against
+his sons."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi made no sign.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You live too much alone, Rabbi," and Carmichael began again as the
+sense of the tragedy grew on him, "and nurse your conscience till it
+gets over tender; no other man would dream of&nbsp;&#8230; prosecuting a&nbsp;&#8230;
+fellow minister in such circumstances.  You have spoken to me like a
+father, surely that is enough," and in his honest heat the young fellow
+knelt down by the Rabbi's chair and took his hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+A tear rolled down the Rabbi's cheek, and he looked fondly at the lad.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your words pierce me as sharp swords, John; spare me, for I can do
+none otherwise; all night I wrestled for release, but in vain."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael had a sudden revulsion of feeling, such as befalls emotional
+and ill-disciplined natures when they are disappointed and mortified.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Very good, Doctor Saunderson"&mdash;Carmichael rose awkwardly and stood on
+the hearthrug again, an elbow on the mantelpiece&mdash;"you must do as you
+please and as you think right.  I am sorry that I&nbsp;&#8230; pressed you so
+far, but it was on grounds of our&nbsp;&#8230; friendship.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Perhaps you will tell me as soon as you can what you propose to do,
+and when you will bring&nbsp;&#8230; this matter before the Presbytery.  My
+sermon was fully written and&nbsp;&#8230; is at your disposal."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+While this cold rain beat on the Rabbi's head he moved not, but at its
+close he looked at Carmichael with the appeal of a dumb animal in his
+eyes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The first meeting of Presbytery is on Monday, but you would no doubt
+consider that too soon; is there anything about dates in the order of
+procedure for heresy?" and Carmichael made as though he would go over
+to the shelves for a law book.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"John," cried the Rabbi&mdash;his voice full of tears&mdash;rising and following
+the foolish lad, "is this all you have in your heart to say unto me?
+Surely, as I stand before you, it is not my desire to do such a thing,
+for I would rather cut off my right hand.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"God hath not been pleased to give me many friends, and He only knows
+how you and the others have comforted my heart.  I lie not, John, but
+speak the truth, that there is nothing unto life itself I would not
+give for your good, who have been as the apple of my eye unto me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael hardened himself, torn between a savage sense of
+satisfaction that the Rabbi was suffering for his foolishness and the
+inclination of his better self to respond to the old man's love.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If there be a breach between us, it will not be for you as it must be
+for me.  You have many friends, and may God add unto them good men and
+faithful, but I shall lose my one earthly joy and consolation, when
+your feet are no longer heard on my threshold and your face no longer
+brings light to my room.  And, John, even this thing which I am
+constrained to do is yet of love, as&nbsp;&#8230; you shall confess one day."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael's pride alone resisted, and it was melting fast.  Had he
+even looked at the dear face, he must have given way, but he kept his
+shoulder to the Rabbi, and at that moment the sound of wheels passing
+the corner of the manse gave him an ungracious way of escape.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is Burnbrae's dog-cart&nbsp;&#8230; Doctor Saunderson, and I think he
+will not wish to keep his horse standing in the snow, so unless you
+will stay all night, as it's going to drift.&#8230;  Then perhaps it
+would be better.&#8230;  Can I assist you in packing?"  How formal it
+all sounded, and he allowed the Rabbi to go upstairs alone, with the
+result that various things of the old man's are in Carmichael's house
+unto this day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Another chance was given the lad when the Rabbi would have bidden him
+good-bye at the door, beseeching that he should not come out into the
+drift, and still another when Burnbrae, being concerned about his
+passenger's appearance, who seemed ill-fitted to face a storm, wrapt
+him in a plaid; and he had one more when the old man leant out of the
+dog-cart and took Carmichael's hand in both of his, but only said, "God
+bless you for all you 've been to me, and forgive me for all wherein I
+have failed you."  And they did not meet again till that
+never-to-be-forgotten sederunt of the Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown,
+when the minister of Kilbogie accused the minister of Drumtochty of
+teaching the Linlathen heresy of the Fatherhood of God in a sermon
+before the Sacrament.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Among all the institutions of the North a Presbytery is the most
+characteristic, and affords a standing illustration of the
+contradictions of a superbly logical people.  It is so anti-clerical a
+court that for every clergyman there must be a layman&mdash;country
+ministers promising to bring in their elder for great occasions, and
+instructing him audibly how to vote&mdash;and so fiercely clerical that if
+the most pious and intelligent elder dared to administer a sacrament he
+would be at once tried and censured for sacrilege.  So careful is a
+Presbytery to prevent the beginnings of Papacy that it insists upon
+each of its members occupying the chair in turn, and dismisses him
+again into private life as soon as he has mastered his duties, but so
+imbued is it with the idea of authority that whatever decision may be
+given by some lad of twenty-five in the chair&mdash;duly instructed,
+however, by the clerk below&mdash;will be rigidly obeyed.  When a Presbytery
+has nothing else to do, it dearly loves to pass a general condemnation
+on sacerdotalism, in which the tyranny of prelates, and the foolishness
+of vestments will be fully exposed, but a Presbytery wields a power at
+which a bishop's hair would stand on end, and Doctor Dowbiggin once
+made Carmichael leave the Communion Table and go into the vestry to put
+on his bands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When a Presbytery is in its lighter moods, it gives itself to points of
+order with a skill and relish beyond the Southern imagination.  It did
+not matter how harmless, even infantile, might be the proposal placed
+before the court by such a man as MacWheep of Pitscowrie, he has hardly
+got past an apology for his presumption in venturing to speak at all,
+before a member of Presbytery&mdash;who had reduced his congregation to an
+irreducible minimum by the woodenness of his preaching&mdash;inquires
+whether the speech of "our esteemed brother is not <I>ultra vires</I>" or
+something else as awful.  MacWheep at once sits down with the air of
+one taken red-handed in arson, and the court debates the point till
+every authority has taken his fill, when the clerk submits to the
+Moderator, with a fine blend of deference and infallibility, that Mr.
+MacWheep is perfectly within his rights; and then, as that estimable
+person has, by this time, lost any thread he ever possessed, the
+Presbytery passes to the next business&mdash;with the high spirit of men
+returning from a holiday.  Carmichael used, indeed, to relate how in a
+great stress of business someone moved that the Presbytery should
+adjourn for dinner, and the court argued for seventy minutes, with many
+precedents, whether such a motion&mdash;touching as it did the standing
+orders&mdash;could even be discussed, and with an unnecessary prodigality of
+testimony he used to give perorations which improved with every telling.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The love of law diffused through the Presbytery became incarnate in the
+clerk, who was one of the most finished specimens of his class in the
+Scottish Kirk.  His sedate appearance, bald, polished head, fringed
+with pure white hair, shrewd face, with neatly cut side whiskers, his
+suggestion of unerring accuracy and inexhaustible memory, his attitude
+for exposition,&mdash;holding his glasses in his left hand and enforcing his
+decision with the little finger of the right hand&mdash;carried conviction
+even to the most disorderly.  Ecclesiastical radicals, boiling over
+with new schemes, and boasting to admiring circles of MacWheeps that
+they would not be brow-beaten by red tape officials, became
+ungrammatical before that firm gaze, and ended in abject surrender.
+Self-contained and self-sufficing, the clerk took no part in debate,
+save at critical moments to lay down the law, but wrote his minutes
+unmoved through torrents of speech on every subject, from the
+Sustentation Fund to the Union between England and Scotland, and even
+under the picturesque eloquence of foreign deputies, whose names he
+invariably requested should be handed to him, written legibly on a
+sheet of paper.  On two occasions only he ceased from writing: when Dr.
+Dowbiggin discussed a method of procedure&mdash;then he watched him over his
+spectacles in hope of a nice point; or when some enthusiastic brother
+would urge the Presbytery to issue an injunction on the sin of Sabbath
+walking&mdash;then the clerk would abandon his pen in visible despair, and
+sitting sideways on his chair and supporting his head by that same
+little finger, would face the Presbytery with an expression of reverent
+curiosity on his face why the Almighty was pleased to create such a
+man.  His preaching was distinguished for orderliness, and was much
+sought after for Fast days.  It turned largely on the use of
+prepositions and the scope of conjunctions, so that the clerk could
+prove the doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice from "for," and Retribution
+from "as" in the Lord's prayer, emphasising and confirming everything
+by that wonderful finger, which seemed to be designed by Providence for
+delicate distinctions, just as another man's fist served for popular
+declamation.  His pulpit masterpiece was a lecture on the Council of
+Jerusalem, in which its whole deliberations were reviewed by the rules
+of the Free Kirk Book of Procedure, and a searching and edifying
+discourse concluded with two lessons.  First: That no ecclesiastical
+body can conduct its proceedings without officials.  Second: That such
+men ought to be accepted as a special gift of Providence.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-292"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-292.jpg" ALT="His attitude for exposition." BORDER="2" WIDTH="363" HEIGHT="463">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 363px">
+His attitude for exposition.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+The general opinion among good people was that the clerk's preaching
+was rather for upbuilding than arousing, but it is still remembered by
+the survivors of the old Presbytery that when MacWheep organised a
+conference on "The state of religion in our congregations," and it was
+meandering in strange directions, the clerk, who utilised such seasons
+for the writing of letters, rose amid a keen revival of interest&mdash;it
+was supposed that he had detected an irregularity in the
+proceedings&mdash;and offered his contribution.  "It did not become him to
+boast," he said, "but he had seen marvellous things in his day: under
+his unworthy ministry three beadles had been converted to
+Christianity," and this experience was so final that the conference
+immediately closed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Times there were, however, when the Presbytery rose to its height, and
+was invested with an undeniable spiritual dignity.  Its members, taken
+one by one, consisted of farmers, shepherds, tradesmen, and one or two
+professional men, with some twenty ministers, only two or three of whom
+were known beyond their parishes.  Yet those men had no doubt that as
+soon as they were constituted in the name of Christ, they held their
+authority from the Son of God and Saviour of the world, and they bore
+themselves in spiritual matters as His servants.  No kindly feeling of
+neighbourliness or any fear of man could hinder them from inquiring
+into the religious condition of a parish or dealing faithfully with an
+erring minister.  They had power to ordain, and laid hands on the bent
+head of some young probationer with much solemnity; they had also power
+to take away the orders they had given, and he had been hardened indeed
+beyond hope who could be present and not tremble when the Moderator,
+standing in his place, with the Presbytery around, and speaking in the
+name of the Head of the Church, deposed an unworthy brother from the
+holy ministry.  MacWheep was a "cratur," and much given to twaddle, but
+when it was his duty once to rebuke a fellow-minister for quarrelling
+with his people, he was delivered from himself, and spake with such
+grave wisdom as he has never shown before or since.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the Presbytery assembled to receive a statement from Doctor
+Saunderson "<I>re</I> error in doctrine by a brother Presbyter," even a
+stranger might have noticed that its members were weighted with a sense
+of responsibility, and although a discussion arose on the attempt of a
+desultory member to introduce a deputy charged with the subject of the
+lost ten tribes, yet it was promptly squelched by the clerk, who
+intimated, with much gravity, that the court had met <I>in hunc
+effectum</I>, viz. to hear Doctor Saunderson, and that the court could
+not, in consistence with law, take up any other business, not
+even&mdash;here Carmichael professed to detect a flicker of the clerkly
+eyelids&mdash;the disappearance of the ten tribes.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the last time that the Rabbi ever spoke in public, and it is now
+agreed that the deliverance was a fit memorial of the most learned
+scholar that has been ever known in those parts.  He began by showing
+that Christian doctrine has taken various shapes, some more and some
+less in accordance with the deposit of truth given by Christ and the
+holy Apostles, and especially that the doctrine of Grace had been
+differently conceived by two eminent theologians, Calvin and Arminius,
+and his exposition was so lucid that the clerk gave it as his opinion
+afterwards, that the two systems were understood by certain members of
+the court for the first time that day.  Afterwards the Rabbi vindicated
+and glorified Calvinism from the Scriptures of the Old and New
+Testament, from the Fathers, from the Reformation Divines, from the
+later creeds, till the brain of the Presbytery reeled through the
+wealth of allusion and quotation, all in the tongues of the learned.
+Then he dealt with the theology of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, and showed
+how it was undermining the very foundations of Calvinism; yet the Rabbi
+spake so tenderly of our Scottish Maurice that the Presbytery knew not
+whether it ought to condemn Erskine as a heretic or love him as a
+saint.  Having thus brought the court face to face with the issues
+involved, the Rabbi gave a sketch of a certain sermon he had heard
+while assisting "a learned and much-beloved brother at the Sacrament,"
+and Carmichael was amazed at the transfiguration of this very youthful
+performance, which now figured as a profound and edifying discourse,
+for whose excellent qualities the speaker had not adequate words.  This
+fine discourse was, however, to a certain degree marred, the Rabbi
+suggested, by an unfortunate, although no doubt temporary, leaning to
+the teaching of Mr. Erskine, whose beautiful piety, which was even to
+himself in his worldliness and unprofitableness a salutary rebuke, had
+exercised its just fascination upon his much more spiritual brother.
+Finally the Rabbi left the matter in the hands of the Presbytery,
+declaring that he had cleared his conscience, and that the minister was
+one&mdash;here he was painfully overcome&mdash;dear to him as a son, and to whose
+many labours and singular graces he could bear full testimony, the Rev.
+John Carmichael, of Drumtochty.  The Presbytery was slow and pedantic,
+but was not insensible to a spiritual situation, and there was a murmur
+of sympathy when the Rabbi sat down&mdash;much exhausted, and never having
+allowed himself to look once at Carmichael.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then arose a self-made man, who considered orthodoxy and capital to be
+bound up together, and especially identified any departure from
+sovereignty with that pestilent form of Socialism which demanded equal
+chances for every man.  He was only a plain layman, he said, and
+perhaps he ought not to speak in the presence of so many reverend
+gentlemen, but he was very grateful to Doctor Saunderson for his
+honourable and straightforward conduct.  It would be better for the
+Church if there were more like him, and he would just like to ask Mr.
+Carmichael one or two questions.  Did he sign the Confession?&mdash;that was
+one; and had he kept it?&mdash;that was two; and the last was, When did he
+propose to go?  He knew something about building contracts, and he had
+heard of a penalty when a contract was broken.  There was just one
+thing more he would like to say&mdash;if there was less loose theology in
+the pulpit there would be more money in the plate.  The shame of the
+Rabbi during this harangue was pitiable to behold.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Then a stalwart arose on the other side, and a young gentleman who had
+just escaped from a college debating society wished to know what
+century we were living in, warned the last speaker that the progress of
+theological science would not be hindered by mercenary threats, advised
+Doctor Saunderson to read a certain German, called Ritschl,&mdash;as if he
+had been speaking to a babe in arms,&mdash;and was refreshing himself with a
+Latin quotation, when the Rabbi, in utter absence of mind, corrected a
+false quantity aloud.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Moderator," the old man apologised in much confusion, "I wot not what
+I did, and I pray my reverend brother, whose interesting and
+instructive address I have interrupted by this unmannerliness, to grant
+me his pardon, for my tongue simply obeyed my ear."  Which untoward
+incident brought the modern to an end, as by a stroke of ironical fate.
+It seemed to the clerk that little good to any one concerned was to
+come out of this debate, and he signalled to Doctor Dowbiggin, with
+whom he had dined the night before, when they concocted a motion over
+their wine.  Whereupon that astute man explained to the court that he
+did not desire to curtail the valuable discussion, from which he
+personally had derived much profit, but he had ventured to draw up a
+motion, simply for the guidance of the House&mdash;it was said by the
+Rabbi's boys that the Doctor's success as an ecclesiastic was largely
+due to the skilful use of such phrases&mdash;and then he read: "Whereas the
+Church is set in all her courts for the defence of the truth, whereas
+it is reported that various erroneous doctrines are being promulgated
+in books and other public prints, whereas it has been stated that one
+of the ministers of this Presbytery has used words that might be
+supposed to give sanction to a certain view which appears to conflict
+with statements contained in the standards of the Church, the
+Presbytery of Muirtown declares first of all, its unshaken adherence to
+the said standards; secondly, deplores the existence in any quarter of
+notions contradictory or subversive of said standards; thirdly, thanks
+Doctor Saunderson for the vigilance he has shown in the cause of sound
+doctrine; fourthly, calls upon all ministers within the bounds to have
+a care that they create no offence or misunderstanding by their
+teaching, and finally enjoins all parties concerned to cultivate peace
+and charity."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+This motion was seconded by the clerk and carried
+unanimously,&mdash;Carmichael being compelled to silence by the two wise men
+for his own sake and theirs,&mdash;and was declared to be a conspicuous
+victory both by the self-made man and the modern, which was another
+tribute to the ecclesiastical gifts of Doctor Dowbiggin and the clerk
+of the Presbytery of Muirtown.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap21"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXI.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-300.jpg" ALT="dropcap-t" BORDER="0" WIDTH="153" HEIGHT="291">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+he Rabbi had been careful to send an abstract of his speech to
+Carmichael, with a letter enough to melt the heart even of a
+self-sufficient young clerical; and Carmichael had considered how he
+should bear himself at the Presbytery.  His intention had been to meet
+the Rabbi with public cordiality and escort him to a seat, so that all
+men should see that he was too magnanimous to be offended by this
+latest eccentricity of their friend.  This calculated plan was upset by
+the Rabbi coming in late and taking the first seat that offered, and
+when he would have gone afterwards to thank him for his generosity the
+Rabbi had disappeared.  It was evident that the old man's love was as
+deep as ever, but that he was much hurt, and would not risk another
+repulse.  Very likely he had walked in from Kilbogie, perhaps without
+breakfast, and had now started to return to his cheerless manse.  It
+was a wetting spring rain, and he remembered that the Rabbi had no
+coat.  A fit of remorse overtook Carmichael, and he scoured the streets
+of Muirtown to find the Rabbi, imagining deeds of attention&mdash;how he
+would capture him unawares mooning along some side street hopelessly
+astray; how he would accuse him of characteristic cunning and deep
+plotting, how he would carry him by force to the Kilspindie Arms and
+insist upon their dining in state; how the Rabbi would wish to
+discharge the account and find twopence in his pockets&mdash;having given
+all his silver to an ex-Presbyterian minister stranded in Muirtown
+through peculiar circumstances; how he would speak gravely to the Rabbi
+on the lack of common honesty, and threaten a real prosecution, when
+the charge would be "obtaining a dinner on false pretences," how they
+would journey to Kildrummie in high content, and&mdash;the engine having
+whistled for a dog-cart&mdash;they would drive to Drumtochty manse, the sun
+shining through the rain as they entered the garden; how he would
+compass the Rabbi with observances, and the old man would sit again in
+the big chair full of joy and peace.  Ah, the kindly jests that have
+not come off in life, the gracious deeds that never were done, the
+reparations that were too late!  When Carmichael reached the station
+the Rabbi was already half way to Kilbogie, trudging along wet and
+weary and very sad, because, although he had obeyed his conscience at a
+cost, it seemed to him as if he had simply alienated the boy whom God
+had given him as a son in his old age, for even the guileless Rabbi
+suspected that the ecclesiastics considered his action foolishness and
+of no service to the Church of God.  Barbara's language on his arrival
+was vituperative to a degree, she gave him food grudgingly, and when,
+in the early morning, he fell asleep over an open Father, he was
+repeating Carmichael's name, and the thick old paper was soaked with
+tears.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His nemesis seized Carmichael so soon as he reached the Dunleith train
+in the shape of the Free Kirk minister of Kildrummie, who had purchased
+six pounds of prize seed potatoes, and was carrying the treasure home
+in a paper bag.  This bag had done after its kind, and as the
+distinguished agriculturist had not seen his feet for years, and could
+only have stooped at the risk of apoplexy, he watched the dispersion of
+his potatoes with dismay, and hailed the arrival of Carmichael with
+exclamations of thankfulness.  It is wonderful over what an area six
+pounds of (prize) potatoes can deploy on a railway platform, and how
+the feet of passengers will carry them unto far distances.  Some might
+never have been restored to the bag had it not been for Kildrummie's
+comprehensive eye and the physical skill with which he guided
+Carmichael, till even prodigals that had strayed over to the
+neighbourhood of the Aberdeen express were restored to the extemporised
+fold in the minister's top-coat pockets.  Carmichael had knelt on that
+very platform six months or so before, but then he stooped in the
+service of two most agreeable dogs and under the approving eyes of Miss
+Carnegie; that was a different experience from hunting after single
+potatoes on all fours among the feet of unsympathetic passengers, and
+being prodded to duty by the umbrella of an obese Free Kirk minister.
+As a reward for this service of the aged, he was obliged to travel to
+Kildrummie with his neighbour&mdash;in whom for the native humour that was
+in him he had often rejoiced, but whose company was not congenial that
+day&mdash;and Kildrummie laid himself out for a pleasant talk.  After the
+roots had been secured and their pedigree stated, Kildrummie fell back
+on the proceedings of Presbytery, expressing much admiration for the
+guidance of Doctor Dowbiggin and denouncing Saunderson as "fair
+dottle," in proof of which judgment Kildrummie adduced the fact that
+the Rabbi had allowed a very happily situated pigsty to sink into ruin.
+Kildrummie, still in search of agreeable themes to pass the time,
+mentioned a pleasant tale he had gathered at the seed shop.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yir neebur upbye, the General's dochter, is cairryin' on an awfu' rig
+the noo at the Castle"&mdash;Kildrummie fell into dialect in private life,
+often with much richness&mdash;"an' the sough o' her ongaeins hes come the
+length o' Muirtown.  The place is foo' o' men&mdash;tae say naethin' o'
+weemin; but it's little she hes tae dae wi' them or them wi'
+her&mdash;officers frae Edinburgh an' writin' men frae London, as weel as
+half a dozen coonty birkies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well?" said Carmichael, despising himself for his curiosity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She hes a wy, there 's nae doot o' that, an' gin the trimmie hesna
+turned the heads o' half the men in the Castle, till they say she hes
+the pick of twa lords, five honourables, and a poet.  But the lassie
+kens what's what; it's Lord Hay she 's settin' her cap for, an' as sure
+as ye 're sittin' there, Drum, she 'll hae him.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ma word"&mdash;and Kildrummie pursued his way&mdash;"it 'll be a match, the
+dochter o' a puir Hielant laird, wi' naethin' but his half pay and a
+few pounds frae a fairm or twa.  She 's a clever ane; French songs,
+dancin', shootin', ridin', actin', there's nae deevilry that's beyond
+her.  They say upbye that she's been a bonnie handfu' tae her
+father&mdash;General though he be&mdash;an' a' peety her man."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They say a lot of&nbsp;&#8230; lies, and I don't see what call a minister has
+to slander&nbsp;&#8230; ," and then Carmichael saw the folly of quarrelling
+with a veteran gossip over a young woman that would have nothing to say
+to him.  What two Free Kirk ministers or their people thought of her
+would never affect Miss Carnegie.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Truth's nae slander," and Kildrummie watched Carmichael with relish;
+"a' thocht ye wud hae got a taste o' her in the Glen.  Didna a' heer
+frae Piggie Walker that ye ca'd her Jezebel frae yir ain pulpit, an'
+that ma lady whuppit oot o' the kirk in the middle o' the sermon?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I did nothing of the kind, and Walker is a&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Piggie 's no very particular at a time," admitted Kildrummie; "maybe
+it's a makup the story aboot Miss Carnegie an' yirsel'.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Accordin' to the wratch," for Carmichael would deign no reply, "she
+wes threatenin' tae mak a fule o' the Free Kirk minister o' Drumtochty
+juist for practice, but a' said, 'Na, na, Piggie, Maister Carmichael is
+ower quiet and sensible a lad.  He kens as weel as onybody that a
+Carnegie wud never dae for a minister's wife.  Gin ye said a Bailie's
+dochter frae Muirtown 'at hes some money comin' tae her and kens the
+principles o' the Free Kirk.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Noo a' can speak frae experience, having been terrible fortunate wi'
+a' ma wives.&#8230;  Ye 'll come up tae tea; we killed a pig yesterday,
+and&nbsp;&#8230;  Weel, weel, a wilfu' man maun hae his wy," and Carmichael,
+as he made his way up the hill, felt that the hand of Providence was
+heavy upon him, and that any highmindedness was being severely
+chastened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Two days Carmichael tramped the moors, returning each evening wet,
+weary, hungry, to sleep ten hours without turning, and on the morning
+of the third day he came down in such heart that Sarah wondered whether
+he could have received a letter by special messenger; and he
+congratulated himself, as he walked round his garden, that he had
+overcome by sheer will-power the first real infatuation of his life.
+He was so lifted above all sentiment as to review his temporary folly
+from the bare, serene heights of common-sense.  Miss Carnegie was
+certainly not an heiress, and she was a young woman of very decided
+character, but her blood was better than the Hays', and she was&nbsp;&#8230;
+attractive&mdash;yes, attractive.  Most likely she was engaged to Lord Hay,
+or if he did not please her&mdash;she was&nbsp;&#8230; whimsical and&nbsp;&#8230;
+self-willed&mdash;there was Lord Invermay's son.  Fancy Kate&nbsp;&#8230; Miss
+Carnegie in a Free Kirk manse&mdash;Kildrummie was a very&nbsp;&#8230; homely old
+man, but he touched the point there&mdash;receiving Doctor Dowbiggin with
+becoming ceremony and hearing him on the payment of probationers, or
+taking tea at Kildrummie Manse&mdash;where he had, however, feasted royally
+many a time after the Presbytery, but.&#8230;  This daughter of a
+Jacobite house, and brought up amid the romance of war, settling down
+in the narrowest circle of Scottish life&mdash;as soon imagine an eagle
+domesticated among barn-door poultry.  This image amused Carmichael so
+much that he could have laughed aloud, but&nbsp;&#8230; the village might have
+heard him.  He only stretched himself like one awaking, and felt so
+strong that he resolved to drop in on Janet to see how it fared with
+the old woman and&nbsp;&#8230; to have Miss Carnegie's engagement confirmed.
+The Carnegies might return any day from the South, and it would be well
+that he should know how to meet them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will be hearing that they hef come back to the Lodge yesterday
+morning, and it iss myself that will be glad to see Miss Kate again;
+and very pretty iss she looking, with peautiful dresses and bonnets,
+for I hef seen them all, maybe twelve or ten.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Oh yes, my dear, Donald will be talking about her marriage to Lord
+Kilspindie's son, who iss a very handsome young man and good at the
+shooting; and he will be blowing that they will live at the Lodge in
+great state, with many gillies and a piper.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, it iss not Janet Macpherson, my dear, that will be believing
+Donald Cameron, or any Cameron&mdash;although I am not saying that the
+Camerons are not men of their hands&mdash;for Donald will be always making
+great stories and telling me wonderful things.  He wass a brave man in
+the battle, and iss very clever at the doctrine too, and will be strong
+against human himes (hymns), but he iss a most awful liar iss Donald
+Cameron, and you must not be believing a word that comes out of his
+mouth.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will be asking many questions in her room as soon as Donald had
+brought up her boxes and the door was shut.  Some will be about the
+Glen, and some about the garden, and some will be about people&mdash;whether
+you ever will be visiting me, and whether you asked for her after the
+day she left the kirk.  But I will say, 'No; Mr. Carmichael does not
+speak about anything but the religion when he comes to my cottage.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That iss nothing.  I will be saying more, that I am hearing that the
+minister iss to be married to a fery rich young lady in Muirtown who
+hass been courting him for two years, and that her father will be
+giving the minister twenty thousand pounds the day they are married.
+And I will say she iss very beautiful, with blue eyes and gold hair,
+and that her temper iss so sweet they are calling her the Angel of
+Muirtown.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Toot, toot, my dear, you are not to be speaking about lies, for that
+iss not a pretty word among friends, and you will not be meddling with
+me, for you will be better at the preaching and the singing than
+dealing with women.  It iss not good to be making yourself too common,
+and Miss Kate will be thinking the more of you if you be holding your
+head high and letting her see that you are not a poor lowland body, but
+a Farquharson by your mother's side, and maybe of the chief's blood,
+though twenty or fifteen times removed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She will be very pleased to hear such good news of you, and be saying
+that it iss a mercy you are getting somebody to dress you properly.
+But her temper will not be at all good, and I did not ask her about
+Lord Hay, and she said nothing to me, nor about any other lord.  It iss
+not often I hef seen as great a liar as Donald Cameron.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Last evening Miss Kate will come down before dinner and talk about
+many things, and then she will say at the door, 'Donald tells me that
+Mister Carmichael does not believe in the Bible, and that his minister,
+Doctor Saunderson, has cast him off, and that he has been punished by
+his Bishop or somebody at Muirtown.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"'Donald will be knowing more doctrine and telling more lies every
+month,' I said to her.  'Doctor Saunderson&mdash;who is a very fine preacher
+and can put the fear of God upon the people most wonderful&mdash;and our
+minister had a little feud, and they will fight it out before some
+chiefs at Muirtown like gentlemen, and now they are good friends again.'
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Kate had gone off for a long walk, and I am not saying that she
+will be calling at Kilbogie Manse before she comes back.  She is very
+fond of Doctor Saunderson, and maybe he will be telling her of the
+feud.  It iss more than an hour through the woods to Kilbogie,"
+concluded Janet, "but you will be having a glass of milk first."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate reviewed her reasons for the expedition to Kilbogie, and settled
+they were the pleasures of a walk through Tochty woods when the spring
+flowers were in their glory, and a visit to one of the dearest
+curiosities she had ever seen.  It was within the bounds of possibility
+that Doctor Saunderson might refer to his friend, but on her part she
+would certainly not refer to the Free Church minister of Drumtochty.
+Her reception by that conscientious professor Barbara could not be
+called encouraging.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him, for he's in his bed, and gin he
+disna mend faster than he wes daein' the last time a' gied him a cry,
+he 's no like to be in the pulpit on Sabbath.  A' wes juist thinkin' he
+wudna be the waur o' a doctor."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-309"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-309.jpg" ALT="&quot;Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him." BORDER="2" WIDTH="366" HEIGHT="570">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 366px">
+&quot;Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him.
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean to say that Doctor Saunderson is lying ill and no one
+nursing him?" and Kate eyed the housekeeper in a very unappreciative
+fashion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gin he wants a nurse she 'll hae tae be brocht frae Muirtown
+Infirmary, for a 've eneuch withoot ony fyke (delicate work) o' that
+kind.  For twal year hev a' been hoosekeeper in this manse, an' gin it
+hedna been for peety a' wad hae flung up the place.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye never cud tell when he wud come in, or when he wud gae oot, or what
+he wud be wantin' next.  A' the waufies in the countryside come here,
+and the best in the hoose is no gude eneuch for them.  He's been an
+awfu' handfu' tae me, an' noo a'coont him clean dottle.  But we maun
+juist bear oor burdens," concluded Barbara piously, and proposed to
+close the door.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Your master will not want a nurse a minute longer; show me his room at
+once," and Kate was so commanding that Barbara's courage began to fail.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Who may ye be," raising her voice to rally her heart, "'at wud take
+chairge o' a strainger in his ain hoose an' no sae muckle as ask leave?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Miss Carnegie, of Tochty Lodge; will you stand out of my way?"
+and Kate swept past Barbara and went upstairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Weel, a' declare," as soon as she had recovered, "of a' the impudent
+hizzies," but Barbara did not follow the intruder upstairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate had seen various curious hospitals in her day, and had nursed many
+sick men,&mdash;like the brave girl she was,&mdash;but the Rabbi's room was
+something quite new.  His favourite books had been gathering there for
+years, and now lined two walls and overhung the bed after a very
+perilous fashion, and had dispossessed the looking-glass,&mdash;which had
+become a nomad and was at present resting insecurely on John Owen,&mdash;and
+stood in banks round the bed.  During his few days of illness the Rabbi
+had accumulated so many volumes round him that he lay in a kind of
+tunnel, arched over, as it were, with literature.  He had been reading
+Calvin's <I>Commentary on the Psalms</I>, in Latin, and it still lay open at
+the 88th, the saddest of all songs in the Psalter; but as he grew
+weaker the heavy folio had slid forward, and he seemed to be feeling
+for it.  Although Kate spoke to him by name, he did not know any one
+was in the room.  "Lord, why castest Thou off my soul?&#8230;  I suffer
+Thy terror, I am distracted&nbsp;&#8230; fierce wrath goeth over me&nbsp;&#8230;
+lover and friend hast Thou put far from me&nbsp;&#8230; friend far from me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His head fell on his breast, his breath was short and rapid, and he
+coughed every few seconds.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"My friend far from me&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+At the sorrow in his voice, and the thing which he said, the tears came
+to Kate's eyes, and she went forward and spoke to him very gently.  "Do
+you know me, Dr. Saunderson, Miss Carnegie?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Not Saunderson&nbsp;&#8230; Magor Missabib."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rabbi, Rabbi"&mdash;so much she knew; and now Kate stroked the bent white
+head.  "Your friend, Mister Carmichael&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, yes"&mdash;he now looked up, and spoke eagerly&mdash;"John Carmichael, of
+Drumtochty&nbsp;&#8230; my friend in my old age&nbsp;&#8230; and others&nbsp;&#8230; my
+boys&nbsp;&#8230; but John has left me&nbsp;&#8230; he would not speak to me&nbsp;&#8230;  I
+am alone now&nbsp;&#8230; he did not understand&nbsp;&#8230; mine acquaintance into
+darkness&nbsp;&#8230; here we see in a glass darkly&nbsp;&#8230;" (he turned aside to
+expound the Greek word for darkly), "but some day&nbsp;&#8230; face to face."
+And twice he said it, with an indescribable sweetness, "face to face."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate hurriedly removed the books from the bed, and wrapt round his
+shoulders the old grey plaid that had eked out his covering at night,
+and then she went downstairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Bring," she said to Barbara, "hot water, soap, towels, and a sponge to
+Doctor Saunderson's bedroom, immediately."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And gin a' dinna?" inquired Barbara aggressively.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I 'll shoot you where you stand."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Barbara shows to her cronies how Miss Carnegie drew a pistol from her
+pocket at this point and held it to her head, and how at every turn the
+pistol was again in evidence; sometimes a dagger is thrown in, but that
+is only late in the evening when Barbara is under the influence of
+tonics.  Kate herself admits that if she had had her little revolver
+with her she might have been tempted to outline the housekeeper's face
+on the wall, and she still thinks her threat an inspiration.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Now," said Kate, when Barbara had brought her commands in with
+incredible celerity, "bring up some fresh milk and three glasses of
+whisky."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Whisky!"  Barbara could hardly compass the unfamiliar word.  "The
+Doctor never hed sic a thing in the hoose, although mony a time, puir
+man&nbsp;&#8230;"  Discipline was softening even that austere spirit.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No, but you have, for you are blowing a full gale just now; bring up
+your private bottle, or I 'll go down for it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There's enough," holding the bottle to the light, "to do till evening;
+go to the next farm and send a man on horseback to tell Mr. Carmichael
+of Drumtochty, that Doctor Saunderson is dying, and another for Dr.
+Manley of Muirtown."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very tenderly did Kate sponge the Rabbi's face and hands, and then she
+dressed his hair, till at length he came to himself.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This ministry is&nbsp;&#8230; grateful to me, Barbara&nbsp;&#8230; my strength has
+gone from me&nbsp;&#8230; but my eyes fail me.&#8230;  Of a verity you are
+not&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I am Kate Carnegie, whom you were so kind to at Tochty.  Will you let
+me be your nurse?  I learned in India, and know what to do."  It was
+only wounded soldiers who knew how&mdash;soft her voice could be, and hands.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is I that&nbsp;&#8230; should be serving you&nbsp;&#8230; the first time you have
+come to the manse&nbsp;&#8230; no woman has ever done me&nbsp;&#8230; such kindness
+before.&#8230;"  He followed her as she tried to bring some order out of
+chads, and knew not that he spoke aloud.  "A gracious maid&nbsp;&#8230; above
+rubies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+His breathing was growing worse, in spite of many wise things she did
+for him&mdash;Doctor Manley, who paid no compliments, but was a strength
+unto every country doctor in Perthshire, praises Kate unto this
+day&mdash;and the Rabbi did not care to speak.  So she sat down by his side
+and read to him from the <I>Pilgrim's Progress</I>&mdash;holding his hand all the
+time&mdash;and the passage he desired was the story of Mr. Fearing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"This I took very great notice of, that the valley of the shadow of
+Death was as quiet while he went through it as ever I knew it before or
+since.  I suppose these enemies here had now a special check from our
+Lord and a command not to meddle until Mr. Fearing was passed over
+it.&#8230;  Here also I took notice of what was very remarkable: the
+water of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my
+life.  So he went over at last, not much above wet-shod.  When he was
+going up to the gate.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Rabbi listened for an instant.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is John's step&nbsp;&#8230; he hath a sound of his own&nbsp;&#8230; my only
+earthly desire is fulfilled."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Rabbi," cried Carmichael, and half kneeling, he threw one arm round
+the old man, "say that you forgive me.  I looked for you everywhere on
+Monday, but you could not be found."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you think, John, that I&nbsp;&#8230; my will was to do you an injury
+or&nbsp;&#8230; vex your soul?  Many trials in my life&nbsp;&#8230; all God's
+will&nbsp;&#8230; but this hardest&nbsp;&#8230; when I lost you&nbsp;&#8230; nothing left
+here&nbsp;&#8230; but you&nbsp;&#8230;&mdash;my breath is bad, a little chill&mdash;&#8230;
+understand.&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I always did, and I never respected you more; it was my foolish pride
+that made me call you Doctor Saunderson in the study; but my love was
+the same, and now you will let me stay and wait on you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The old man smiled sadly, and laid his hand on his boy's head.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I cannot let you.&#8230;  Go, John, my son."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Go and leave you, Rabbi!"  Carmichael tried to laugh.  "Not till you
+are ready to appear at the Presbytery again.  We 'll send Barbara away
+for a holiday, and Sarah will take her place,&mdash;you remember that
+cream,&mdash;and we shall have a royal time, a meal every four hours, Rabbi,
+and the Fathers in between," and Carmichael, springing to his feet and
+turning round to hide his tears, came face to face with Miss Carnegie,
+who had been unable to escape from the room.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I happened to call"&mdash;Kate was quite calm&mdash;"and found Doctor Saunderson
+in bed; so I stayed till some friend should come; you must have met the
+messenger I sent for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, a mile from the manse; I was on my way&nbsp;&#8230;  Janet said&nbsp;&#8230;
+but I&nbsp;&#8230; did not remember anything when I saw the Rabbi."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Will you take a little milk again&nbsp;&#8230; Rabbi?" and at her bidding and
+the name he made a brave effort to swallow, but he was plainly sinking.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"No more," he whispered; "thank you&nbsp;&#8230; for service&nbsp;&#8230; to a lonely
+man; may God bless you&nbsp;&#8230; both.&#8230;"  He signed for her hand,
+which he kept to the end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Satisfied&nbsp;&#8230; read, John&nbsp;&#8230; the woman from coasts of&mdash;of&mdash;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I know, Rabbi," and kneeling on the other side of the bed, he read the
+story slowly of a Tyrian woman's faith.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is not meet to take the children's meat and cast it to dogs."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Dogs"&mdash;they heard the Rabbi appropriate his name&mdash;"outside&nbsp;&#8230; the
+covenant."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And she said, Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
+from their master's table."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Lord, I believe&nbsp;&#8230; help Thou mine&nbsp;&#8230; unbelief."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He then fell into an agony of soul, during which Carmichael could hear:
+"Though&nbsp;&#8230; He slay&nbsp;&#8230; me&nbsp;&#8230; yet will I trust&nbsp;&#8230; trust&nbsp;&#8230;
+in Him."  He drew two or three long breaths and was still.  After a
+little he was heard again with a new note&mdash;"He that believeth&nbsp;&#8230; in
+Him&nbsp;&#8230; shall not be confounded," and again "A bruised reed&nbsp;&#8230;
+shall He not&nbsp;&#8230;"  Then he opened his eyes and raised his head&mdash;but
+he saw neither Kate nor Carmichael, for the Rabbi had done with earthly
+friends and earthly trials&mdash;and he, who had walked in darkness and seen
+no light, said in a clear voice full of joy, "My Lord, and my God."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was Kate that closed his eyes and laid the old scholar's head on the
+pillow, and then she left the room, casting one swift glance of pity at
+Carmichael, who was weeping bitterly and crying between the sobs,
+"Rabbi, Rabbi."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap22"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-316.jpg" ALT="dropcap-d" BORDER="0" WIDTH="171" HEIGHT="279">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+octor Davidson allowed himself, in later years, the pleasant luxury of
+an after luncheon nap, and then it was his habit&mdash;weather
+permitting&mdash;to go out and meet Posty, who adhered so closely to his
+time-table&mdash;notwithstanding certain wayside rests&mdash;that the Doctor's
+dog knew his hour of arrival, and saw that his master was on the road
+in time.  It was a fine April morning when the news of the great
+disaster came, and the Doctor felt the stirring of spring in his blood.
+On the first hint from Skye he sprang from his chair, declaring it was
+a sin to be in the house on such a day, and went out in such haste that
+he had to return for his hat.  As he went up the walk, the Doctor
+plucked some early lilies and placed them in his coat; he threw so many
+stones that Skye forgot his habit of body and ecclesiastical position;
+and he was altogether so youthful and frolicsome that John was
+seriously alarmed, and afterwards remarked to Rebecca that he was not
+unprepared for calamity.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The best o's tempts Providence at a time, and when a man like the
+Doctor tries tae rin aifter his dog jidgment canna be far off.  A 'm no
+sayin'," John concluded, with characteristic modesty, "that onybody cud
+tell what was coming, but a' jaloused there wud be tribble."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor met Posty in the avenue, the finest bit on our main road,
+where the road has wide margins of grass on either side, and the two
+rows of tall ancient trees arch their branches overhead.  Some day in
+the past it had been part of the approach to the house of Tochty, and
+under this long green arch the Jacobite cavaliers rode away after black
+John Carnegie's burial.  No one could stand beneath those stately trees
+without thinking of the former days, when men fought not for money and
+an easy life, but for loyalty and love, and in this place the minister
+of Drumtochty received his evil tidings like a brave gentleman who does
+not lose heart while honour is left.  During his years in the Glen he
+had carried himself well, with dignity and charity, in peace and
+kindliness, so that now when he is dead and gone&mdash;the last of his
+family&mdash;he still remains to many of us a type of the country clergyman
+that is no longer found in Scotland, but is greatly missed.  It seemed,
+however, to many of us&mdash;I have heard both Drumsheugh and Burnbrae say
+this, each in his own way&mdash;that it needed adversity to bring out the
+greatness of the Doctor, just as frost gives the last touch of ripeness
+to certain fruits.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Fower letters the day, Doctor, ane frae Dunleith, ane frae Glasgie,
+another frae Edinburgh, and the fourth no clean stampit, so a' can say
+naethin' aboot it.  Twa circulars an' the <I>Caledonian</I> maks up the hale
+hypothic."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Posty buckled and adjusted his bag, and made as though he was going,
+but he loitered to give opportunity fur any questions the Doctor might
+wish to ask on foreign affairs.  For Posty was not merely the carrier
+of letters to the Glen, but a scout who was sent down to collect
+information regarding the affairs of the outer world.  He was an
+introduction to and running commentary on the weekly paper.  By-and-by,
+when the labour of the day was done, and the Glen was full of sweet,
+soft light from the sides of Ben Urtach, a farmer would make for his
+favourite seat beside the white rose-tree in the garden, and take his
+first dip into the <I>Muirtown Advertiser</I>.  It was a full and satisfying
+paper, with its agricultural advertisements, its roups, reported with
+an accuracy of detail that condescended on a solitary stirk, its local
+intelligence, its facetious anecdotes.  Through this familiar country
+the good man found his own way at a rate which allowed him to complete
+the survey in six days.  Foreign telegrams, however, and political
+intelligence, as well as the turmoil of the great cities, were strange
+to him, and here he greatly valued Posty's laconic hints, who, visiting
+the frontier, was supposed to be in communication with those centres.
+"Posty says that the Afghans are no makin' muckle o' the war," and
+Hillocks would sally forth to enjoy Sir Frederick Roberts' great march,
+line by line, afterwards enlarging thereon with much unction, and
+laying up a store of allusion that would last for many days.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Persons raised to the height of a daily newspaper like the minister
+might be supposed independent of Posty's précis, but even Doctor
+Davidson, with that day's <I>Caledonian</I> in his hand, still availed
+himself of the spoken word.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, Posty, any news this morning?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Naethin', Doctor, worth mentionin', except the failure o' a company
+Glasgie wy; it's been rotten, a' wes hearin', for a while, an' noo it's
+fair stramash.  They say it 'll no be lichtsome for weedows an' mony
+decent fouk in Scotland."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's bad news, Posty.  There 's too many of those swindling concerns
+in the country.  People ought to take care where they place their
+savings, and keep to old-established institutions.  We 're pretty
+hard-headed up here, and I 'll wager that nobody in the Glen has lost a
+penny in any of those new-fangled companies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The auld fouk in Drumtochty pit their siller in a pock and hode it
+ablow their beds, an', ma certes, that bank didna break;" and Posty
+went along the avenue, his very back suggestive of a past, cautious,
+unenterprising, safe and honest.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Doctor glanced at the envelopes and thrust the letters into his
+pocket.  His good nature was touched at the thought of another
+financial disaster, by which many hard-working people would lose their
+little savings, and all the more that he had some of his private means
+invested in a Glasgow bank&mdash;one of those tried and powerful
+institutions which was indifferent to every crisis in trade.  Already
+he anticipated an appeal, and considered what he would give, for it did
+not matter whether it was a coalpit explosion in Lanarkshire or a loss
+of fishing-boats in the Moray Firth, if widows needed help the Doctor's
+guinea was on its way within four-and-twenty hours.  Some forms of
+religious philanthropy had very little hold on the Doctor's
+sympathy&mdash;one of the religious prints mentioned him freely as a
+Unitarian, because he had spoken unkindly of the Jewish mission&mdash;but in
+the matter of widows and orphans he was a specialist.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Widows, Posty said; poor things! and very likely bairns.  Well, well,
+we 'll see what can be done out of Daisy's fund."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Very unlikely people have their whims, and it was his humour to assign
+one fourth of his income to his little sister, who was to have kept
+house for him, and "never to leave you, Sandie," and out of this fund
+the Doctor did his public charities.  "In memory of a little maid,"
+appeared in various subscription lists; but the reference thereof was
+only known after the Doctor's death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Western Counties Bank did not open its doors yesterday, and it was
+officially announced at the head-office, Glasgow, that the bank had
+stopped.  It is impossible as yet to forecast the debts, but they are
+known to be enormous, and as the bank is not limited, it is feared that
+the consequences to the shareholders will be very serious.  This
+failure was quite unexpected, the Western Counties Bank having been
+looked on as a prosperous and stable concern."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He read the paragraph twice word by word&mdash;it did not take long&mdash;he
+folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket, and he stood in
+the spot for five minutes to take in the meaning in its length and
+breadth.  A pleasant spring sun was shining upon him through a break in
+the leafy arch, a handful of primroses were blooming at his feet, a
+lark was singing in the neighbouring field.  Sometimes the Doctor used
+to speculate how he would have liked being a poor man, and he concluded
+that he would have disliked it very much.  He had never been rich, and
+he was not given to extravagance, but he was accustomed to easy
+circumstances, and he pitied some of his old friends who had seen it
+their duty to secede at the Disruption, and had to practise many little
+economies, who travelled third class and had to walk from the station,
+and could not offer their friends a glass of wine.  This was the way he
+must live now, and Daisy's fund would have to be closed, which seemed
+to him the sweetest pleasure of his life.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And Jack!  Would to God I had never mentioned this wretched bank to
+him.  Poor Jack, with the few hundreds he had saved for Kit!"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+For some five minutes more the Doctor stood in the place; then he
+straightened himself as one who, come what may, would play the man, and
+when he passed Janet's cottage, on his way to the Lodge, that honest
+admirer of able-bodied, good-looking men came out and followed him with
+her eyes for the sight of his firm unbroken carriage.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Kate will be grieving very much about Doctor Saunderson's death,"
+Donald explained at the Lodge, "and she went down this forenoon with
+the General to put flowers on his grave; but they will be coming back
+every minute," and the Doctor met them at the Beeches.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-322"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-322.jpg" ALT="&quot;To put flowers on his grave.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="346" HEIGHT="558">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 346px">
+&quot;To put flowers on his grave.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"May I have as fair hands to decorate my grave, Miss Catherine
+Carnegie," and the Doctor bowed gallantly; "but of one thing I am sure,
+I have done nothing to deserve it.  Saunderson was a scholar of the
+ancient kind, and a very fine spirit."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think," said Kate, "that he was&nbsp;&#8230; like À Kempis, I mean,
+and George Herbert, a kind of&nbsp;&#8230; saint?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Altogether one, I should say.  I don't think he would have known port
+wine from sherry, or an <I>entrée</I> from a mutton chop; beside a man like
+that what worldly fellows you and I are, Jack, and mine is the greater
+shame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I'll have no comparisons, Padre"&mdash;Kate was a little puzzled by the
+tone in the Doctor's voice; "he was so good that I loved him; but there
+are some points in the General and you, quite nice points, and for the
+sake of them you shall have afternoon tea in my room," where the Doctor
+and the General fell on former days and were wonderful company.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's not really about the road I wish to talk to you," and the Doctor
+closed the door of the General's den, "but about&nbsp;&#8230; a terrible
+calamity that has befallen you and me, Jack, and I am to blame."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"What is it?" and Carnegie sat erect; "does it touch our name or&nbsp;&#8230;
+Kate?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Neither, thank God," said Davidson.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Then it cannot be so very bad.  Let us have it at once," and the
+General lighted a cheroot.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Our bank has failed, and we shall have to give up everything to pay
+the debt, and&nbsp;&#8230; Jack, it was I advised you to buy the shares."  The
+Doctor rose and went to the window.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"For God's sake don't do that, Sandie.  Why, man, you gave me the best
+advice you knew, and there 's an end of it.  It's the fortune of war,
+and we must take it without whining.  I know whom you are thinking
+about, and I am&nbsp;&#8230; a bit sorry for Kate, for she ought to have lots
+of things&mdash;more dresses and trinkets, you know.  But Davidson, she 'll
+be the bravest of the three."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are right there, Jack.  Kate is of the true grit, but&nbsp;&#8230; Tochty
+Lodge."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, it will hit us pretty hard to see the old place sold, if it comes
+to that, when I hoped to end my days here&nbsp;&#8230; but, man, it's our
+fate.  Bit by bit we 've lost Drumtochty, till there were just the
+woods and the two farms left, and soon we 'll be out of the
+place&mdash;nothing left but our graves.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Sandie, this is bad form, and&nbsp;&#8230; you 'll not hear this talk again;
+we 'll get a billet somewhere, and wherever it be, there 'll be a bed
+and a crust for you, old man;" and at the door the two held one
+another's hands for a second; that was all.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"So this was what you two conspirators were talking about downstairs,
+as if I could not be trusted.  Did you think that I would faint, or
+perhaps weep?  The padre deserves a good scolding, and as for you&mdash;"
+Then Kate went over and cast an arm round her father's neck, whose face
+was quivering.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is rather a disappointment to leave the Lodge when we were getting
+it to our mind; but we 'll have a jolly little home somewhere, and I
+'ll get a chance of earning something.  Dancing now&mdash;I think that I
+might be able to teach some girls how to waltz.  Then my French is
+really intelligible, and most colloquial; besides revolver shooting.
+Dad, we are on our way to a fortune, and at the worst you 'll have your
+curry and cheroots, and I 'll have a well-fitting dress.  Voilà, mon
+père."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+When the two Drumtochty men arrived next forenoon at the hall in
+Glasgow, where the shareholders had been summoned to receive
+particulars of their ruin, the dreary place was filled with a crowd
+representative of every class in the community except the highest,
+whose wealth is in land, and the lowest, whose possessions are on their
+backs.  There were city merchants, who could not conceal their chagrin
+that they had been befooled; countrymen, who seemed utterly dazed, as
+if the course of the seasons had been reversed; prosperous tradesmen,
+who were aggressive in appearance and wanted to take it out of
+somebody; widows, who could hardly restrain their tears, seeing before
+them nothing but starvation; clergymen, who were thinking of their boys
+taken from school and college.  For a while the victims were silent,
+and watched with hungry eyes the platform door, and there was an eager
+rustle when some clerk came out and laid a bundle of papers on the
+table.  This incident seemed to excite the meeting and set tongues
+loose.  People began to talk to their neighbours explaining how they
+came to be connected with the bank, as if this were now a crime.  One
+had inherited the shares and had never had resolution to sell them;
+another had been deceived by a friend and bought them; a third had
+taken over two shares for a bad debt.  A minister thought that he must
+have been summoned by mistake, for he was simply a trustee on an estate
+which had shares, but he was plainly nervous about his position.  An
+Ayrshire Bailie had only had his shares for six months, and he put it,
+to his circle, with municipal eloquence, whether he could be held
+responsible for frauds of years' standing.  No one argued with him, and
+indeed you might say anything you pleased, for each was so much taken
+up with his own case that he only listened to you that he might
+establish a claim in turn on your attention.  Here and there a noisy
+and confident personage got a larger audience by professing to have
+private information.  A second-rate stockbroker assured quite a
+congregation that the assets of the bank included an estate in
+Australia, which would more than pay the whole debt, and advised them
+to see that it was not flung away; and a Government pensioner mentioned
+casually in his neighbourhood, on the authority of one of the managers,
+that there was not that day a solvent bank in Scotland.  The different
+conversations rise to a babel, various speakers enforce their views on
+the floor with umbrellas, one enthusiast exhorts his brother
+unfortunates from a chair, when suddenly there is a hush, and then in a
+painful silence the shareholders hang on the lips of the accountant,
+from whom they learn that things could not be worse, that the richest
+shareholder may be ruined, and that ordinary people will lose their
+last penny.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Speech again breaks forth, but now it is despairing, fierce,
+vindictive.  One speaker storms against Government which allows public
+institutions to defraud the public, and refers to himself as the widow
+and orphan, and another assails the directorate with bitter invective
+as liars and thieves, and insists on knowing whether they are to be
+punished.  The game having now been unearthed, the pack follow in full
+cry.  The tradesman tells with much gusto how one director asked the
+detectives for leave to have family prayers before he was removed, and
+then declares his conviction that when a man takes to praying you had
+better look after your watch.  Ayrshire wished to inform the accountant
+and the authorities that the directors had conveyed to their wives and
+friends enormous sums which ought to be seized without delay.  The air
+grew thick with upbraidings, complaints, cries for vengeance, till the
+place reeked with sordid passions.  Through all this ignoble storm the
+Drumtochty men sat silent, amazed, disgusted, till at last the Doctor
+rose, and such authority was in his very appearance that with his first
+words he obtained a hearing.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Mr. Accountant," he said, "and gentlemen, it appears to me as if under
+a natural provocation and suffering we are in danger of forgetting our
+due dignity and self-respect.  We have been, as is supposed, the
+subjects of fraud on the part of those whom we trusted; that is a
+matter which the law will decide, and, if necessary, punish.  If we
+have been betrayed, then the directors are in worse case than the
+shareholders, for we are not disgraced.  The duty before us is plain,
+and must be discharged to our utmost ability.  It is to go home and
+gather together our last penny for the payment of our debts, in order
+that at any rate those who have trusted us may not be disappointed.
+Gentlemen, it is evident that we have lost our means; let us show to
+Scotland that there is something which cannot be taken from us by any
+fraud, and that we have retained our courage and our honour."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was the General who led the applause so that the roof of the hall
+rang, but it is just to Ayrshire and the rest to say that they came to
+themselves&mdash;all men of the old Scottish breed&mdash;and followed close after
+with a mighty shout.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The sound of that speech went through Scotland and awoke the spirit of
+honest men in many places, so that the Doctor, travelling next day to
+Muirtown, third class, with the General, and wedged in among a set of
+cattle dealers, was so abashed by their remarks as they read the
+<I>Caledonian</I> that the General let out the secret.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yir hand, sir," said the chief among them, a mighty man at the Falkirk
+Tryst; "gin it bena a leeberty, ilka ane o's hes a sair fecht tae keep
+straicht in oor wy o' business, but ye 've gien 's a lift the day," and
+so they must needs all have a grip of the Doctor's hand, who took snuff
+with prodigality, while the General complained of the smoke from the
+engine.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Nor were their trials over, for on Muirtown platform&mdash;it being
+Friday&mdash;all kinds of Perthshire men were gathered, and were so proud of
+our Doctor that before he got shelter in the Dunleith train his hand
+was sore, and the men that grasped it were of all kinds, from Lord
+Kilspindie&mdash;who, having missed him at the Manse, had come to catch him
+at the station&mdash;"Best sermon you ever preached, Davidson,"&mdash;to an
+Athole farmer&mdash;"I am an elder in the Free Kirk, but it iss this man
+that will be honouring you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a fine instance of the unfailing tact of Peter Bruce that,
+seeing the carriage out of which the two came, and taking in the
+situation, he made no offer of the first class, but straightway dusted
+out a third with his handkerchief, and escorted them to it cap in hand.
+Drumtochty restrained itself with an effort in foreign parts&mdash;for
+Kildrummie was exceptionally strong at the Junction&mdash;but it waited at
+the terminus till the outer world had gone up the road.  Then their own
+folk took the two in hand, and these were the guard of honour who
+escorted the Minister and the General to where our Kate was waiting
+with the dog-cart, each carrying some morsel of luggage&mdash;Drumsheugh,
+Burnbrae, Hillocks, Netherton, Jamie Soutar, and Archie Moncur.  Kate
+drove gloriously through Kildrummie as if they had come from a triumph,
+and let it be said to the credit of that despised town, that, the news
+having come, every hat was lifted, but that which lasted till they got
+home, and till long afterwards, was the handshake of the Drumtochty men.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap23"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-329.jpg" ALT="dropcap-w" BORDER="0" WIDTH="166" HEIGHT="264">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+hen the General and Kate were loitering over breakfast the morning
+after the ovation, they heard the sound of a horse's feet on the
+gravel, and Donald came in with more his usual importance.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It iss a messenger from Muirtown Castle, and he iss waiting to know
+whether there will be any answer."  And Donald put one letter before
+the father and another before the daughter, both showing the Hay crest.
+Kate's face whitened as she recognised the handwriting on her envelope,
+and she went over to the window seat of a turret in the corner of the
+room, while the General opened his letter, standing on a tiger-skin,
+with his back to the fireplace in the great hall.  This is what he read:
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+MY DEAR CARNEGIE,&mdash;When men have fought together in the trenches before
+Sebastopol, as their ancestors have ridden side by side with Prince
+Charlie, I hope you will agree with me they need not stand on ceremony.
+If I seem guilty of any indiscretion in what I am going to say, then
+you will pardon me for "Auld Lang Syne."
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+You have one daughter and I have one son, and so I do not need to tell
+you that he is very dear to me, and that I have often thought of his
+marriage, on which not only his own happiness so much depends, but also
+the future of our house and name.  Very likely you have had some such
+thoughts about Kate, with this difference, that you would rather keep
+so winsome a girl with you, while I want even so good a son as Hay to
+be married whenever he can meet with one whom he loves, and who is
+worthy of him.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+Hay never gave me an hour's anxiety, and has no entanglements of any
+kind, but on the subject of marriage I could make no impression.  "Time
+enough," he would say, or "The other person has not turned up," and I
+was getting uneasy, for you and I are not so young as once we were.
+You may fancy my satisfaction, therefore, when George came down from
+Drumtochty last August and told me he had found the "other person," and
+that she was my old friend Jack Carnegie's daughter.  Of course I urged
+him to make sure of himself, but now he has had ample opportunities
+during your two visits, and he is quite determined that his wife is to
+be Kate or nobody.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+It goes without saying that the Countess and I heartily approve Hay's
+choice and are charmed with Kate, who is as bonnie as she is
+high-spirited.  She sustains the old traditions of her family, who were
+ever strong and true, and she has a clever tongue, which neither you
+nor I have, Jack, nor Hay either, good fellow though he be, and that is
+not a bad thing for a woman nowadays.  They would make a handsome pair,
+as they ought, with such good-looking fathers, eh?
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+Well, I am coming to my point, for in those circumstances I want your
+help.  What Miss Carnegie thinks of Hay we don't know, and unless I 'm
+much mistaken she will decide for herself, but is it too much to ask
+you&mdash;if you can&mdash;to say a word for him?  You are quite right to think
+that no man is worthy of Kate, but she is bound to marry some day&mdash;I
+can't conceive how you have kept her so long&mdash;and I am certain Hay will
+make a good husband, and he is simply devoted to her.  If she refuses
+him, I am afraid he will not marry, and then&mdash;well, grant I'm selfish,
+but it would be a calamity to us.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+Don't you think that it looks like an arrangement of Providence to
+unite two families that have shared common dangers and common faith in
+the past, and to establish a Carnegie once more as lady of Drumtochty?
+Now that is all, and it's a long screed, but the matter lies near my
+heart, and we shall wait the answers from you both with anxiety.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="closing">
+Yours faithfully,
+<BR>
+KILSPINDIE.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Kate's letter was much shorter, and was written in big schoolboy hand
+with great care.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+DEAR MISS CARNEGIE,&mdash;They say that a woman always knows when a man
+loves her, and if so you will not be astonished at this letter.  From
+that day I saw you in Drumtochty Kirk I have loved you, and every week
+I love you more.  My mother is the only other woman I have ever cared
+for, and that is different.  Will you be my wife?  I often wanted to
+ask you when you were with us in November and last month, but my heart
+failed me.  Can you love me a little, enough to say yes?  I am not
+clever, and I am afraid I shall never do anything to make you proud of
+me, but you will have all my heart, and I 'll do my best to make you
+happy.
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="closing">
+I am, yours very sincerely,
+<BR>
+HAY.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+Carnegie could see Kate's face from his place, who was looking out of
+the window with a kindly expression, and her father, who was of a
+simple mind, and knew little of women, was encouraged by such visible
+friendliness.  He was about to go over, when her face changed.  She
+dropped the letter on the seat, and became very thoughtful, knitting
+her brows and resting her chin on her hand.  In a little, something
+stung her&mdash;like a person recalling an injury&mdash;and she flushed with
+anger, drumming with her fingers on the sill of the window.  Then anger
+gave place to sadness, as if she had resolved to do something that was
+inevitable, but less than the best.  Kate glanced in her father's
+direction, and read Lord Hay's letter again; then she seemed to have
+made up her mind.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Father," as she joined him on the skin beneath those loyal Carnegies
+on the wall, "there is Lord Hay's letter, and he is a&nbsp;&#8230; worthy
+gentleman.  Perhaps I did not give him so much encouragement as he
+took, but that does not matter.  This is a&nbsp;&#8230; serious decision, and
+ought not to be made on the spur of the moment.  Will you let the
+messenger go with a note to say that an answer will be sent on Monday?
+You might write to Lord Kilspindie."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She was still standing in the place when he returned, and had been
+studying the proud, determined face of Black John's mother, who had not
+spared her only son for the good cause.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did you ever hear of any Carnegie, dad, who married beneath her,
+or&nbsp;&#8230; loved one on the other side?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Never," said her father.  "Our women all married into loyal families
+of their own rank, which is best for comfort; but why do you ask?  Hay
+is a&nbsp;&#8230;"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, I know; it was only&nbsp;&#8230; curiosity made me ask, and I suppose
+some of our women must have made sacrifices for their&nbsp;&#8230; cause?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Far more than the men ever did, for, see you, a man is just shot, and
+all is over, and before he falls he 's had some good fighting, but his
+wife suffers all her days, when he is living and when he is dead.  Yet
+our women were the first to send their men to the field.  Heavens! what
+women do suffer&mdash;they ought to have their reward."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"They have," said Kate, with emphasis, "if they help those whom they
+love.&#8230;  Father, would you be quite satisfied with Lord Hay for a
+son-in-law, and&nbsp;&#8230; would you let us live with you here as much as we
+could?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kate, if you are to marry&mdash;and I knew it must come some day&mdash;I have
+not seen a more honest man; but you are forgetting that Tochty Lodge
+will soon be out of our hands; I 'll have to get a bungalow somewhere,
+not too far away from Muirtown, I hope."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If I marry Lord Hay, Tochty Lodge will not be sold, and you will never
+be disturbed, dad.  We shall not be separated more than we can help,"
+and Kate caressed the General.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you mean, lassie," said the General, with a sudden suspicion,
+lilting her face till he saw her eyes, "that you are going to accept
+Hay in order to keep the old home?  You must not do this, for it would
+not&nbsp;&#8230; don't you see that I&nbsp;&#8230; could not accept this at your
+hands?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You cannot prevent your daughter marrying Lord Hay if your daughter so
+decides, but as yet she is in doubt, very great doubt, and so I am
+going for a long walk on the big moor, and you&nbsp;&#8230; well, why not take
+lunch with the Padre at the manse?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Hay is a straight young fellow, and Kate would supply what he wants&mdash;a
+dash of go, you know"&mdash;so the General was summing up the situation to
+his old friend; "but my girl is not to marry Hay or any other man for
+my sake, and that is what she thinks of doing."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Did it ever occur to you, Carnegie, that Kate had a&nbsp;&#8230; well, kindly
+feeling for any other man?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Plenty of fellows tried their luck: first subalterns, then
+aides-de-camp, and at last commissioners; it was no easy affair to be
+her father," and Carnegie gave Davidson a comic look.  "I used to scold
+her, but upon my word I don't know she was to blame, and I am certain
+she did not care for one of them; in fact, she laughed at them all
+till&mdash;well, in fact, I had to interfere."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And since you came to the Lodge"&mdash;the Doctor spoke with
+meaning&mdash;"besides Lord Hay?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why, there is just yourself"&mdash;the Doctor nodded with much
+appreciation&mdash;"and that Free Kirkman.&#8230;  Davidson, do you mean
+that&mdash;oh, nonsense, man; she was quite angry one day when I suggested a
+parson.  Kate has always said that was the last man she would marry."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That is an evidence she will."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The General stared at the oracle, and went on:
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She has made his life miserable at the Lodge with her tongue; she
+delighted in teasing him.  Your idea is quite absurd."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Carnegie, did you ever hear the classical couplet&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="poem">
+"Scarting and biting<BR>
+Mak Scots fouk's 'ooing;"<BR>
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+and although I admit the description applies in the first instance to
+milkmaids, yet there is a fair share of national character in the
+Carnegies."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you really think that Kate is in&nbsp;&#8230; has, well, a, eh, tenderness
+to Carmichael? it would never have occurred to me."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"How would you look on Carmichael as a suitor?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Well, if Kate is to marry&mdash;and mind you I always prepared myself for
+that&mdash;I would of course prefer Hay, not because he is a lord, or rich,
+or any snobbery of that kind&mdash;you know me better than that, Sandie&mdash;but
+because he 's&nbsp;&#8230; you know&nbsp;&#8230; belongs to our own set.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Don't you think there is something in that?" and the General tried to
+explain his honest mind, in which lived no unworthy or uncharitable
+thought.  "I have not one word to say against Carmichael; he 's
+good-looking, and monstrous clever, and he has always made himself very
+agreeable, very, and the people swear by him in the Glen; but&nbsp;&#8230; you
+must understand what I mean, Davidson," and the General was in despair.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You mean that though he 's a first-rate young fellow for a clergyman,
+he does not belong to your world&mdash;has a different set of friends, has
+different habits of living, has a different way of thinking and
+speaking&mdash;is, in fact, an outsider."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"That's it&mdash;just what I was 'ettling' after&mdash;lucky fellows we Scots
+with such words," and the General was immensely delighted to be
+delivered of his idea in an inoffensive form.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It is my own belief, Carnegie&mdash;and you can laugh at me afterwards if I
+be wrong&mdash;that this will be the end of it, however.  Yes, putting it
+plainly, that Kate is in love with Carmichael, as he is certainly with
+her; and you will have to make the best of the situation."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You don't like the idea any more than I do, Davidson?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Speaking in perfect confidence and frankness, I do not.  I look at the
+matter this way"&mdash;the Doctor stood on the hearth-rug in a judicial
+attitude, pulling down his waistcoat with his two hands, his legs
+apart, and his eye-glass on his nose&mdash;"Carmichael has been brought up
+among&nbsp;&#8230; plain, respectable people, and theological books, and
+church courts, and Free Kirk society, all of which is excellent,
+but&nbsp;&#8230; secluded"&mdash;the Doctor liked the word, which gave his mind
+without offence&mdash;"secluded.  Kate is a Carnegie, was educated in
+France, has travelled in India, and has lived in the most exciting
+circumstances.  She loves soldiers, war, gaiety, sport, besides many
+other&nbsp;&#8230; eh, good things, and is a&nbsp;&#8230; lovely girl.  Love laughs
+at rules, but if you ask me my candid opinion, the marriage would not
+be&nbsp;&#8230; in fact, congruous.  If it is to be, it must be, and God bless
+them both, say I, and so will everybody say; but it will be an
+experiment, a distinct and&nbsp;&#8230; interesting experiment."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Kate is not to marry any one for my sake, to save Tochty, but I do
+wish she had fancied Lord Hay," said the General, ruefully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Free Kirk folk in the depths of their hearts consider me a worldly
+old clergyman, and perhaps I am, for, Jack, I would dearly like to see
+our Kate Viscountess Hay, and to think that one day, when we three old
+fellows are gone, she would be Countess of Kilspindie."  That was the
+first conference of the day on Kate's love affairs, and this is how it
+ended.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Meanwhile the young woman herself had gone up the road to the high Glen
+and made her way over dykes and through fields to Whinny Knowe, which
+she had often visited since the August Sacrament.  Whinny came out from
+the kitchen door in corduroy trousers, much stained with soil, and grey
+shirt&mdash;wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after a hearty
+dinner&mdash;and went to the barn for his midday sleep before he went again
+to the sowing.  Marget met her at the garden gate, dressed in her
+week-day clothes and fresh from a morning's churning, but ever refined
+and spiritual, as one whose soul is shining through the veil of common
+circumstances.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's a benison tae see ye on this bricht day, Miss Carnegie, an' ye
+'ll come tae the garden-seat, for the spring flooers are bloomin'
+bonnie and sweet the noo, an' fillin' 's a' wi' hope.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Gin there be ony sun shinin'," as she spread a plaid, "the heat fa's
+here, an' save when the snow is heavy on the Glen, there 's aye some
+blossoms here tae mind us o' oor Father's love an' the world that isna
+seen."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marget," began Kate, not with a blush, but rather a richening of
+colour, "you have been awfully good to me, and have helped me in lots
+of ways, far more than you could dream of.  Do you know you 've made me
+almost good at times, with just enough badness to keep me still myself,
+as when I flounced out from the Free Kirk."
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-338"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-338.jpg" ALT="&quot;You have been awfully good to me.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="352" HEIGHT="574">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 352px">
+&quot;You have been awfully good to me.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+Marget only smiled deprecation and affection, for her heart went out to
+this motherless, undisciplined girl, whom she respected, like a true
+Scot, because, although Kate had made her a friend, she was still a
+Carnegie; whom she loved, because, although Kate might be very
+provoking, she was honest to the core.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"To-day," Kate resumed, after a pause, and speaking with an unusual
+nervousness, "I want your advice on a serious matter, which I must
+decide, and which&nbsp;&#8230; concerns other people as well as myself.  In
+fact, I would like to ask a question," and she paused to frame her case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a just testimony to Marget Howe that Kate never thought of
+pledging her to secrecy, for there are people whom to suspect of
+dishonour is a sin.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Suppose that a man&nbsp;&#8230; loved a woman, and that he was honourable,
+brave, gentle, true, in fact&nbsp;&#8230; a gentleman, and made her a proposal
+of marriage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marget was looking before her with calm, attentive face, never once
+glancing at Kate to supplement what was told.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"If&nbsp;&#8230; the girl accepted him, she would have a high position, and be
+rich, so that she could&nbsp;&#8230; save her&nbsp;&#8230; family from ruin, and
+keep&nbsp;&#8230; them in the house they loved."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marget listened with earnest intelligence.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"She respects this man, and is grateful to him.  She is certain that he
+would be&nbsp;&#8230; kind to her, and give her everything she wanted.  And
+she thinks that he&nbsp;&#8230; would be happy."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Marget waited for the end.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But she does not love him&mdash;that is all."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+As the tale was being told in, brief, clear, slow sentences, Marget's
+eyes became luminous, and her lips opened as one ready to speak from an
+inner knowledge.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye hev let me see a piece o' life, an' it is sacred, for naethin' on
+earth is sae near God as luve, an' a 'll no deny that ma woman's heart
+is wi' that honest gentleman, an' a' the mair gin he dinna win his
+prize.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"But a man often comes tae his heicht through disappointment, and a
+woman, she hes tae learn that there is that which she hes the richt tae
+give for gratitude or friendship's sake, and that which can only be
+bestowed by the hand o' luve.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It will maybe help ye gin a' tell ye anither tale, an' though it be o'
+humble life, yet oor hearts are the same in the castle and the cottar's
+hoose, wi' the same cup o' sorrow tae drink an' the same croon o' joy
+tae wear, an' the same dividin' o' roads for oor trial.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There wes a man showed a wumman muckle kindness, and to her fouk also,
+an' he wes simple an' honest, an' for what he hed done an' because
+there wes nae evil in him she married him."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"And what has happened?"  Kate, being half Highland, had less patience
+than Marget.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"He hes been a gude man tae her through the dark an' through the licht,
+an' she hes tried tae repay him as a puir imperfect wumman can, an' her
+hert is warm to him, but there hes aye been ae thing wantin'&mdash;an' it
+hes been that wife's cross a' her life&mdash;there wes nae ither man, but
+her husband wesna, isna, canna be her ain a'thegither an' for ever&mdash;for
+the want o' luve&mdash;that luve o' luve that maks marriage."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Her voice was laden with feeling, and it was plain that she had given
+of her own and deepest for the guiding of another.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Marget, I can never be grateful enough to you for what you have shown
+me this day."  As she passed Whinny with his bag of seed, he apologised
+for his wife.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"A 'm dootin', Miss Carnegie, the gude-wife hes keepit ye ower lang in
+the gairden haiverin' awa' aboot the flooers an' her ither trokes.  But
+she 's michty prood for a' that aboot yir comin' up tae veesit us."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Such was the second conference on Kate's affairs on that day.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No place could be more thoroughly cleansed from vulgar curiosity than
+our Glen, or have a finer contempt for "clatters," but the atmosphere
+was electrical in the diffusion of information.  What happened at
+Burnbrae was known at the foot of Glen Urtach by evening, and the visit
+of spiritual consolation which Milton, in the days of his Pharisaism,
+paid to Jamie Soutar on his deathbed was the joy of every fireside in
+Drumtochty within twenty-four hours.  Perhaps it was not, therefore,
+remarkable that the arrival of Lord Kilspindie's groom at Tochty Lodge
+post haste with two letters on Saturday morning&mdash;one for the General
+from his Lordship, and one from his son for Miss Kate&mdash;should have been
+rightly interpreted, and the news spread with such rapidity that
+Hillocks&mdash;a man not distinguished above his fellows for tact&mdash;was able
+to inform Carmichael in the early afternoon that the marriage between
+the young lord and the "Miss" at Tochty was now practically arranged.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It's been aff and on a' winter, an' the second veesit tae the Castle
+settled it, but a 'm hearin' it wes the loss o' the Lodge brocht the
+fast offer this mornin'.  She 's an able wumman, an' cairried her gear
+tae the best market.  Ma certes," and Hillocks contemplated Kate's
+achievement with sympathetic admiration, "but she 'll set her place
+weel, an' haud her ain wi' the Duchess o' Athole."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael ought perhaps to have taken his beating like a man, and said
+nothing to any one, but instead thereof he betook himself for
+consolation to Marget, a better counsellor in a crisis than Janet, with
+all her Celtic wiles, and Marget set him in the very seat where Kate
+had put her case.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It has, I suppose, been all a dream, and now I have awaked, but it
+was&nbsp;&#8230; a pleasant dream, and one finds the morning light a little
+chill.  One must just learn to forget, and be as if one had never&nbsp;&#8230;
+dreamed," but Carmichael looked at Marget wistfully.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye canna be the same again, for a' coont, gin ony man loves a wumman
+wi' a leal hert, whether she answer or no, or whether she even kens, he
+'s been the gainer, an' the harvest will be his for ever.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It hes seemed to me that nae luve is proved an' crooned for eternity
+onless the man hes forgotten himsel' an' is willin' tae live alane gin
+the wumman he luves sees prosperity.  He only is the perfect lover, and
+for him God hes the best gifts.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Yes, a 've seen it wi' ma ain eyes,"&mdash;for indeed this seemed to
+Carmichael an impossible height of self-abnegation,&mdash;"a man who loved
+an' served a wumman wi' his best an' at a great cost, an' yet for whom
+there cud be no reward but his ain luve."  Marget's face grew so
+beautiful as she told of the constancy of this unknown, unrewarded
+lover that Carmichael left without further speech, but with a purer
+vision of love than had ever before visited his soul.  Marget watched
+him go down the same path by which Kate went, and she said to herself,
+"Whether or no he win is in the will of God, but already luve hes given
+his blessin' tae man and maid."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Kate did not go to kirk on Sunday, but lived all day in the woods, and
+in the evening she kissed her father and laid this answer in his
+hands:&mdash;
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P CLASS="letter">
+DEAR LORD HAY,&mdash;You have done me the greatest honour any woman can
+receive at your hands, and for two days I have thought of nothing else.
+If it were enough that your wife should like and respect you, then I
+would at once accept you as my betrothed, but as it is plain to me that
+no woman ought to marry any one unless she also loves him, I am obliged
+to refuse one of the truest men I have ever met, for whom I have a very
+kindly place in my heart, and whose happiness I shall always
+desire.&mdash;Believe me, yours sincerely,
+</P>
+
+<P CLASS="closing">
+KATE CARNEGIE.
+</P>
+
+<BR>
+
+<P>
+"You could do nothing else, Kit, and you have done right to close the
+matter&nbsp;&#8230; but I 'm sorry for Hay."
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR>
+
+<A NAME="chap24"></A>
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+</H3>
+
+<H3 ALIGN="center">
+LOVE IS LORD.
+</H3>
+
+<IMG CLASS="imgleft" SRC="images/img-344.jpg" ALT="dropcap-i" BORDER="0" WIDTH="129" HEIGHT="274">
+
+<P CLASS="noindent">
+t could not be said with a steady face that the proceedings of the
+Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown increased the gaiety of nations, and
+there might be persons&mdash;far left to themselves, of course&mdash;who would
+describe its members as wearisome ecclesiastics.  Carmichael himself,
+in a mood of gay irresponsibility, had once sketched a meeting of this
+reverend court, in which the names were skilfully adapted, after the
+ancient fashion, to represent character, and the incidents, if not
+<I>vero</I>, were certainly ben trovato, and had the article ready for
+transmission to <I>Ferrier's Journal</I>.  'A Sederunt' did not, however,
+add to the miseries of a most courteous editor, for Jenkins, having
+come up for an all-night conference, and having heard the article with
+unfeigned delight, pointed out that, if it were accepted, which
+Carmichael's experience did not certify, the writer would be run down
+within fourteen days, and that, so unreasonable a thing is human
+nature, some of the Presbytery might be less than pleased with their
+own likenesses.  "It 's in the waste-paper basket," Carmichael said
+next morning, which, as the author was twenty-five years of age, and
+not conspicuously modest, is a conclusive testimonial to the goodness
+of one Presbytery, and its hold on the affection of its members.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Scots take their pleasures sadly, and no one can imagine from what arid
+soil they may not draw their nutriment, but it was not for motions of
+ponderous ambiguity and pragmatical points of order, that the minister
+of Kincairney rose before daybreak on a winter's morning, and worked
+his way to the nearest station, with the stars still overhead, and the
+snow below his feet, so that when the clerk made a sign to the
+Moderator punctually at one minute past eleven to "constitute the
+Presbytery," he might not be missing from his place.  It was the
+longing of a lonely man, across whose front door no visitor had come
+for weeks, for friendly company; of a weary minister, discouraged by
+narrow circumstances, monotonous routine, unexpected disappointments
+among his people, for a word of good cheer.  A cynical stranger might
+discover various stupidities, peculiarities, provincialisms in the
+Presbytery&mdash;he knew himself who had a temper, and who was a trifle
+sensitive about his rights&mdash;but this middle-aged, hard-working,
+simple-living man saw twenty faithful brethren&mdash;the elders did not
+count in this connection, for they did not understand&mdash;who stood beside
+him on occasion at the Holy Table, and gave him advice in his
+perplexities, and would bury him with honest regret when he died, and
+fight like wild cats that his widow and children should have their due.
+His toilsome journey was forgotten when Doctor Dowbiggin, in an
+interstice of motions, came across the floor and sat down beside him,
+and whispered confidentially, "Well, how are things going on at
+Kincairney?"&mdash;Dowbiggin really deserved his leadership&mdash;or when the
+clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, would pass his snuff-box
+across to him without a word, for the clerk had a way of handing his
+box, which, being interpreted, ran as follows:&mdash;"You suppose that I am
+lifted above all ordinary affairs in my clerkly isolation, and that I
+do not know what a solid work you are doing for God and man in the
+obscure parish of Kincairney, but you are wrong.  You have a very warm
+corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box."  And the said
+minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn
+of the road by his wife&mdash;sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter
+of a century's toiling and preaching&mdash;would enlarge on Doctor
+Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when
+they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him&mdash;incredible to
+our cynic&mdash;and say, "You see, Tom, more people than I know what a good
+work you are doing," and Tom would start his twenty-first lecture on
+the Ephesians next morning with new spirit.  Such is the power of
+comradeship, such is the thirst for sympathy; and indeed there is no
+dog either so big or so little that it does not appreciate a pat, and
+go down the street afterwards with better heart.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Presbytery had always a tender regard for the Free Kirk of
+Drumtochty, and happened to treat Carmichael with much favour.  When
+the "call" to him was signed at once by every member of the
+congregation, the clerk&mdash;who had been obliged to summon Donald Menzies
+from Gaelic by the intimation that Drumtochty was by the law of the
+Church "uni-lingual, and that all proceedings must be conducted in the
+English language"&mdash;arose and declared that "such unanimous attention to
+their ecclesiastical duties was unexampled in his experience;" and when
+at Carmichael's ordination a certain certificate was wanting, the
+clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the
+court should anticipate its arrival, dealing with the matter
+"proleptically," and the court saw in the very word another proof of
+the clerk's masterly official genius.  It was he also&mdash;expressing the
+mind of the Presbytery&mdash;who proposed that the Court should send
+Carmichael as a commissioner to the General Assembly in the first year
+of his ministry, and took occasion to remark that Mr. Carmichael,
+according to "reliable information at his disposal," was rendering
+important service to the Free Church in his sphere at Drumtochty.
+Carmichael was very happy in those days, and was so petted by his
+ecclesiastical superiors that he never missed a meeting of court, where
+he either sat in a demure silence, which commended him greatly to the
+old men, or conversed with his friends on a back bench about general
+affairs.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It gave him, therefore, a shock to sit with his brethren in the month
+of June&mdash;when the walk through the woods had been a joy, and Muirtown
+lay at her fairest, and the sunshine filled the court-room, and every
+man had a summer air, and Doctor Dowbiggin actually wore a rose in his
+coat&mdash;and to discover that he himself was sick of his old friends, of
+his work, of his people, of himself.  The reasons were obvious.  Was it
+not a sin that thirty Christian men should be cooped up in a room
+passing schedules when the summer was young and fresh upon the land?
+Could any one of the Rabbi's boys sit in that room and see his
+accustomed place&mdash;a corner next the wall on a back seat&mdash;empty, and not
+be cast down?  Besides, does not a minister's year begin in September
+and end in July, and before it closes is not the minister at his
+lowest, having given away himself for eleven months?  "One begins to
+weary for a rest," he whispered to Kincairney, and that worthy man
+explained that he and his wife had been planning their triennial
+holiday, and hoped to have a fortnight in Carnoustie.  Carmichael
+realised his hypocrisy in that instant, for he knew perfectly that he
+had lost touch with life because of a hopeless love, and a proud face
+he had not seen a year ago.  He flung himself out of the court with
+such impatience that the clerk stayed his hand in the midst of the
+sacred words <I>pro re nata</I>, and Kincairney mentioned to his wife in the
+evening that Carmichael had never got over Doctor Saunderson's death.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael wandered up one of the meadows which are the glory of
+Muirtown, and sat down by the queen of Scottish rivers, which runs deep
+and swift, clean and bright, from Loch Tay to the sea, between wooded
+banks and overhanging trees, past cornfields and ancient castles; a
+river for him who swims, or rows, or fishes, or dreams, in which, if
+such were to be his fate, a man might ask to be drowned.  Opposite him
+began the woods of Muirtown Castle, and he tried to be glad that
+Kate&nbsp;&#8230; Miss Carnegie would one day be their mistress: the formal
+announcement of her engagement, he had heard, was to be made next week,
+on Lord Kilspindie's birthday.  A distant whistle came on the clear air
+from Muirtown station, where&nbsp;&#8230; and all this turmoil of hope and
+fear, love and despair, had been packed into a few months.  There is a
+bend in the river where he sits, and the salmon fishers have dropped
+their nets, and are now dragging them to the bank.  With a thrill of
+sympathy Carmichael watched the fish struggling in the meshes, and his
+heart leapt when, through some mishandling, one escaped with a flash of
+silver and plunged into the river.  He had also been caught quite
+suddenly in the joyous current of his life and held in bonds.  Why
+should he not make a bold plunge for freedom, which he could never have
+with the Lodge at his doors, with the Castle only twelve miles away?
+He had been asked in his student days to go to the north-west of Canada
+and take charge of a parish fifty miles square.  The idea had for a
+little fired his imagination, and then faded before other ambitions.
+It revived with power on the banks of that joyful, forceful river, and
+he saw himself beginning life again on the open prairie lands&mdash;riding,
+camping, shooting, preaching&mdash;a free man and an apostle to the Scottish
+Dispersion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+With this bracing resolution, that seemed a call of God to deliver him
+from bondage, came a longing to visit Kilbogie Manse and the Rabbi's
+grave.  It was a journey of expiation, for Carmichael followed the road
+the Rabbi walked with the hand of death upon him after that lamentable
+Presbytery, and he marked the hills where the old man must have stood
+and fought for breath.  He could see Mains, where he had gone with
+Doctor Saunderson to the exposition, and he passed the spot where the
+Rabbi had taken farewell of George Pitillo in a figure.  What learning,
+and simplicity, and unselfishness, and honesty, and affection were
+mingled in the character of the Rabbi!  What skill, and courage, and
+tenderness, and self-sacrifice, and humility there had been also in
+William MacLure, who had just died!  Carmichael dwelt on the likeness
+and unlikeness of the two men, who had each loved the highest he knew
+and served his generation according to the will of God, till he found
+himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with
+the Rabbi in his long vigils.  It was a singular means of grace to have
+known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and
+impressionable.  A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael.  He lifted
+his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship
+he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any
+intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see
+the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way.  The district was full of the
+Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any
+moment&mdash;buried in a book and proceeding steadily in the wrong
+direction.  The Rabbi surely was not dead, and Carmichael drifted into
+that dear world of romance where what we desire comes to pass, and
+facts count for nothing.  This was how the Idyll went.  From the moment
+of the reconciliation the Rabbi's disease began to abate in a quite
+unheard of fashion&mdash;love wrought a miracle&mdash;and with Kate's nursing and
+his he speedily recovered.  Things came right between Kate and himself
+as they shared their task of love, and so&nbsp;&#8230; of course&mdash;it took
+place last month&mdash;and now he was going to carry off the Rabbi, who
+somehow had not come to the Presbytery, to Drumtochty, where his bride
+would meet them both beneath the laburnum arch at the gate.  He would
+be cunning as he approached the door of Kilbogie Manse, and walk on the
+grass border lest the Rabbi, poring over some Father, should hear the
+crunch of the gravel&mdash;he did know his footstep&mdash;and so he would take
+the old man by surprise.  Alas! he need not take such care, for the
+walk was now as the border with grass, and the gate was lying open, and
+the dead house stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and knew him
+not.  The key was in the door, and he crossed the threshold once
+more&mdash;no need to beware of parcels on the floor now&mdash;and turned to the
+familiar room.  The shelves had been taken down, but he could trace
+their lines on the ancient discoloured paper that was now revealed for
+the first time; there, where a new shutter was resting against the
+wall, used to stand the "seat of the fathers," and exactly in the midst
+of that heap of straw the Rabbi had his chair.&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ye 've come tae see hoo we 're getting on wi' the repairs"&mdash;it was the
+joiner of Kilbogie; "it's no a licht job, for there 's nae doot the
+hoose hes been awfu' negleckit.  The Doctor wes a terrible scholar, but
+he wudna hae kent that the slates were aff the roof till the drap cam
+intae his bed.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Ou aye, the manse is tae be papered an' pented for the new minister;
+a' cud show ye the papers; juist as ye please; they're verra tasty an'
+showy.  He's tae be married at once, a 'm hearin', an' this is tae be
+the drawin'-room; he wes here ten days syne&mdash;the day after he wes
+eleckit: they 're aye in a hurry when they 're engaged&mdash;an' seleckit a
+sma' room upstairs for his study; he didna think he wud need as lairge
+a room for bukes, an' he thocht the auld study wud dae fine for
+pairties.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"There 's juist ae room feenished, an' ye micht like tae see the paper
+on 't; it's a yellow rose on a licht blue grund; a 'm jidgin' it wes
+the Doctor's ain room.  Weel, it's a gude lang wy tae Drumtochty, an'
+ye 'll no be wantin' tae pit aff time, a' daresay."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a terrible douche of prose, and Carmichael was still shivering
+when he reached the kindly shade of Tochty woods.  He had seen the
+successful candidate at the Presbytery arranging about his "trial
+discourses" with the clerk&mdash;who regarded him dubiously&mdash;and he had
+heard some story about his being a "popular hand," and bewitching the
+young people with a sermon on the "good fight," with four heads "the
+soldier," "the battle-field," "the battle," and "the crown"&mdash;each with
+an illustration, an anecdote, and a verse of poetry.  Carmichael
+recognised the type, and already saw the new minister of Kilbogie, smug
+and self-satisfied, handing round cream and sugar in the Rabbi's old
+study, while his wife, a stout young woman in gay clothing, pours tea
+from a pot of florid design, and bearing a blazing marriage
+inscription.  There would be a <I>soirée</I> in the kirk, where the Rabbi
+had opened the mysteries of God, and his successor would explain how
+unworthy he felt to follow Doctor Saunderson, and how he was going to
+reorganise the congregation, and there would be many jocose allusions
+to his coming marriage; but Carmichael would by that time have left the
+district.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+No one can walk a mile in Tochty woods, where there are little glades
+of mossy turf, and banks of violets and geraniums, and gentle creatures
+on ground and branch, and cool shade from the summer sun, and the sound
+of running water by your side, without being sweetened and comforted.
+Bitter thoughts and cynical criticisms, as well as vain regrets and
+peevish complaints, fell away from Carmichael's soul, and gave place to
+a gentle melancholy.  He came to the heart of the wood, where was the
+lovers' grave, and the place seemed to invite his company.  A sense of
+the tears of things came over him, and he sat down by the river-side to
+meditate.  It was two hundred years and more since the lassies died,
+who were never wedded, and for him there was not even to be love.  The
+ages were linked together by a long tragedy of disappointment and
+vanity, but the Tochty ran now as in the former days.  What was any
+human life but a drop in the river that flowed without ceasing to the
+unknown sea?  What could any one do but yield himself to necessity, and
+summon his courage to endure?  Then at the singing of a bird his mood
+lightened and was changed, as if he had heard the Evangel.  God was
+over all, and life was immortal, and he could not be wrong who did the
+will of God.  After a day of conflict, peace came to his soul, and in
+the soft light of the setting sun he rose to go home.
+</P>
+
+<A NAME="img-353"></A>
+<CENTER>
+<IMG CLASS="imgcenter" SRC="images/img-353.jpg" ALT="&quot;He sat down by the river-side to meditate.&quot;" BORDER="2" WIDTH="342" HEIGHT="548">
+<H3 CLASS="h3center" STYLE="width: 342px">
+&quot;He sat down by the river-side to meditate.&quot;
+</H3>
+</CENTER>
+
+<P>
+"Miss Carnegie&nbsp;&#8230; I did not know you were here&nbsp;&#8230;  I thought you
+were in London," and Carmichael stood before Kate in great confusion.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Nor did I see you behind that tree"&mdash;Kate herself was startled.  "Yes,
+the General and I have been visiting some old friends, and only came
+home an hour ago.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you know"&mdash;Kate was herself again&mdash;"the first thing I do on arrival
+is to make a pilgrimage to this place.  Half an hour here banishes the
+dust of a day's journey and of&nbsp;&#8230;
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Besides, I don't know whether you have heard"&mdash;Kate spoke
+hurriedly&mdash;"that it is now settled that I&nbsp;&#8230; we will be leaving the
+Lodge soon, and one wants to have as much as possible of the old place
+in the time remaining."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+She gave him this opportunity in kindness, as it seemed, and he
+reproached himself because he did not offer his congratulations.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You will, I&nbsp;&#8230; the people hope, come often here, Miss Carnegie, and
+not cast off Drumtochty, although the Lodge be not your home.  You will
+always have a place in the hearts of the Glen.  Marjorie will never be
+grateful enough for your readings," which was bravely said.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think that I can ever forget the Glen and my&nbsp;&#8230; friends
+here?  Not while I live; the Carnegies have their own faults, but
+ingratitude is not one.  Nor the dear Rabbi's grave."  Then there was
+silence, which Carmichael found very trying&mdash;they had been so near that
+day in Kilbogie Manse, with only the Rabbi, who loved them both,
+between; but now, although they stood face to face, there was a gulf
+dividing them.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It may not be easy for me to visit Drumtochty often, for you know
+there has been a change&nbsp;&#8230; in our circumstances, and one must suit
+oneself to it."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael flushed uneasily, and Kate supposed that he was sympathising
+with their losses.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"I hope to be a busy woman soon, with lots of work, and I shall use
+every one of my little scraps of knowledge.  How do you think I shall
+acquit myself in my new role?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was a little hard on Carmichael, who was thinking of a countess,
+while Kate meant a governess.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You need not ask me how I think you will do as&nbsp;&#8230; in any position,
+and I&nbsp;&#8230; wish you every success, and&nbsp;&#8230; (with a visible effort)
+happiness."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+He spoke so stiffly that Kate sought about for reasons, and could only
+remember their quarrel and imagine he retained a grudge&mdash;which she
+thought was rather ungenerous.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"It occurs to me that one man ought to be thankful when we depart, for
+then he will be able to call Queen Mary names every Sunday without a
+misguided Jacobite girl dropping in to create a disturbance."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Drumtochty will have to form its own opinion of poor Mary without my
+aid," and Carmichael smiled sadly in pardon of the past, "for it is
+likely, although no one knows this in the Glen, that I shall soon be
+far away."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Leaving Drumtochty?  What will Marjorie do without you, and Dr.
+Davidson, and&nbsp;&#8230; all the people?"  Then, remembering Janet's gossip,
+and her voice freezing, "I suppose you have got a better or more
+convenient living.  The Glen is certainly rather inaccessible."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Have I done anything, Miss Carnegie, to justify you in thinking that I
+would leave the Glen, which has been so good to me, for&nbsp;&#8230; worldly
+reasons?  There is enough to support an unmarried man, and I am not
+likely to&nbsp;&#8230; to marry," said Carmichael, bitterly; "but there are
+times when it is better for a man to change his whole surroundings and
+make a new life."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+It was clear that the Bailie's daughter was a romance of Janet's Celtic
+imagination, and Kate's manner softened.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"The Rabbi's death and&nbsp;&#8230; your difference of opinion&mdash;something
+about doctrine, was n't it? we were from home&mdash;must have been a great
+trial, and, as there was no opportunity before, let me say how much we
+sympathised with you and&nbsp;&#8230; thought of you.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do you think, however, Mr. Carmichael"&mdash;she spoke with hesitation, but
+much kindness&mdash;"that you ought to fling up your work here on that
+account?  Would not the Rabbi himself have wished you to stick to your
+post?&#8230; and all your friends would like to think you had been&nbsp;&#8230;
+brave."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"You are cruel, Miss Carnegie; you try me beyond what I can endure,
+although I shall be ashamed to-night for what I am to say.  Do you not
+know or guess that it is your&nbsp;&#8230; on account of you, I mean, that I
+must leave Drumtochty?"
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"On account of me?"  Kate looked at him in unaffected amazement.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Are you blind, or is it that you could not suspect me of such
+presumption?  Had you no idea that night in Dr. Davidson's
+drawing-room?  Have you never seen that I&nbsp;&#8230;  Kate&mdash;I will say it
+once to your face as I say it every hour to myself&mdash;you won my heart in
+an instant on Muirtown Station, and will hold it till I die.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Do not speak till I be done, and then order me from your presence as I
+deserve, I know that it is unworthy of a gentleman, and&nbsp;&#8230; a
+minister of Christ to say such things to the betrothed of another man;
+only one minute more"&mdash;for Kate had started as if in anger&mdash;"I know
+also that if I were stronger I could go on living as before, and meet
+you from time to time when you came from the Castle with your husband,
+and never allow myself to think of Lady Hay as I felt to Miss Carnegie.
+But I am afraid of myself, and&nbsp;&#8230; this is the last time we shall
+meet, Miss Carnegie.  Forgive me for my love, and believe that one man
+will ever remember and&nbsp;&#8230; pray for you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+Carmichael bowed low, the last sunshine of the evening playing on his
+fair hair, and turned to go.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"One word, if you please," said Kate, and they looked into one
+another's eyes, the blue and brown, seeing many things that cannot be
+written.  "You may be forgiven for&nbsp;&#8230; loving me, because you could
+not help that"&mdash;this with a very roguish look, our Kate all over&mdash;"and
+I suppose you must be forgiven for listening to foolish gossip, since
+people will tell lies"&mdash;this with a stamp of the foot, our Kate
+again&mdash;"but I shall never forgive you if you leave me, never"&mdash;this was
+a new Kate, like to the opening of a flower.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Why?  Tell me plainly," and in the silence Carmichael heard a trout
+leap in the river.
+</P>
+
+<P>
+"Because I love you."
+</P>
+
+<P>
+The Tochty water sang a pleasant song, and the sun set gloriously
+behind Ben Urtach.
+</P>
+
+<BR><BR><BR><BR>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers, by Ian
+Maclaren
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers
+
+
+Author: Ian Maclaren
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 19, 2007  [eBook #20399]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE
+MINISTERS***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 20399-h.htm or 20399-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/3/9/20399/20399-h/20399-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/3/9/20399/20399-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS.
+
+by
+
+IAN MACLAREN.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Toronto:
+Fleming H. Revell Company,
+140-142 Yonge Street.
+1896.
+Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada,
+in the year 1896, by Hodder & Stoughton,
+at the Department of Agriculture.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+A CERTAIN BROTHERHOOD
+
+
+Faithful in Criticism
+
+Loyal in Affection
+
+Tender in Trouble
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+     I.  PANDEMONIUM
+    II.  PEACE
+   III.  A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS
+    IV.  A SECRET CHAMBER
+     V.  CONCERNING BESOMS
+    VI.  A PLEASAUNCE
+   VII.  A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION
+  VIII.  A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION
+    IX.  A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE
+     X.  A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN
+    XI.  IN THE GLOAMING
+   XII.  KILBOGIE MANSE
+  XIII.  PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT
+   XIV.  A MODERATE
+    XV.  JOINT POTENTATES
+   XVI.  DRIED ROSE LEAVES
+  XVII.  SMOULDERING FIRES
+ XVIII.  LOVE SICKNESS
+   XIX.  THE FEAR OF GOD
+    XX.  THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND
+   XXI.  LIGHT AT EVENTIDE
+  XXII.  WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH
+ XXIII.  MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL
+  XXIV.  LOVE IS LORD
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
+
+
+   Carmichael had taken his Turn
+
+   "Many a Ploy we had together"
+
+   Peter was standing in his Favourite Attitude
+
+   "I am the General's Daughter"
+
+   Janet Macpherson was waiting in the Deep Doorway
+
+   "It's a Difficult Key to turn"
+
+   Kate in her Favourite Position
+
+   One Gardener who . . . works for Love's Sake
+
+   Among the Great Trees
+
+   "Mr. Carmichael, you have much Cause for Thankfulness"
+
+   Carmichael sang a Solo
+
+   "Here iss your Silver Piece"
+
+   "I should call it a Deliberate--"
+
+   "She had an Unfortunate Tendency to meddle with my Books"
+
+   Mother Church cast her Spell over his Imagination
+
+   "Ye'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there"
+
+   A Tall, Bony, Forbidding Woman
+
+   Gathering her Berry Harvest
+
+   He was a Mere Wisp of a Man
+
+   "Will you let me walk with you for a Little?"
+
+   "Private Capaucity"
+
+   Standing with a Half-Dried Dish in her Hand
+
+   The Old Man escorted her Ladyship
+
+   Would gossip with him by the Hour
+
+   The Driver stops to exchange Views
+
+   Two Tramps held Conference
+
+   Wrestling in Darkness of Soul
+
+   His Attitude for Exposition
+
+   "Ay, he's in, but ye canna see him"
+
+   "To put Flowers on his Grave"
+
+   "You have been awfully Good to me"
+
+   "He sat down by the River-side to meditate"
+
+
+
+
+KATE CARNEGIE.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+PANDEMONIUM.
+
+It was the morning before the Twelfth, years ago, and nothing like unto
+Muirtown Station could have been found in all the travelling world.
+For Muirtown, as everybody knows, is the centre which receives the
+southern immigrants in autumn, and distributes them, with all their
+belongings of servants, horses, dogs, and luggage, over the north
+country from Athole to Sutherland.  All night, express trains, whose
+ordinary formation had been reinforced by horse boxes, carriage trucks,
+saloons and luggage vans, drawn by two engines, and pushed up inclines
+by a third, had been careering along the three iron trunk roads that
+run from London to the North.  Four hours ago they had forced the
+border, that used to be more jealously guarded, and had begun to
+converge on their terminus.  Passengers, awakened by the caller air and
+looking out still half asleep, miss the undisciplined hedgerows and
+many-shaped patches of pasture, the warm brick homesteads and shaded
+ponds of the south.  Square fields cultivated up to a foot of the stone
+dykes or wire-fencing, the strong grey-stone farm-houses, the
+swift-running burns, and the never-distant hills, brace the mind.
+Local passengers come in with deliberation, whose austere faces condemn
+the luxurious disorder of night travel, and challenge the defence of
+Arminian doctrine.  A voice shouts "Carstairs Junction," with a command
+of the letter _r_, which is the bequest of an unconquerable past, and
+inspires one with the hope of some day hearing a freeborn Scot say
+"Auchterarder."  The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat
+holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn,
+between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the
+foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile
+plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul
+counts the ten hours' dust and heat but a slight price for the sight of
+the Scottish Rhine flowing deep, clear, and swift by the foot of its
+wooded hills, and the "Fair City" in the heart of her meadows.
+
+"Do you see the last wreath of mist floating off the summit of the
+hill, and the silver sheen of the river against the green of the woods?
+Quick, dad," and the General, accustomed to obey, stood up beside Kate
+for the brief glimpse between the tunnel and a prison.  Yet they had
+seen the snows of the Himalayas, and the great river that runs through
+the plains of India.  But it is so with Scottish folk that they may
+have lived opposite the Jungfrau at Muerren, and walked among the big
+trees of the Yosemite Valley, and watched the blood-red afterglow on
+the Pyramids, and yet will value a sunset behind the Cuchullin hills,
+and the Pass of the Trossachs, and the mist shot through with light on
+the sides of Ben Nevis, and the Tay at Dunkeld--just above the
+bridge--better guerdon for their eyes.
+
+"Ay, lassie"--the other people had left at Stirling, and the General
+fell back upon the past--"there 's just one bonnier river, and that's
+the Tochty at a bend below the Lodge, as we shall see it, please God,
+this evening."
+
+"Tickets," broke in a voice with authority.  "This is no the station,
+an' ye 'll hae to wait till the first diveesion o' yir train is
+emptied.  Kildrummie?  Ye change, of coorse, but yir branch 'll hae a
+lang wait the day.  It 'll be an awfu' fecht wi' the Hielant train.
+Muirtown platform 'll be worth seein'; it 'll juist be michty," and the
+collector departed, smacking his lips in prospect of the fray.
+
+"Upon my word," said the General, taken aback for a moment by the easy
+manners of his countryman, but rejoicing in every new assurance of
+home, "our people are no blate."
+
+"Is n't it delicious to be where character has not been worn smooth by
+centuries of oppression, but where each man is himself?  Conversation
+has salt here, and tastes in the mouth.  We 've just heard two men
+speak this morning, and each face is bitten into my memory.  Now our
+turn has come," and the train wound itself in at last.
+
+Porters, averaging six feet and with stentorian voices, were driving
+back the mixed multitude in order to afford foothold for the new
+arrivals on that marvellous landing place, which in those days served
+for all the trains which came in and all that went out, both north and
+south.  One man tears open the door of a first with commanding gesture.
+"A' change and hurry up.  Na, na," rejecting the offer of a private
+engagement; "we hev nae time for that trade the day.  Ye maun cairry
+yir bags yersels; the dogs and boxes 'll tak us a' oor time."  He
+unlocks an under compartment and drags out a pair of pointers, who fawn
+upon him obsequiously in gratitude for their release.  "Doon wi' ye,"
+as one to whom duty denies the ordinary courtesies of life, and he
+fastens them to the base of an iron pillar.  Deserted immediately by
+their deliverer, the pointers made overtures to two elderly ladies,
+standing bewildered in the crush, to be repulsed with umbrellas, and
+then sit down upon their tails in despair.  Their forlorn condition,
+left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a
+slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their
+voices in melodious concert, to the scandal of the two females, who
+cannot escape the neighbourhood, and regard the pointers with horror.
+Distant friends, also in bonds and distress of mind, feel comforted and
+join cheerfully, while a large black retriever, who had foolishly
+attempted to obstruct a luggage barrow with his tail, breaks in with a
+high solo.  Two collies, their tempers irritated by obstacles as they
+follow their masters, who had been taking their morning in the
+second-class refreshment room, fall out by the way, and obtain as by
+magic a clear space in which to settle details; while a fox-terrier,
+escaping from his anxious mistress, has mounted a pile of boxes and
+gives a general challenge.
+
+Porters fling open packed luggage vans with a swing, setting free a
+cataract of portmanteaus, boxes, hampers, baskets, which pours across
+the platform for yards, led by a frolicsome black leather valise, whose
+anxious owner has fought her adventurous way to the van for the purpose
+of explaining to a phlegmatic Scot that he would know it by a broken
+strap, and must lift it out gently, for it contained breakables.
+
+"It can gang itsel, that ane," as the afflicted woman followed its
+reckless progress with a wail.  "Sall, if they were a' as clever on
+their feet as yon box there wud be less tribble," and with two
+assistants he falls upon the congested mass within.  They perform
+prodigies of strength, handling huge trunks that ought to have filled
+some woman with repentance as if they were Gladstone bags, and light
+weights as if they were paper parcels.  With unerring scent they detect
+the latest label among the remains of past history, and the air
+resounds with "Hielant train," "Aiberdeen fast," "Aiberdeen slow,"
+"Muirtown"--this with indifference--and at a time "Dunleith," and once
+"Kildrummie," with much contempt.  By this time stacks of baggage of
+varying size have been erected, the largest of which is a pyramid in
+shape, with a very uncertain apex.
+
+Male passengers--heads of families and new to Muirtown--hover anxiously
+round the outskirts, and goaded on by female commands, rush into the
+heart of the fray for the purpose of claiming a piece of luggage, which
+turns out to be some other person's, and retire hastily after a
+fair-sized portmanteau descends on their toes, and the sharp edge of a
+trunk takes them in the small of the back.  Footmen with gloves and
+superior airs make gentlemanly efforts to collect the family luggage,
+and are rewarded by having some hopelessly vulgar tin boxes, heavily
+roped, deposited among its initialled glory.  One elderly female who
+had been wise to choose some other day to revisit her native town,
+discovers her basket flung up against a pillar, like wreckage from a
+storm, and settles herself down upon it with a sigh of relief.  She
+remains unmoved amid the turmoil, save when a passing gun-case tips her
+bonnet to one side, giving her a very rakish air, and a good-natured
+retriever on a neighbouring box is so much taken with her appearance
+that he offers her a friendly caress.  Restless people--who remember
+that their train ought to have left half an hour ago, and cannot
+realise that all bonds are loosed on the eleventh--fasten on any man in
+a uniform, and suffer many rebuffs.
+
+"There 's nae use asking me," answers a guard, coming off duty and
+pushing his way through the crowd as one accustomed to such spectacles;
+"a 'm juist in frae Carlisle; get haud o' a porter."
+
+"Cupar Angus?"--this from the porter--"that's the Aiberdeen slow; it's
+no made up yet, and little chance o't till the express an' the Hielant
+be aff.  Whar 'll it start frae?" breaking away; "forrit, a' tell ye,
+forrit."
+
+Fathers of families, left on guard and misled by a sudden movement
+"forrit," rush to the waiting-room and bring out, for the third time,
+the whole expedition, to escort them back again with shame.  Barrows
+with towering piles of luggage are pushed through the human mass by two
+porters, who allow their engine to make its own way with much
+confidence, condescending only at a time to shout, "A' say, hey, oot o'
+there," and treating any testy complaint with the silent contempt of a
+drayman for a costermonger.  Old hands, who have fed at their leisure
+in callous indifference to all alarms, lounge about in great content,
+and a group of sheep farmers, having endeavoured in vain, after one
+tasting, to settle the merits of a new dip, take a glance in the
+"Hielant" quarter, and adjourn the conference once more to the
+refreshment-room.  Groups of sportsmen discuss the prospects of
+to-morrow in detail, and tell stories of ancient twelfths, while
+chieftains from London, in full Highland dress, are painfully conscious
+of the whiteness of their legs.  A handful of preposterous people who
+persist in going south when the world has its face northwards, threaten
+to complain to headquarters if they are not sent away, and an official
+with a loud voice and a subtle gift of humour intimates that a train is
+about to leave for Dundee.
+
+During this time wonderful manoeuvres have been executed on the lines
+of rail opposite the platform.  Trains have left with all the air of a
+departure and disappeared round the curve outside the station, only to
+return in fragments.  Half a dozen carriages pass without an engine, as
+if they had started on their own account, break vans that one saw
+presiding over expresses stand forsaken, a long procession of horse
+boxes rattle through, and a saloon carriage, with people, is so much in
+evidence that the name of an English Duke is freely mentioned, and
+every new passage relieves the tedium of the waiting.
+
+Out of all this confusion trains begin to grow and take shape, and one,
+with green carriages, looks so complete that a rumour spreads that the
+Hielant train has been made up and may appear any minute in its place.
+The sunshine beating through the glass roof, the heat of travel, the
+dust of the station, the moving carriages with their various colours,
+the shouts of railway officials, the recurring panics of fussy
+passengers, begin to affect the nerves.  Conversation becomes broken,
+porters are beset on every side with questions they cannot answer,
+rushes are made on any empty carriages within reach, a child is knocked
+down and cries.
+
+Over all this excitement and confusion one man is presiding, untiring,
+forceful, ubiquitous--a sturdy man, somewhere about five feet ten,
+whose lungs are brass and nerves fine steel wire.  He is dressed, as to
+his body, in brown corduroy trousers, a blue jacket and waistcoat with
+shining brass buttons, a grey flannel shirt, and a silver-braided cap,
+which, as time passes, he thrusts further back on his head till its
+peak stands at last almost erect, a crest seen high above the conflict.
+As to the soul of him, this man is clothed with resolution, courage,
+authority, and an infectious enthusiasm.  He is the brain and will of
+the whole organism, its driving power.  Drivers lean out of their
+engines, one hand on the steam throttle, their eyes fixed on this man;
+if he waves his hands, trains move; if he holds them up, trains halt.
+Strings of carriages out in the open are carrying out his plans, and
+the porters toil like maniacs to meet his commands.  Piles of luggage
+disappear as he directs the attack, and his scouts capture isolated
+boxes hidden among the people.  Every horse box has a place in his
+memory, and he has calculated how many carriages would clear the north
+traffic; he carries the destination of families in his head, and has
+made arrangements for their comfort.  "Soon ready now, sir," as he
+passed swiftly down to receive the last southerner, "and a second
+compartment reserved for you," till people watched for him, and the
+sound of his voice, "forrit wi' the Hielant luggage," inspired
+bewildered tourists with confidence, and became an argument for
+Providence.  There is a general movement towards the northern end of
+the station; five barrows, whose luggage swings dangerously and has to
+be held on, pass in procession; dogs are collected and trailed along in
+bundles; families pick up their bags and press after their luggage,
+cheered to recognise a familiar piece peeping out from strange goods; a
+bell is rung with insistence.  The Aberdeen express leaves--its
+passengers regarding the platform with pity--and the guard of the last
+van slamming his door in triumph.  The great man concentrates his force
+with a wave of his hand for the _tour de force_ of the year, the
+despatch of the Hielant train.
+
+The southern end of the platform is now deserted--the London express
+departed half an hour ago with thirteen passengers, very crestfallen
+and envious--and across the open centre porters hustle barrows at
+headlong speed, with neglected pieces of luggage.  Along the edge of
+the Highland platform there stretches a solid mass of life,
+close-packed, motionless, silent, composed of tourists, dogs, families,
+lords, dogs, sheep farmers, keepers, clericals, dogs, footmen,
+commercials, ladies' maids, grooms, dogs, waiting for the empty train
+that, after deploying hither and thither, picking up some trifle, a
+horse box or a duke's saloon, at every new raid, is now backing slowly
+in for its freight.  The expectant crowd has ceased from conversation,
+sporting or otherwise; respectable elderly gentlemen brace themselves
+for the scramble, and examine their nearest neighbours suspiciously;
+heads of families gather their belongings round them by signs and
+explain in a whisper how to act; one female tourist--of a certain age
+and severe aspect--refreshes her memory as to the best window for the
+view of Killiecrankie.  The luggage has been piled in huge masses at
+each end of the siding; the porters rest themselves against it, taking
+off their caps, and wiping their foreheads with handkerchiefs of many
+colours and uses.  It is the stillness before the last charge; beyond
+the outermost luggage an arm is seen waving, and the long coil of
+carriages begins to twist into the station.
+
+People who know their ancient Muirtown well, and have taken part in
+this day of days, will remember a harbour of refuge beside the
+book-stall, protected by the buffers of the Highland siding on one side
+and a breakwater of luggage on the other, and persons within this
+shelter could see the storming of the train to great advantage.
+Carmichael, the young Free Kirk minister of Drumtochty, who had been
+tasting the civilisation of Muirtown overnight and was waiting for the
+Dunleith train, leant against the back of the bookstall, watching the
+scene with frank, boyish interest.  Rather under six feet in height, he
+passed for more, because he stood so straight and looked so slim, for
+his limbs were as slender as a woman's, while women (in Muirtown) had
+envied his hands and feet.  But in chest measure he was only two inches
+behind Saunders Baxter, the grieve of Drumsheugh, who was the standard
+of manhood by whom all others were tried and (mostly) condemned in
+Drumtochty.  Chancing to come upon Saunders putting the stone one day
+with the bothy lads, Carmichael had taken his turn, with the result
+that his stone lay foremost in the final heat by an inch exactly.
+MacLure saw them kneeling together to measure, the Free Kirk minister
+and the ploughmen all in a bunch, and went on his way rejoicing to tell
+the Free Kirk folk that their new minister was a man of his hands.  His
+hair was fair, just touched with gold, and he wore it rather long, so
+that in the excitement of preaching a lock sometimes fell down on his
+forehead, which he would throw back with a toss of his head--a gesture
+Mrs. Macfadyen, our critic, thought very taking.  His dark blue eyes
+used to enlarge with passion in the Sacrament and grow so tender, the
+healthy tan disappeared and left his cheeks so white, that the mothers
+were terrified lest he should die early, and sent offerings of cream on
+Monday morning.  For though his name was Carmichael, he had Celtic
+blood in him, and was full of all kinds of emotion, but mostly those
+that were brave and pure and true.  He had done well at the University,
+and was inclined to be philosophical, for he knew little of himself and
+nothing of the world.  There were times when he allowed himself to be
+supercilious and sarcastic; but it was not for an occasional jingle of
+cleverness the people loved him, or, for that matter, any other man.
+It was his humanity that won their hearts, and this he had partly from
+his mother, partly from his training.  Through a kind providence and
+his mother's countryness, he had been brought up among animals--birds,
+mice, dormice, guinea-pigs, rabbits, dogs, cattle, horses, till he knew
+all their ways, and loved God's creatures as did St. Francis d'Assisi,
+to whom every creature of God was dear, from Sister Swallow to Brother
+Wolf.  So he learned, as he grew older, to love men and women and
+little children, even although they might be ugly, or stupid, or
+bad-tempered, or even wicked, and this sympathy cleansed away many a
+little fault of pride and self-conceit and impatience and hot temper,
+and in the end of the days made a man of John Carmichael.  The dumb
+animals had an instinct about this young fellow, and would make
+overtures to him that were a certificate for any situation requiring
+character.  Horses by the wayside neighed at his approach, and
+stretched out their velvet muzzles to be stroked.  Dogs insisted upon
+sitting on his knees, unless quite prevented by their size, and then
+they put their paws on his chest.  Hillocks was utterly scandalised by
+his collie's familiarity with the minister, and brought him to his
+senses by the application of a boot, but Carmichael waived all
+apologies.  "Rover and I made friends two days ago on the road, and my
+clothes will take no injury."  And indeed they could not, for
+Carmichael, except on Sundays and at funerals, wore a soft hat and suit
+of threadbare tweeds, on which a microscopist could have found traces
+of a peat bog, moss of dykes, the scale of a trout, and a tiny bit of
+heather.
+
+[Illustration: Carmichael had taken his turn.]
+
+His usual fortune befell him that day in Muirtown Station, for two
+retrievers, worming their way through the luggage, reached him, and
+made known their wants.
+
+"Thirsty?  I believe you.  All the way from England, and heat enough to
+roast you alive.  I 've got no dish, else I 'd soon get water.
+
+"Inverness?  Poor chaps, that's too far to go with your tongues like a
+lime-kiln.  Down, good dogs; I 'll be back in a minute."
+
+You can have no idea, unless you have tried it, how much water a soft
+clerical hat can hold--if you turn up the edges and bash down the
+inside with your fist, and fill the space to the brim.  But it is
+difficult to convey such a vessel with undiminished content through a
+crowd, and altogether impossible to lift one's eyes.  Carmichael was
+therefore quite unconscious that two new-comers to the shelter were
+watching him with keen delight as he came in bareheaded, flushed,
+triumphant--amid howls of welcome--and knelt down to hold the cup
+till--drinking time about in strict honour--the retrievers had reached
+the maker's name.
+
+"Do you think they would like a biscuit?" said a clear, sweet, low
+voice, with an accent of pride and just a flavour of amusement in its
+tone.  Carmichael rose in much embarrassment, and was quite confounded.
+
+They were standing together--father and daughter, evidently--and there
+was no manner of doubt about him.  A spare man, without an ounce of
+superfluous flesh, straight as a rod, and having an air of command,
+with keen grey eyes, close-cropped hair turning white, a clean-shaven
+face except where a heavy moustache covered a firm-set mouth--one
+recognised in him a retired army man of rank, a colonel at least, it
+might be a general; and the bronze on his face suggested long Indian
+service.  But he might have been dressed in Rob Roy tartan, or been a
+naval officer in full uniform, for all Carmichael knew.  A hundred
+thousand faces pass before your eyes and are forgotten, mere physical
+impressions; you see one, and it is in your heart for ever, as you saw
+it the first time.  Wavy black hair, a low, straight forehead, hazel
+eyes with long eyelashes, a perfectly-shaped Grecian nose, a strong
+mouth, whose upper lip had a curve of softness, a clear-cut chin with
+one dimple, small ears set high in the head, and a rich creamy
+complexion--that was what flashed upon Carmichael as he turned from the
+retrievers.  He was a man so unobservant of women that he could not
+have described a woman's dress to save his life or any other person's;
+and now that he is married--he is a middle-aged man now and threatened
+with stoutness--it is his wife's reproach that he does not know when
+she wears her new spring bonnet for the first time.  Yet he took in
+this young woman's dress, from the smart hat, with a white bird's wing
+on the side, and the close-fitting tailor made jacket, to the small,
+well-gloved hand in dogskin, the grey tweed skirt, and one shoe, with a
+tip on it, that peeped out below her frock.  Critics might have hinted
+that her shoulders were too square, and that her figure wanted somewhat
+in softness of outline; but it seemed to Carmichael that he had never
+seen so winsome or high-bred a woman; and so it has also seemed to many
+who have gone farther afield in the world than the young minister of
+Drumtochty.
+
+Carmichael was at that age when a man prides himself on dressing and
+thinking as he pleases, and had quite scandalised a Muirtown elder--a
+stout gentleman, who had come out in '43, and could with difficulty be
+weaned from Dr. Chalmers--by making his appearance on the preceding
+evening in amazing tweeds and a grey flannel shirt.  He explained
+casually that for a fifteen-mile walk flannels were absolutely
+necessary, and that he was rather pleased to find that he had come from
+door to door in four hours and two minutes exactly.  His host was at a
+loss for words, because he was comparing this unconventional youth with
+the fathers, who wore large white stocks and ambled along at about two
+and a half miles an hour, clearing their throats also in a very
+impressive way, and seasoning the principles of the Free Kirk with
+snuff of an excellent fragrance.  It was hard even for the most
+generous charity to identify the spirit of the Disruption in such a
+figure, and the good elder grew so proper and so didactic that
+Carmichael went from bad to worse.
+
+"Well, you would find the congregation in excellent order.  The
+Professor was a most painstaking man, though retiring in disposition,
+and his sermons were thoroughly solid and edifying.  They were possibly
+just a little above the heads of Drumtochty, but I always enjoyed Mr.
+Cunningham myself," nodding his head as one who understood all
+mysteries.
+
+"Did you ever happen to hear the advice Jamie Soutar gave the
+deputation from Muirtown when they came up to see whether Cunningham
+would be fit for the North Kirk, where two Bailies stand at the plate
+every day, and the Provost did not think himself good enough to be an
+elder?" for Carmichael was full of wickedness that day, and earning a
+judgment.
+
+His host indicated that the deputation had given in a very full and
+satisfactory report--he was, in fact, on the Session of the North
+himself--but that no reference had been made to Jamie.
+
+"Well, you must know," and Carmichael laid himself out for narration,
+"the people were harassed with raids from the Lowlands during
+Cunningham's time, and did their best in self-defence.  Spying makes
+men cunning, and it was wonderful how many subterfuges the deputations
+used to practise.  They would walk from Kildrummie as if they were
+staying in the district, and one retired tradesman talked about the
+crops as if he was a farmer, but it was a pity that he did n't know the
+difference between the cereals.
+
+"'Yon man that wes up aifter yir minister, Elspeth,' Hillocks said to
+Mrs. Macfadyen, 'hesna hed muckle money spent on his eddication.  "A
+graund field o' barley," he says, and as sure as a 'm stannin' here, it
+wes the haugh field o' aits.'
+
+"'He 's frae Glaisgie,' was all Elspeth answered, 'and by next Friday
+we 'll hae his name an' kirk.  He said he wes up for a walk an' juist
+dropped in, the wratch.'
+
+"Some drove from Muirtown, giving out that they were English tourists,
+speaking with a fine East Coast accent, and were rebuked by Lachlan
+Campbell for breaking the Sabbath.  Your men put up their trap at the
+last farm in Netheraird--which always has grudged Drumtochty its
+ministers and borne their removal with resignation--and came up in
+pairs, who pretended they did not know one another.
+
+"Jamie was hearing the Professor's last lecture on Justification, and
+our people asked him to take charge of the strangers.  He found out the
+town from their hats, and escorted them to the boundaries of the
+parish, assisting their confidences till one of your men--I think it
+was the Provost--admitted that it had taken them all their time to
+follow the sermon.
+
+"'A 'm astonished at ye,' said Jamie, for the Netheraird man let it
+out; 'yon wes a sermon for young fouk, juist milk, ye ken, tae the
+ordinar' discoorses.  Surely,' as if the thought had just struck him,
+'ye werena thinkin' o' callin' Maister Cunningham tae Muirtown.
+
+"'Edinboorgh, noo; that micht dae gin the feck o' the members be
+professors, but Muirtown wud be clean havers.  There's times when the
+Drumtochty fouk themsels canna understand the cratur, he 's that deep.
+As for Muirtown'--here Jamie allowed himself a brief rest of enjoyment;
+'but ye've hed a fine drive, tae say naethin' o' the traivel.'"
+
+Then, having begun, Carmichael retailed so many of Jamie's most wicked
+sayings, and so exalted the Glen as a place "where you can go up one
+side and down the other with your dogs, and every second man you meet
+will give you something to remember," that the city dignitary doubted
+afterwards to his wife "whether this young man was . . . quite what we
+have been accustomed to in a Free Church minister."  Carmichael ought
+to have had repentances for shocking a worthy man, but instead thereof
+laughed in his room and slept soundly, not knowing that he would be
+humbled in the dust by mid-day to-morrow.
+
+It seemed to him on the platform as if an hour passed while he, who had
+played with a city father, stood, clothed with shame, before this
+commanding young woman.  Had she ever looked upon a more abject wretch?
+and Carmichael photographed himself with merciless accuracy, from his
+hair that he had not thrown back to an impress of dust which one knee
+had taken from the platform, and he registered a resolution that he
+would never be again boastfully indifferent to the loss of a button on
+his coat.  She stooped and fed the dogs, who did her homage, and he
+marked that her profile was even finer--more delicate, more perfect,
+more bewitching--than her front face, but he still stood holding his
+shapeless hat in his hand, and for the first time in his life had no
+words to say.
+
+"They are very polite dogs," and Miss Carnegie gave Carmichael one more
+chance; "they make as much of a biscuit as if it were a feast; but I do
+think dogs have such excellent manners, they are always so
+un-self-conscious."
+
+"I wish I were a dog," said Carmichael, with much solemnity, and
+afterwards was filled with thankfulness that the baggage behind gave
+way at that moment, and that an exasperated porter was able to express
+his mind freely.
+
+"Dinna try tae lift that box for ony sake, man.  Sall, ye 're no'
+feared," as Carmichael, thirsting for action, swung it up unaided; and
+then, catching sight of the merest wisp of white, "A' didna see ye were
+a minister, an' the word cam oot sudden."
+
+"You would find it a help to say Northumberland, Cumberland,
+Westmoreland, and Durham," and with a smile to Carmichael, still
+bareheaded and now redder than ever, Miss Carnegie went along the
+platform to see the Hielant train depart.  It was worth waiting to
+watch the two minutes' scrimmage, and to hear the great man say, as he
+took off his cap with deliberation and wiped his brow, "That's anither
+year ower; some o' you lads see tae that Dunleith train."  There was a
+day when Carmichael would have enjoyed the scene to the full, but now
+he had eyes for nothing but that tall, slim figure and the white bird's
+wing.
+
+When they disappeared into the Dunleith train, Carmichael had a wild
+idea of entering the same compartment, and in the end had to be pushed
+into the last second by the guard, who knew most of his regular people
+and every one of the Drumtochty men.  He was so much engaged with his
+own thoughts that he gave two English tourists to understand that Lord
+Kilspindie's castle, standing amid its woods on the bank of the Tay,
+was a recently erected dye work, and that as the train turned off the
+North trunk line for Dunleith they might at any moment enter the pass
+of Killiecrankie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+PEACE.
+
+"The last stage now, Kit; in less than two hours we'll see Tochty
+woods.  The very thought makes me a boy again, and it seems yesterday
+that I kissed your mother on the door-step of the old lodge and went
+off to the Crimean war.
+
+"That's Muirtown Castle over there in the wood--a grand place in its
+way, but nothing to our home, lassie.  Kilspindie--he was Viscount Hay
+then--joined me at Muirtown, and we fought through the weary winter.
+He left the army after the war, with lots of honour.  A good fellow was
+Hay, both in the trenches and the messroom.
+
+"I 've never seen him since, and I dare say he 's forgotten a battered
+old Indian.  Besides, he's the big swell in this district, and I 'm
+only a poor Hielant laird, with a wood and a tumble-down house and a
+couple of farms."
+
+"You are also a shameless hypocrite and deceiver, for you believe that
+the Carnegies are as old as the Hays, and you know that, though you
+have only two farms, you have twelve medals and seven wounds.  What
+does money matter? it simply makes people vulgar."
+
+"Nonsense, lassie; if a Carnegie runs down money, it's because he has
+got none and wishes he had.  If you and I had only a few hundreds a
+year over the half-pay to rattle in our pockets, we should have lots of
+little pleasures, and you might have lived in England, with all sorts
+of variety and comfort, instead of wandering about India with a gang of
+stupid old chaps who have been so busy fighting that they never had
+time to read a book."
+
+"You mean like yourself, dad, and V. C. and Colonel Kinloch?  Where
+could a girl have found finer company than with my Knights of King
+Arthur?  And do you dare to insinuate that I could have been content
+away from the regiment, that made me their daughter after mother died,
+and the army?
+
+"Pleasure!" and Kate's cheek flushed.  "I 've had it since I was a
+little tot and could remember anything--the bugles sounding reveille in
+the clear air, and the sergeants drilling the new drafts in the
+morning, and the regiment coming out with the band before and you at
+its head, and hearing 'God save the Queen' at a review, and seeing the
+companies passing like one man before the General.
+
+"Don't you think that's better than tea-drinking, and gossiping, and
+sewing meetings, and going for walks in some stupid little hole of a
+country town?  Oh, you wicked, aggravating dad.  Now, what more will
+money do?"
+
+"Well," said the General, with much gravity, "if you were even a
+moderate heiress there is no saying but that we might pick up a
+presentable husband for you among the lairds.  As it is, I fancy a
+country minister is all you could expect.
+
+"Don't . . . my ears will come off some day; one was loosened by a cut
+in the Mutiny.  No, I 'll never do the like again.  But some day you
+will marry, all the same," and Kate's father rubbed his ears.
+
+"No, I 'm not going to leave you, for nobody else could ever make a
+curry to please; and if I do, it will not be a Scotch minister--horrid,
+bigoted wretches, V. C. says.  Am I like a minister's wife, to address
+mothers' meetings and write out sermons?  By the way, is there a kirk
+at Drumtochty, or will you read prayers to Janet and Donald and me?"
+
+"When I was a lad there was just one minister in Drumtochty, Mr.
+Davidson, a splendid specimen of the old school, who, on great
+occasions, wore gaiters and a frill with a diamond in the centre; he
+carried a gold-headed stick, and took snuff out of a presentation box.
+
+"His son Sandie was my age to a year, and many a ploy we had together;
+there was the jackdaw's nest in the ivy on the old tower we harried
+together," and the General could only indicate the delightful risk of
+the exploit.  "My father and the minister were pacing the avenue at the
+time, and caught sight of us against the sky.  'It's your rascal and
+mine, Laird,' we heard the minister say, and they waited till we got
+down, and then each did his duty by his own for trying to break his
+neck; but they were secretly proud of the exploit, for I caught my
+father showing old Lord Kilspindie the spot, and next time Hay was up
+he tried to reach the place, and stuck where the wall hangs over.  I
+'ll point out the hole this evening; you can see it from the other side
+of the den quite plain."
+
+[Illustration: "Many a ploy we had together."]
+
+"Sandie went to the church--I wish every parson were as straight--and
+Kilspindie appointed him to succeed the old gentleman, and when I saw
+him in his study last month, it seemed as if his father stood before
+you, except the breeches and the frill; but Sandie has a  marvellous
+stock--what havers I 'm deivin' you with, lassie."
+
+"Tell me about Sandie this minute--did he remember the raiding of the
+jack-daws?"
+
+"He did," cried the General, in great spirits; "he just looked at me
+for an instant--no one knew of my visit--and then he gripped my hands,
+and do you know, Kit, he was . . . well, and there was a lump in my
+throat too; it would be about thirty years, for one reason and another,
+since we met."
+
+"What did he say? the very words, dad," and Kate held up her finger in
+command.
+
+"'Jack, old man, is this really you?'--he held me at arm's
+length--'man, div ye mind the jackdaw's nest?'"
+
+"Did he?  And he 's to be our padre.  I know I 'll love him at once.
+Go on, everything, for you 've never told me anything about Drumtochty."
+
+"We had a glorious time going over old times.  We fished up every trout
+again, and we shot our first day on the moor again with Peter Stewart,
+Kilspindie's head keeper, as fine an old Highlander as ever lived.
+Stewart said in the evening, 'You 're a pair of prave boys, as becometh
+your fathers' sons,' and Sandie gave him two and fourpence he had
+scraped for a tip, but I had only one and elevenpence--we were both
+kept bare.  But he knew better than to refuse our offerings, though he
+never saw less than gold or notes from the men that shot at the lodge,
+and Sandie remembered how he touched his Highland bonnet and said, 'I
+will be much obliged to you both; and you will be coming to the moor
+another day, for I hef his lordship's orders.'
+
+"Boys are queer animals, lassie; we were prouder that Peter accepted
+our poor little tip than about the muirfowl we shot, though I had three
+brace and Sandie four.  Highlanders are all gentlemen by birth, and be
+sure of this, Kit, it's only that breed which can manage boys and
+soldiers.  But where am I now?"
+
+"With Sandie--I beg his reverence's pardon--with the Rev. the padre of
+Drumtochty," and Kate went over and sat down beside the General to
+anticipate any rebellion, for it was a joy to see the warrior turning
+into a boy before her eyes.  "Well?"
+
+"We had a royal dinner, as it seemed to me.  Sandie has a couple of
+servants, man and wife, who rule him with a rod of iron, but I would
+forgive that for the cooking and the loyalty.  After dinner he
+disappeared with a look of mystery, and came back with a cobwebbed
+bottle of the old shape, short and bunchy, which he carried as if it
+were a baby.
+
+"'Just two bottles of my father's port left; we 'll have one to-day to
+welcome you back, and we 'll keep the other to celebrate your
+daughter's marriage.' He had one sister, younger by ten years, and her
+death in girlhood nearly broke his heart.  It struck me from something
+he said that his love is with her; at any rate, he has never married.
+Sandie has just one fault--he would not touch a cheroot; but he snuffs
+handsomely out of his father's box.
+
+"Of course, I can't say anything about his preaching, but it's bound to
+be sensible stuff."
+
+"Bother the sermons; he 's an old dear himself, and I know we shall be
+great friends.  We 'll flirt together, and you will not have one word
+to say, so make up your mind to submit."
+
+"We shall have good days in the old place, lassie; but you know we are
+poor, and must live quietly.  What I have planned is a couple of handy
+women or so in the house with Donald.  Janet is going to live at the
+gate where she was brought up, but she will look after you well, and we
+'ll always have a bed and a glass of wine for a friend.  Then you can
+have a run up to London and get your things, Kit," and the General
+looked wistfully at his daughter, as one who would have given her a
+kingdom.
+
+"Do you think your girl cares so much about luxuries and dresses?  Of
+course I like to look well--every woman does, and if she pretends
+otherwise she 's a hypocrite; but money just seems to make some women
+hideous.  It is enough for me to have you all to myself up in your old
+home, and to see you enjoying the rest you have earned.  We'll be as
+happy as two lovers, dad," and Kate threw an arm round her father's
+neck and kissed him.
+
+"We have to change here," as the train began to slow; "prepare to see
+the most remarkable railway in the empire, and a guard to correspond."
+And then it came upon them, the first sight that made a Drumtochty
+man's heart warm, and assured him that he was nearing home.
+
+An engine on a reduced scale, that had once served in the local goods
+department of a big station, and then, having grown old and asthmatic,
+was transferred on half-pay, as it were, to the Kildrummie branch,
+where it puffed between the junction and the terminus half a dozen
+times a day, with two carriages and an occasional coal truck.  Times
+there were when wood was exported from Kildrummie, and then the train
+was taken down in detachments, and it was a pleasant legend that, one
+market day, when Drumtochty was down in force, the engine stuck, and
+Drumsheugh invited the Glen to get out and push.  The two carriages
+were quite distinguished in construction, and had seen better days.
+One consisted of a single first-class compartment in the centre, with a
+bulge of an imposing appearance, supported on either side by two
+seconds.  As no native ever travelled second, one compartment had been
+employed as a reserve to the luggage van, so that Drumtochty might have
+a convenient place of deposit for calves, but the other was jealously
+reserved by Peter Bruce for strangers with second-class tickets, that
+his branch might not be put to confusion.  The other carriage was
+three-fourths third class and one-fourth luggage, and did the real
+work; on its steps Peter stood and dispensed wisdom, between the
+junction and Kildrummie.
+
+But neither the carriages nor the engine could have made history
+without the guard, beside whom the guards of the main line--even of the
+expresses that ran to London--were as nothing--fribbles and weaklings.
+For the guard of the Kildrummie branch was absolute ruler, lording it
+over man and beast without appeal, and treating the Kildrummie
+stationmaster as a federated power.  Peter was a short man of great
+breadth, like unto the cutting of an oak-tree, with a penetrating grey
+eye, an immovable countenance, and bushy whiskers.  It was understood
+that when the line was opened, and the directors were about to fill up
+the post of guard from a number of candidates qualified by long
+experience on various lines, Peter, who had been simply wasting his
+time driving a carrier's cart, came in, and sitting down opposite the
+board--two lairds and a farmer--looked straight before him without
+making any application.  It was felt by all in an instant that only one
+course was open, in the eternal fitness of things.  Experience was well
+enough, but special creation was better, and Peter was immediately
+appointed, his name being asked by the chairman afterwards as a
+formality.  From the beginning he took up a masterful position,
+receiving his human cargo at the junction and discharging it at the
+station with a power that even Drumtochty did not resist, and a
+knowledge of individuals that was almost comprehensive.  It is true
+that, boasting one Friday evening concerning the "crooded" state of the
+train, he admitted with reluctance that "there 's a stranger in the
+second I canna mak oot," but it is understood that he solved the
+problem before the man got his luggage at Kildrummie.
+
+Perhaps Peter's most famous achievement was his demolition of a south
+country bagman, who had made himself unpleasant, and the story was much
+tasted by our guard's admirers.  This self-important and vivacious
+gentleman, seated in the first, was watching Peter's leisurely
+movements on the Kildrummie platform with much impatience, and lost all
+self-control on Peter going outside to examine the road for any distant
+passenger.
+
+"Look here, guard, this train ought to have left five minutes ago, and
+I give you notice that if we miss our connection I 'll hold your
+company responsible."
+
+At the sound of this foreign voice with its indecent clamour, Peter
+returned and took up his position opposite the speaker, while the staff
+and the whole body of passengers--four Kildrummie and three Drumtochty,
+quite sufficient for the situation--waited the issue.  Not one word did
+Peter deign to reply, but he fixed the irate traveller with a gaze so
+searching, so awful, so irresistible, that the poor man fell back into
+his seat and pretended to look out at the opposite window.  After a
+pause of thirty seconds, Peter turned to the engine-driver.
+
+"They 're a' here noo, an' there 's nae use waitin' langer; ca' awa',
+but ye needna distress the engine."
+
+It was noticed that the foolhardy traveller kept the full length of the
+junction between himself and Peter till the Dunleith train came in,
+while his very back was eloquent of humiliation, and Hillocks offered
+his snuff-box ostentatiously to Peter, which that worthy accepted as a
+public tribute of admiration.
+
+"Look, Kate, there he is;" and there Peter was, standing in his
+favourite attitude, his legs wide apart and his thumbs in his armholes,
+superior, abstracted, motionless till the train stopped, when he came
+forward.
+
+[Illustration: Peter was standing in his favourite attitude.]
+
+"Prood tae see ye, General, coming back at laist, an' the Miss wi' ye;
+it 'll no be the blame o' the fouk up by gin ye bena happy.  Drumtochty
+hes an idea o' itsel', and peety the man 'at tries tae drive them, but
+they 're couthy.
+
+"This wy, an' a'll see tae yir luggage," and before Peter made for the
+Dunleith van it is said that he took off his cap to Kate; but if so,
+this was the only time he had ever shown such gallantry to a lady.
+
+Certainly he must have been flustered by something, for he did not
+notice that Carmichael, overcome by shyness at the sight of the
+Carnegies in the first, had hid himself in the second, till he closed
+the doors; then the Carnegies heard it all.
+
+"It's I, Peter," very quietly; "your first has passengers to-day,
+and . . . I 'll just sit here."
+
+"Come oot o' that," after a moment, during which Peter had simply
+looked; then the hat and the tweeds came stumbling into the first,
+making some sort of a bow and muttering an apology.
+
+"A'll tak' yir ticket, Maister Carmichael," with severity.  "General,"
+suddenly relaxing, "this is the Free Kirk minister of yir pairish, an'
+a 'm jidgin' he 'll no try the second again."
+
+Carmichael lifted his head and caught Kate's eye, and at the meeting of
+humour they laughed aloud.  Whereupon the General said, "My daughter,
+Miss Carnegie," and they became so friendly before they reached
+Kildrummie that Carmichael forgot his disgraceful appearance and when
+the General offered him a lift up, simply clutched at the opportunity.
+
+The trap was a four-wheeled dog-cart.  Kate drove, with her father by
+her side and Carmichael behind, but he found it necessary to turn round
+to give information of names and places, and he so managed that he
+could catch Kate's profile half the time.
+
+When he got down at the foot of the hill by Hillocks' farm, to go up
+the near road, instead thereof he scrambled along the ridge, and looked
+through the trees as the carriage passed below; but he did not escape.
+
+"What's he glowerin' at doon there?" Hillocks inquired of Jamie Soutar,
+to whom he was giving some directions about a dyke, and Hillocks made a
+reconnaissance.  "A 'll warrant that's the General and his dochter.
+She 's a weel-faured lassie an' speerity-lookin'."
+
+"It cowes a'," said Jamie to himself; "the first day he ever saw her;
+but it's aye the way, aince an' ever, or . . . never."
+
+"What's the Free Kirk, dad?" when Carmichael had gone.  "Is it the same
+as the Methodists?"
+
+"No, no, quite different.  I 'm not up in those things, but I 've heard
+it was a lot of fellows who would not obey the laws, and so they left
+and made a kirk for themselves, where they do whatever they like.  By
+the way, that was the young fellow we saw giving the dogs water at
+Muirtown.  I rather like him; but why did he look such a fool, and try
+to escape us at the junction?"
+
+"How should I know?  I suppose because he is a . . . foolish boy.  And
+now, dad, for the Lodge and Tochty woods."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS.
+
+It was the custom of the former time to construct roads on a straight
+line, with a preference for uphill and down, and engineers refused to
+make a circuit of twenty yards to secure level ground.  There were two
+advantages in this uncompromising principle of construction, and it may
+be doubtful which commended itself most to the mind of our fathers.
+Roads were drained after the simplest fashion, because a standing pool
+in the hollow had more than a compensation in the dryness of the ascent
+and descent, while the necessity of sliddering down one side and
+scrambling up the other reduced driving to the safe average of four
+miles an hour--horse-doctors forming a class by themselves, and being
+preserved in their headlong career by the particular Providence which
+has a genial regard for persons who have too little sense or have taken
+too much liquor.  Degenerate descendants, anxious to obtain the maximum
+of speed with the minimum of exertion, have shown a quite wonderful
+ingenuity in circumventing hills, so the road between Drumtochty Manse
+and Tochty Lodge gate was duplicated, and the track that plunged into
+the hollow was now forsaken of wheeled traffic and overgrown with grass.
+
+"This way, Kate; it's the old road, and the way I came to kirk with my
+mother.  Yes, it's narrow, but we'll get through and down below--it is
+worth the seeing."
+
+So they forced a passage where the overgrown hedges resisted the
+wheels, and the trees, wet with a morning shower, dashed Kate's jacket
+with a pleasant spray, and the rail of the dog-cart was festooned with
+tendrils of honeysuckle and wild geranium.
+
+"There is the parish kirk of Drumtochty," as they came out and halted
+on the crest of the hill, "and though it be not much to look at after
+the Norman churches of the south, it's a brave old kirk in our fashion,
+and well set in the Glen."
+
+For it stood on a knoll, whence the ground sloped down to the Tochty,
+and it lay with God's acre round it in the shining of the sun.  Half a
+dozen old beeches made a shadow in the summer-time, and beat off the
+winter's storms.  One standing at the west corner of the kirkyard had a
+fuller and sweeter view of the Glen than could be got anywhere save
+from the beeches at the Lodge; but then nothing like unto that can be
+seen far or near, and I have marvelled why painting men have never had
+it on their canvas.
+
+"Our vault is at the east end, where the altar was in the old days, and
+there our dead of many generations lie.  A Carnegie always prayed to be
+buried with his people in Drumtochty, but as it happened, two out of
+three of our house have fallen on the field, and so most of us have not
+had our wish.
+
+"Black John, my great-grandfather, was out in '45, and escaped to
+France.  He married a Highland lassie orphaned there, and entered the
+French service, as many a Scot did before him since the days of the
+Scots Guards.  But when he felt himself a-dying, he asked leave of the
+English government to come home, and he would not die till he laid
+himself down in his room in the tower.  Then he gave directions for his
+funeral, how none were to be asked of the county folk but Drummonds and
+Hays and Stewarts from Blair Athole and such like that had been out
+with the Prince.  And he made his wife promise that she would have him
+dressed for his coffin as he fought on Culloden field, for he had kept
+the clothes.
+
+"Then he asked that the window should be opened that he might hear the
+lilting of the burn below; and he called for my grandfather, who was
+only a young lad, and commanded him to enter one of the Scottish
+regiments and be a loyal kingsman, since all was over with the Stewarts.
+
+"He said a prayer and kissed his wife's hand, being a courtly
+gentleman, and died listening to the sound of the water running over
+the stones in the den below."
+
+"It was as good as dying on the field," said Kate, her face flushing
+with pride; "that is an ancestor worth remembering; and did he get a
+worthy funeral?"
+
+"More than he asked for; his old comrades gathered from far and near,
+and some of the chiefs that were out of hiding came down, and they
+brought him up this very road, with the pipers playing before the
+coffin.  Fifty gentlemen buried John Carnegie, and every man of them
+had been out with the Prince.
+
+"When they gathered in the stone hall you 'll see soon, his
+friend-in-arms, Patrick Murray, gave three toasts.  The first was 'the
+king,' and every man bared his head; the second was 'to him that is
+gone;' the third was 'to the friends that are far awa';' and then one
+of the chiefs proposed another, 'to the men of Culloden;' and after
+that every gentleman dashed his glass on the floor.  Though he was only
+a little lad at the time, my grandfather never forgot the sight.
+
+"He also told me that his mother never shed a tear, but looked prouder
+than he ever saw her, and before they left the hall she bade each
+gentleman good-bye, and to the chief she spoke in Gaelic, being of
+Cluny's blood and a gallant lady.
+
+"Another thing she did also which the lad could not forget, for she
+brought down her husband's sword from the room in the turret, and
+Patrick Murray, of the House of Athole, fastened it above the big
+fireplace, where it hangs unto this day, crossed now with my father's,
+as you will see, Kate, unless we stand here all day going over old
+stories."
+
+"They 're glorious stories, dad; why did n't you tell them to me
+before?  I want to get into the spirit of the past and feel the
+Carnegie blood swinging in my veins before we come to the Lodge.  What
+did they do afterwards, or was that all?"
+
+"They mounted their horses in the courtyard, and as each man passed out
+of the gate he took off his hat and bowed low to the widow, who stood
+in a window I will show you, and watched till the last disappeared into
+the avenue; but my grandfather ran out and saw them ride down the road
+in order of threes, a goodly company of gentlemen.  But this sight is
+better than horsemen and swords."
+
+They were now in the hollow between the kirk and the Lodge, a cup of
+greenery surrounded by wood.  Behind, they still saw the belfry through
+the beeches; before, away to the right, the grey stone of a turret
+showed among the trees.  The burn that sang to Black John ran beneath
+them with a pleasant sound, and fifty yards of turf climbed up to the
+cottage where the old road joined the new and the avenue of the Lodge
+began.  Over this ascent the branches met, through which the sunshine
+glimmered and flickered, and down the centre came a white and brown cow
+in charge of an old woman.
+
+"It's Bell Robb, that lives in the cottage there among the bushes.  I
+was at the parish school with her, Kate--she 's just my age--for we
+were all John Tamson's bairns in those days, and got our learning and
+our licks together, laird's son and cottar's daughter.
+
+"People would count it a queer mixture nowadays, but there were some
+advantages in the former parish school idea; there were lots of
+cleverer subalterns in the old regiment, but none knew his men so well
+as I did.  I had played and fought with their kind.  Would you mind
+saying a word to Bell . . . just her name or something?" for this was a
+new life to the pride of the regiment, as they called Kate, and
+Carnegie was not sure how she might take it.  Kate was a lovable lass,
+but like every complete woman, she had a temper and a stock of
+prejudices.  She was good comrade with all true men, although her heart
+was whole, and with a few women that did not mince their words or carry
+two faces, but Kate had claws inside the velvet, and once she so
+handled with her tongue a young fellow who offended her that he sent in
+his papers.  What she said was not much, but it was memorable, and
+every word drew blood.  Her father was never quite certain what she
+would do, although he was always sure of her love.
+
+"Do you suppose, dad, that I 'm to take up with all your friends of the
+jackdaw days?  You seem to have kept fine company."  Kate was already
+out of the dogcart, and now took Bell by the hand.
+
+"I am the General's daughter, and he was telling me that you and he
+were playmates long ago.  You 'll let me come to see you, and you 'll
+tell me all his exploits when he was John Carnegie?"
+
+[Illustration: "I am the General's daughter."]
+
+"To think he minded me, an' him sae lang awa' at the weary wars."  Bell
+was between the laughing and the crying.  "We 're lifted to know oor
+laird 's a General, and that he's gotten sic honour.  There's nae bluid
+like the auld bluid, an' the Carnegies cud aye afford to be hamely.
+
+"Ye're like him," and Bell examined Kate carefully; "but a' can tell
+yir mither's dochter, a weel-faured mettlesome lady as wes ever seen;
+wae 's me, wae 's me for the wars," at the sight of Carnegie's face;
+"but ye 'll come in to see Marjorie.  A 'll mak her ready," and Bell
+hurried into the cottage.
+
+"Marjorie has been blind from her birth.  She was the pet of the
+school, and now Bell takes care of her.  Davidson was telling me that
+she wanted to support Marjorie off the wages she earns as a field hand
+on the farms, and the parish had to force half-a-crown a week on them;
+but hear this."
+
+"Never mind hoo ye look," Bell was speaking.  "A' canna keep them
+waitin' till ye be snoddit."
+
+"Gie me ma kep, at ony rate, that the minister brocht frae Muirtown,
+and Drumsheugh's shawl; it wudna be respectfu' to oor Laird, an' it his
+first veesit;" and there was a note of refinement in the voice, as of
+one living apart.
+
+"Yes, I'm here, Marjorie," and the General stooped over the low bed
+where the old woman was lying, "and this is my daughter, the only child
+left me; you would hear that all my boys were killed."
+
+"We did that, and we were a' wae for ye; a' thocht o' ye and a' saw ye
+in yir sorrow, for them 'at canna see ootside see the better inside.
+But it 'll be some comfort to be in the hame o' yir people aince mair,
+and to ken ye 've dune yir wark weel.  It's pleasant for us to think
+the licht 'll be burnin' in the windows o' the Lodge again, and that ye
+'re come back aifter the wars.
+
+"Miss Kate, wull ye lat me pass ma hand ower yir face, an' then a 'll
+ken what like ye are better nor some 'at hes the joy o' seein' ye wi'
+their een. . . .  The Glen 'll be the happier for the sicht o' ye; a'
+thank ye for yir kindness to a puir woman."
+
+"If you begin to pay compliments, Marjorie, I 'll tell you what I think
+of that cap; for the pink is just the very shade for your complexion,
+and it's a perfect shape."
+
+"Ma young minister, Maister Carmichael, seleckit it in Muirtown, an' a'
+heard that he went ower sax shops to find one to his fancy; he never
+forgets me, an' he wrote me a letter on his holiday.  A'body likes him
+for his bonnie face an' honest ways."
+
+"Oh, I know him already, Marjorie, for he drove up with us, and I
+thought him very nice; but we must go, for you know I 've not yet seen
+our home, and I 'm just tingling with curiosity."
+
+"You 'll not leave without breakin' bread; it's little we hae, but we
+can offer ye oat-cake an' milk in token o' oor loyalty," and then Bell
+brought the elements of Scottish food; and when Marjorie's lips moved
+in prayer as they ate, it seemed to Carnegie and his daughter like a
+sacrament.  So the two went from the fellowship of the poor to their
+ancient house.
+
+They drove along the avenue between the stately beeches that stood on
+either side and reached out their branches, almost but not quite unto
+meeting, so that the sun, now in the south, made a train of light down
+which the General and Kate came home.  At the end of the beeches the
+road wheeled to the right, and Kate saw for the first time the
+dwelling-place of her people.  Tochty Lodge was of the fourth period of
+Scottish castellated architecture, and till it fell into disrepair was
+a very perfect example of the sixteenth century mansion-house, where
+strength of defence could not yet be dispensed with, for the Carnegies
+were too near the Highland border to do without thick walls or to risk
+habitation on the ground floor.  The buildings had first been erected
+on the L plan, and then had been made into a quadrangle, so that on the
+left was the main part, with a tower at the south-west corner over the
+den, and a wing at the south-east coming out to meet the gate.  On the
+north-east and north were a tower and rooms now in ruins, and along the
+west ran a wall some six feet high with a stone walk three feet from
+the top, whence you could look down on the burn.  A big gateway, whose
+doors were of oak studded with nails, with a grated lattice for
+observation, gave entrance to the courtyard.  In the centre of the yard
+there was an ancient oak and a draw well whose water never failed.  The
+eastern face was bare of ivy, except at the north corner, where stood
+the jackdaws' tower; but the rough grey stone was relieved by the
+tendrils and red blossoms of the hardy tropaeolum which despises the
+rich soil of the south and the softer air, and grows luxuriantly on our
+homely northern houses.  As they came to the gateway, the General bade
+Kate pull up and read the scroll above, which ran in clear-cut letters--
+
+  TRY AND THEN
+  TRVST BETTER GVDE
+  ASSVRANCE
+  BOT TRUST NOT
+  OR YE TRY FOR FEAR
+  OF REPENTANCE.
+
+
+"We 've been a slow dour race, Kit, who never gave our heart lightly,
+but having given it, never played the traitor.  Fortune has not
+favoured us, for acre after acre has gone from our hands, but, thank
+God, we 've never had dishonour."
+
+"And never will, dad, for we are the last of the race."
+
+Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway of the tower, and gave
+Kate welcome as one whose ancestors had for four generations served the
+Carnegies, since the day Black John had married a Macpherson.
+
+[Illustration: Janet Macpherson was waiting in the deep doorway.]
+
+"Calf of my heart," she cried, and took Kate in her arms.  "It is your
+foster-mother that will be glad to see you in the home of your people,
+and will be praying that God will give you peace and good days."
+
+Then they went up the winding stone stair, with deep, narrow windows,
+and came into the dining-hall where the fifty Jacobites toasted the
+king and many a gathering had taken place in the olden time.  It was
+thirty-five feet long by fifteen broad, and twenty-two feet high.  The
+floor was of flags over arches below, and the bare stone walls showed
+at the windows and above the black oak panelling which reached ten feet
+from the ground.  The fireplace was six feet high, and so wide that two
+could sit on either side within.  Upon the mantelpiece the Carnegie
+arms stood out in bold relief under the two crossed swords.  One or two
+portraits of dead Carnegies and some curious weapons broke the monotony
+of the walls, and from the roof hung a finely wrought iron candelabra.
+The western portion of the hall was separated by a screen of open
+woodwork, and made a pleasant dining-room.  A door in the corner led
+into the tower, which had a library, with Carnegie's bedroom above, and
+higher still Kate's room, each with a tiny dressing closet.  For the
+Carnegies always lived together in this tower, and their guests at the
+other end of the hall.  The library had two windows.  From one you
+could look down and see nothing but the foliage of the den, with a
+gleam of water where the burn made a pool, and from the other you
+looked over a meadow with big trees to the Tochty sweeping round a
+bend, and across to the high opposite banks covered with brush-wood.
+First they visited Carnegie's room.
+
+"Here have we been born, and died if we did not fall in battle, and
+it's not a bad billet after all for an old soldier.  Yes, that is your
+mother when we were married, but I like this one better," and the
+General touched his breast, for he carried his love next his heart in a
+silver locket of Indian workmanship.
+
+Three fine deerskins lay on the floor, and one side of the room was
+hung with tapestry; but the most striking piece of furnishing in the
+room was an oak cupboard, sunk a foot into the wall.
+
+"I 'll show you something in that cabinet after luncheon, Kate; but now
+let's see your room."
+
+"How beautiful, and how cunning you have been," and then she took an
+inventory of the furniture, all new, but all in keeping with the age of
+the room.  "You have spent far too much on a very self-willed and
+bad-tempered girl, and all I can do is to make you promise that you
+will come up here sometimes and let me give you tea in this
+window-seat, where we can see the woods and the Tochty."
+
+"Well, Donald," said the General at table to his faithful servant, "how
+do you think Drumtochty will suit you?"
+
+"Any place where you and Miss Kate will be living iss a good place for
+me, and there are six or maybe four men I hef been meeting that hef the
+language, but not good Gaelic--just poor Perthshire talk," for Donald
+was a West Highlander, and prided himself on his better speech.
+
+"And what about a kirk, Donald?  Aren't you Free like Janet?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am Free; but it iss not to that kirk I will be going most
+here, and I am telling Janet that she will be caring more about a man
+that hass a pleasant way with him than about the truth."
+
+"What's wrong with things, Donald, since we lay in Edinburgh twenty
+years ago, and you used to give me bits of the Free Kirk sermons?"
+
+"It iss all wrong that they hef been going these last years, for they
+stand to sing and they sit to pray, and they will be using human himes.
+And it iss great pieces of the Bible they hef cut out, and I am told
+that they are not done yet, but are going from bad to worse," and
+Donald invited questioning.
+
+"What more are they after, man?"
+
+"It will be myself that has found it out, and it iss only what might be
+expected, but I am not saying that you will be believing me."
+
+"Out with it, Donald; let's hear what kind of people we 've come
+amongst."
+
+"They 've been just fairly left to themselves, and the godless bodies
+hef taken to watering the whisky."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A SECRET CHAMBER.
+
+"The cabinet now, dad, and at once," when they went up the stairs and
+were standing in the room.  "Just give me three guesses about the
+mystery; but first let me examine."
+
+It was pretty to see Kate opening the doors, curiously carved with
+hunting scenes, and searching the interior, tapping with her knuckles
+and listening for a hollow sound.
+
+"Is it a treasure we are to find?  Then that's one point.  Not in the
+cabinet?  I have it; there is a door into some other place; am n't I
+right?"
+
+"Where could it be?  We're in a tower cut off from the body of the
+Lodge, with a room above and a room below;" and the General sat down to
+allow full investigation.
+
+After many journeys up and down the stair, and many questions that
+brought no light, Kate played a woman's trick up in her room.
+
+"The General wishes to show me the concealed room in this tower, Janet,
+or whatever you call it.  Would you kindly tell us how to get entrance?
+You need n't come down; just explain to me;" and Kate was very pleasant
+indeed.
+
+"Yes, I am hearing there iss a room in the tower, Miss Kate, that
+strangers will not be able to find; and it would be very curious if the
+Carnegies did not have a safe place for an honest gentleman when he
+wass in a little trouble.  All the good houses will have their secret
+places, and it will not be easy to find some of them.  Oh no; now I
+will remember one at Glamis Castle. . . ."
+
+"Never mind Glamis, nurse, for the General is waiting.  Where is the
+spring? is it in the oak cabinet?"
+
+"It will be good for the General to be resting himself after his
+luncheon, and he will be thinking many things in his room.  Oh yes,"
+continued Janet, settling herself down to narrative, and giving no heed
+to Kate's beguiling ways, "old Mary that died near a hundred would be
+often telling me stories of the old days when I wass a little girl, and
+the one I liked best wass about the hiding of the Duke of Perth."
+
+"You will tell me that to-morrow, when I come down to see your house,
+Janet, and to-day you 'll tell me how to open the spring."
+
+"But it would be a pity not to finish the story about the Duke of
+Perth, for it goes well, and it will be good for a Carnegie to hear
+it."  And Kate flung herself into the window-seat, but was hugely
+interested all the same.
+
+"Mary wass sitting at her door in the evening, and that would be three
+days after Culloden, for the news had been sent by a sure hand from the
+Laird, when a man came riding along the road, and as soon as Mary saw
+him she knew he wass somebody; but perhaps it will be too long a
+story," and Janet began to arrange dresses in a wardrobe.
+
+"No, no; as you have begun it, I want to hear the end, but quick, for
+there 's the room to see and the rest of the Lodge before it grows
+dark.  What like was he?"
+
+"He wass a man that looked as if he would be commanding, but his
+clothes were common grey, and stained with the road.  He wass very
+tired, and could hardly hold himself up in the saddle, and his horse
+wass covered with foam.  'Is this Tochty Lodge?' he asked, softening
+his voice as one trying to speak humbly.  'I am passing this way, and
+have a message for Mistress Carnegie; think you that I can have speech
+of her quietly?'
+
+"So Mary will go up and tell the lady that one wass waiting to see her,
+and that he seemed a noble gentleman.  When they came down to the
+courtyard he had drawn water for his horse from the well, and wass
+giving him to drink, thinking more of the beast that had borne him than
+of his own need, as became a man of birth.
+
+"At the sight of the lady he took off his bonnet and bowed low, and
+asked if he might hef a private audience, to which Mistress Carnegie
+replied, 'We are private here,' and asked, 'Have you been with my son?'
+
+"'We fought together for the Prince three days since--my name is Perth.
+I am escaping for my life, and desire a brief rest, if it please you,
+and bring no danger to your house.'
+
+"'Ye had been welcome, my Lord Duke,' and Mary used to show how her
+mistress straightened herself, though you were the poorest soldier that
+had drawn his sword for the good cause, and ye will stay here till it
+be safe for you to escape to France.'
+
+"He wass four weeks hidden in the room, and although the soldiers
+searched all the house, they could never find the place, and Mrs.
+Carnegie put scorn upon them, asking why they did her so much honour
+and whom they sought.  Oh yes, it wass a cunning place for the bad
+times, and you will be pleased to see it."
+
+"And the secret, Janet," cried Kate, her hand upon the door; "you know
+it quite well."
+
+"So does the General, Catherine of my heart," said Janet, "and he will
+be liking to show it himself."
+
+So Kate departed in a rage, and gave orders that there be no more
+delay, for she would not spend an afternoon seeking for rat-holes.
+
+"No rat-hole, Kit, but a very fair chamber for a hunted man; it is
+twenty years and more since this door opened last, for none knows the
+trick of it save Janet and myself.  There it goes."
+
+A panel in the back of the cabinet slid aside behind its neighbour and
+left a passage through which one could squeeze himself with an effort.
+
+"We go up a stair now, and must have light; a candle will do; the air
+is perfectly pure, for there 's plenty of ventilation;" and then they
+crept up by steps in the thickness of the walls, till they stood in a
+chamber under six feet high, but otherwise as large as the bedroom
+below.  The walls were lined with wood, and there were two tiny slits
+that gave air, but hardly any light.  The only furniture in the room
+was an oaken chest, clasped with iron and curiously locked.
+
+"Our plate chest, Kit; but there 'a not much silver and gold in it,
+worse luck for you, lassie; in fact, we're a pack of fools to set store
+by it.  There 's nothing in the kist but some old clothes, and perhaps
+some buckles and such like.  I dare say there is a lock of hair also.
+Some day we will have a look inside."
+
+"To-day, instantly," and Kate shook her father.  "You are a dreadful
+hypocrite, for I can see that you would rather Tochty were burned down
+than this box be lost.  Are there any relics of Prince Charlie in it?
+Quick."
+
+"Be patient; it's a difficult key to turn; there now;" but there was
+not much to see--only pieces of woollen cloth tightly folded down.
+
+[Illustration: "It's a difficult key to turn."]
+
+"Call Janet, Kate, for she ought to see this opening, and we 'll carry
+everything down to my room, for no one could tell what like things are
+in this gloom.  Yes, Perth lived here for weeks, and used to go up to
+the gallery where Black John's mother sat with her maid; but the son
+was hiding in the North, and never reached his house till he came to
+die."
+
+First of all they came upon a ball dress of the former time, of white
+silk, with a sash of Macpherson tartan, besides much fine lace.
+
+"That is the dress your great-grandmother wore as a bride at the Court
+of Versailles in the fifties.  She was only a lassie, and seemed like
+her husband's daughter.  The Prince danced with her, and they counted
+the dress something to be kept, and that night Locheil and Cluny also
+had a reel with Sheena Carnegie, while Black John looked like a young
+man, for he had been too sorely wounded to be able to dance with her
+himself."  And then the General carried down with his own hands a
+Highland gentleman's evening dress, trews of the Royal tartan, and a
+velvet coat with silver buttons, and a light plaid of fine cloth.
+
+"And this was her husband's dress that night; but why the Stewart
+tartan?"
+
+"No, lassie, that is the suit the Prince wore at Holyrood, where he
+gave a great ball after Prestonpans, and danced with the Edinburgh
+ladies.  It was smuggled across to France at last with other things of
+the Prince's, and he gave it to Carnegie.  'It will remind you of our
+great days,' he said, 'when the Stewarts saw their friends in Mary's
+Palace.'"
+
+Last of all, the General lifted out a casket and laid it on his table.
+Within it was a brooch, such as might once have been worn either by a
+man or a woman; diamonds set in gold, and in the midst a lock of fair
+hair.
+
+"Is it really, father? . . ."  And Kate took the jewel in her hand.
+
+"Yes, the Prince's hair--his wedding present to Sheena Macpherson."
+
+Kate kissed it fervently, and passed it to Janet, who placed it
+carefully in the box, while the General made believe to laugh.
+
+"Your mother wore the brooch on great occasions, and you will do the
+same, Kit, for auld lang syne.  There are two or three families left in
+Perthshire that will like to see it on your breast."
+
+"Yes, and there will maybe be more than two or three that will like to
+see the lady that wears it."  This from Janet.
+
+"Your compliments are a little late, and you may keep them to yourself,
+Janet; it would have been kinder to tell me. . . ."
+
+"Tell you what?"  And the General looked very provoking.
+
+"I hate to be beaten."  Kate first looked angry, and then laughed.
+"What else is there to see?"
+
+"There is the gallery, which is the one feature in our poor house, and
+we will try to reach it from the Duke's hiding-place, for it was a
+cleverly designed hole, and had its stair up as well as down."  And
+then they all came out into one of the strangest rooms you could find
+in Scotland, and one that left a pleasant picture in their minds who
+had seen it lit of a winter night, and the wood burning on the hearth,
+and Kate dancing a reel with Lord Hay or some other brisk young man,
+while the General looked on from one of the deep window recesses.
+
+The gallery extended over the hall and Kate's drawing-room, and
+measured fifty feet long from end to end.  The upper part of the walls
+was divided into compartments by an arcading, made of painted pilasters
+and flat arches.  Each compartment had a motto, and this was on one
+side of the fireplace:
+
+  A nice wyfe and
+    A back doore
+  Oft maketh a rich
+    Man poore.
+
+
+And on the other:--
+
+  Give liberalye
+  To neidfvl folke
+  Denye nane of
+  Them al for litle
+  Thow knawest heir
+  In this lyfe of what
+  Chaunce may the
+  Befall.
+
+
+The glory of the gallery, however, was its ceiling, which was of the
+seventeenth century work, and so wonderful that many learned persons
+used to come and study it.  After the great disaster when the Lodge was
+sold and allowed to fall to pieces, this fine work went first, and now
+no one examining its remains could have imagined how wonderful it was,
+and in its own way how beautiful.  This ceiling was of wood, painted,
+and semi-elliptical in form, and one wet day, when we knew not what
+else to do, Kate and I counted more than three hundred panels.  It was
+an arduous labour for the neck, and the General refused to help us; but
+I am sure that we did not make too many, for we worked time about,
+while the General took note of the figures, and our plan was that each
+finished his tale of work at some amazing beast, so that we could make
+no mistake.  Some of the panels were circles, and they were filled in
+with coats-of-arms; some were squares and they contained a bestiary of
+that day.  It was hard indeed to decide whether the circles or the
+squares were more interesting.  The former had the arms of every family
+in Scotland that had the remotest connection with the Carnegies, and
+besides swept in a wider field, comprising David, King of Israel, who
+was placed near Hector of Troy, and Arthur of Brittany not far from
+Moses--all of whom had appropriate crests and mottoes.  In the centre
+were the arms of our Lord Christ as Emperor of Judea, and the chief
+part of them was the Cross.  But it came upon one with a curious shock,
+to see this coat among the shields of Scottish nobles.  There were
+beasts that could be recognised at once, and these were sparingly
+named; but others were astounding, and above them were inscribed titles
+such as these: Shoe-lyon, Musket, Ostray; and one fearsome animal in
+the centre was designated the Ram of Arabia.  This display of heraldry
+and natural history was reinforced by the cardinal virtues in
+seventeenth century dress: Charitas as an elderly female of extremely
+forbidding aspect, receiving two very imperfectly clad children; and
+Temperantia as a furious-looking person--male on the whole rather than
+female--pouring some liquor--surely water--from a jug into a cup, with
+averted face, and leaving little to be desired.  The afternoon sun
+shining in through a western window and lingering among the black and
+white tracery, so that the marking of a shield came into relief or a
+beast suddenly glared down on one, had a weird, old-world effect.
+
+"It's half an armoury and half a menagerie," said Kate, "and I think we
+'ll have tea in the library with the windows open to the Glen."  And so
+they sat together in quietness, with books of heraldry and sport and
+ancient Scottish classics and such like round them, while Janet went
+out and in.
+
+"So Donald has been obliged to leave his kirk;" for Kate had not yet
+forgiven Janet.  "He says it's very bad here; I hope you won't go to
+such a place."
+
+"What would Donald Macdonald be saying against it?" inquired Janet,
+severely.
+
+"Oh, I don't remember--lots of things.  He thought you were making too
+much of the minister."
+
+"The minister iss a good man, and hass some Highland blood in him,
+though he hass lost his Gaelic, and he will be very pleasant in the
+house.  If I wass seeing a sheep, and it will be putting on this side
+and that, and quarrelling with everybody, do you know what I will be
+thinking?"
+
+"That's Donald, I suppose; well?"
+
+"I will say to myself, that sheep iss a goat."  And Janet left the room
+with the laurels of victory.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CONCERNING BESOMS.
+
+It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less
+than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never
+known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house.  When the
+sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from
+the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart,
+and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are
+covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes.  This
+erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their
+sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie.  No man compelled
+to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or
+other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life,
+and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his
+talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged
+for him at the Great Assize.  Small wonder that he comes to regard the
+world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted
+at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit
+dwelling-place all his years.  When a prophet cometh from the Eternal
+to speak unto modern times as Dante did unto the Middle Ages, and
+constructs the other world before our eyes, he will have one circle in
+his hell for the builders of rotten houses, and doubtless it will be a
+collection of their own works, so that their sin will be its
+punishment, as is most fitting and the way of things.
+
+Surely there will also be some corner of heaven kept for the man who,
+having received a charge to build the shell wherein two people were to
+make a home, laid its foundations deep and raised strong walls that
+nothing but gunpowder could rend in pieces, and roofed it over with
+oaken timber and lined it with the same, so that many generations might
+live therein in peace and honour.  Such a house was the Lodge in those
+days, although at last beginning to show signs of decay, and it somehow
+stirred up the heroic spirit of the former time within a man to sit
+before the big fire in the hall, with grim Carnegies looking down from
+the walls and daring you to do any meanness, while the light blazing
+out from a log was flung back from a sword that had been drawn in the
+'15.  One was unconsciously reinforced in the secret place of his
+manhood, and inwardly convinced that what concerneth every man is not
+whether he fail or succeed, but that he do his duty according to the
+light which may have been given him until he die.  It was also a
+regeneration of the soul to awake in a room of the eastern tower, where
+the Carnegies' guests slept, and fling up the window, with its small
+square panes, to fill one's lungs with the snell northern air, and look
+down on the woods glistening in every leaf, and the silver Tochty just
+touched by the full risen sun.  Miracles have been wrought in that
+tower, for it happened once that an Edinburgh advocate came to stay at
+the Lodge, who spake after a quite marvellous fashion, known neither in
+England nor Scotland; and being himself of pure bourgeois blood, the
+fifth son of a factor, felt it necessary to despise his land, from its
+kirk downwards, and had a collection of japes at Scottish ways, which
+in his provincial simplicity he offered to the Carnegies.  It seemed to
+him certain that people of Jacobite blood and many travels would have
+relished his clever talk, for it is not given to a national decadent to
+understand either the people he has deserted or the ancient houses at
+whose door he stands.  Carnegie was the dullest man living in the
+matter of sneering, and Kate took an instant dislike to the mincing
+little man, whom she ever afterwards called the Popinjay, and so
+handled him with her tongue that his superiority was mightily shaken.
+But there was good stuff in the advocate, besides some brains, and
+after a week's living in the Lodge, he forgot to wear his eye-glass,
+and let his r's out of captivity, and attempted to make love to Kate,
+which foolishness that masterful damsel brought to speedy confusion.
+It was also said that when he went back to the Parliament House, every
+one could understand what he said, and that he got two briefs in one
+week, which shows how good it is to live in an ancient house with
+honest people.
+
+"Is there a ghost, dad?"  They were sitting before the fire in the hall
+after dinner--Kate in her favourite posture, leaning forward and
+nursing her knee.  The veterans and I thought that she always looked at
+her best so, with her fine eyes fixed on the fire, and the light
+bringing her face into relief against the shadow.  We saw her feet
+then--one lifted a little from the ground--and V. C. declared they were
+the smallest you could find for a woman of her size.
+
+[Illustration: Kate in her favourite position.]
+
+"She knows it, too," he used to say, "for when a woman has big feet she
+always keeps them tucked in below her gown.  A woman with an eight-size
+glove and feet to correspond is usually a paragon of modesty, and
+strong on women's rights."
+
+"Kate's glove is number six, and I think it's a size too big," broke in
+the Colonel--we were all lying in the sun on a bank below the beeches
+at the time, and the Colonel was understood to be preparing a sermon
+for some meeting--"but it's a strong little hand, and a steady; she
+used to be able to strike a shilling in the air at revolver practice."
+
+"Ghost, lassie.  Oh, in the Lodge, a Carnegie ghost--not one I've ever
+heard of; so you may sleep in peace, and I 'm below if you feel lonely
+the first night."
+
+"You are most insulting; one would think I were a milksop.  I was
+hoping for a ghost--a white lady by choice.  Did no Carnegie murder his
+wife, for instance, through jealousy or quarrelling?"
+
+"The Carnegies have never quarrelled," said the General, with much
+simplicity; "you see the men have generally been away fighting, and the
+women had never time to weary of them."
+
+"No woman ever wearies of a man unless he be a fool and gives in to
+her--then she grows sick of him.  Life might be wholesome, but it would
+have no smack; it would be like meat without mustard.  If a man cannot
+rule, he ought not to marry, for his wife will play the fool in some
+fashion or other like a runaway horse, and he has half the blame.  Why
+did he take the box-seat?" and Kate nodded to the fire.  "What are you
+laughing at?"
+
+"Perhaps I ought to be shocked, but the thought of any one trying to
+rule you, Kit, tickles me immensely.  I have had the reins since you
+were a bairn, and you have been a handful.  You were a 'smatchit' at
+six years old, and a 'trimmie' at twelve, and you are qualifying for
+the highest rank in your class."
+
+"What may that be, pray? it seems to me that the Scottish tongue is a
+perfect treasure-house for impertinent people.  How Scots must
+congratulate themselves that they need never be at a loss when they are
+angry or even simply frank."
+
+"If it comes to downright swearing, you must go to Gaelic," said the
+General, branching off.  "Donald used to be quite contemptuous of any
+slight efforts at profanity in the barrack yard, although they sickened
+me.  'Toots, Colonel; ye do not need to be troubling yourself with such
+poor little words, for they are just nothing at all, and yet the bodies
+will be saying them over and over again like parrots.  Now a Lochaber
+man could hef been saying what he wass wanting for fifteen minutes, and
+nefer hef used the same word twice, unless he had been forgetting his
+Gaelic.  It's a peautiful language, the Gaelic, when you will not be
+fery well pleased with a man.'"
+
+"That is very good, dad, but I think we were speaking in Scotch, and
+you have not told me that nice complimentary title I am living to
+deserve.  Is 'cutty' the disreputable word? for I think I 've passed
+that rank already; it sounds quite familiar."
+
+"No, it's a far more fetching word than 'cutty,' or even than 'randy'
+(scold), which you may have heard."
+
+"I have," replied Kate instantly, "more than once, and especially after
+I had a difference in opinion with Lieutenant Strange.  You called me
+one or two names then, dad---in fact you were quite eloquent; but you
+know that he was a bad fellow, and that the regiment was well rid of
+him; but I 'm older now, and I have not heard my promotion."
+
+"It's the most vigorous word that Scots have for a particular kind of
+woman."
+
+"Describe her," demanded Kate.
+
+"One who has a mind of her own," began the General, carefully, "and a
+way, too, who is not easily cowed or managed, who is not . . ."
+
+"A fool," suggested Kate.
+
+"Who is not conspicuously soft in manner," pursued the General, with
+discretion, "who might even have a temper."
+
+"Not a tame rabbit, in fact.  I understand what you are driving at, and
+I know what a model must feel when she is being painted.  And now
+kindly pluck up courage and name the picture."  And Kate leant back,
+with her hand behind her head, challenging the General--if he dared.
+"Well?"
+
+"Besom."  And he was not at all ashamed, for a Scot never uses this
+word without a ring of fondness and admiration in his voice, as of one
+who gives the world to understand that he quite disapproves of this
+audacious woman, wife or daughter of his, but is proud of her all the
+time.  It is indeed a necessity of his nature for a Scot to have husks
+of reproach containing kernels of compliment, so that he may let out
+his heart and yet preserve his character as an austere person,
+destitute of vanity and sentiment.
+
+"Accept your servant's thanks, my General.  I am highly honoured."  And
+Kate made a sweeping courtesy, whereupon they both laughed merrily; and
+a log blazing up suddenly made an old Carnegie smile who had taken the
+field for Queen Mary, and was the very man to have delighted in a besom.
+
+"When I was here in June"--and the General stretched himself in a deep
+red leather chair--"I stood a while one evening watching a fair-haired,
+blue-eyed little maid who was making a daisy chain and singing to
+herself in a garden.  Her mother came out from the cottage, and, since
+she did not see me, devoured the child with eyes of love.  Then
+something came into her mind--perhaps that the good man would soon be
+home for supper; she rushed forward and seized the child, as if it had
+been caught in some act of mischief.  'Come into the hoose, this
+meenut, ye little beesom, an' say yir carritches.  What's the chief end
+o' man?'"
+
+"Could she have been so accomplished at that age?" Kate inquired, with
+interest.  "Are you sure about the term of endearment?  Was the child
+visibly flattered?"
+
+"She caught my eye as they passed in, and flung me a smile like one
+excusing her mother's fondness.  But Davidson hears better things, for
+as soon as he appears the younger members of a family are taken from
+their porridge and set to their devotions.
+
+"'What are ye glowerin' at there, ye little cutty?  Toom (empty) yir
+mooth this meenut and say the twenty-third Psalm to the minister.'"
+
+"Life seems full of incident, and the women make the play.  What about
+the men?  Are they merely a chorus?"
+
+"A stranger spending a week in one of our farm-houses would be ready to
+give evidence in a court of justice that he had never seen women so
+domineering or men so submissive as in Drumtochty.
+
+"And why?  Because the housewife who sits in church as if butter would
+n't melt in her mouth speaks with much fluency and vigour at home, and
+the man says nothing.  His normal state is doing wrong and being
+scolded from morning till night--for going out without his breakfast,
+for not cleaning his boots when he comes in, for spoiling chairs by
+sitting on them with wet clothes, for spilling his tea on the
+tablecloth, for going away to market with a dusty coat, for visiting
+the stable with his Sunday coat, for not speaking at all to visitors,
+for saying things he ought n't when he does speak--till the
+long-suffering man, raked fore and aft, rushes from the house in
+desperation, and outside remarks to himself, by way of consolation,
+'Losh keep 's! there 's nae livin' wi' her the day; her tongue 's
+little better than a threshing-mill.'  His confusion, however, is
+neither deep nor lasting, and in a few minutes he has started for a
+round of the farm in good heart, once or twice saying 'Sall' in a way
+that shows a lively recollection of his wife's gifts."
+
+"Then the men love to be ruled," began Kate, with some contempt; "it
+does not give me a higher idea of the district."
+
+"Wait a moment, young woman, for all that goes for nothing except to
+show that the men allow the women to be supreme in one sphere."
+
+"In the dairy, I suppose?"
+
+"Perhaps; and a very pleasant kingdom, too, as I remember it, when a
+hot, thirsty, tired laddie, who had been fishing or ferreting, was
+taken into the cool, moist, darkened place, and saw a dish of milk
+creamed for his benefit by some sonsy housewife.  Sandie and I used to
+think her omnipotent, and heard her put the gude man through his
+facings with awe, but by-and-by we noticed that her power had limits.
+When the matter had to do with anything serious, sowing or reaping or
+kirk or market, his word was law.
+
+"He said little, but it was final, and she never contradicted; it was
+rare to hear a man call his wife by name; it was usually 'gude wife,'
+and she always referred to him as the 'maister.'  And without any
+exception, these silent, reserved men were 'maister;' they had a look
+of authority."
+
+"They gave way in trifles, to rule in a crisis, which is just my idea
+of masculine government," expatiated Kate.  "A woman likes to say what
+she pleases and have her will in little things; she has her way, and if
+a man corrects her because she is inaccurate, and nags at her when she
+does anything he does not approve, then he is very foolish and very
+trying, and if she is not quite a saint, she will make him suffer.
+
+"Do you remember Dr. Pettigrew, that prim little effigy of a man, and
+his delightful Irish wife, and how conversation used to run when he was
+within hearing?"
+
+"Glad to have a tasting, Kit," and the General lay back in expectation.
+
+"'Oi remember him, as foine an upstanding young officer as ye would
+wish to see, six feet in his boots.'
+
+"'About five feet ten, I believe, was his exact height, my dear.'
+
+"'Maybe he was n't full grown then, but he was a good-looking man, and
+as pretty a rider as ever sat on a horse.  Well, he was a Warwickshire
+man . . .'
+
+"'Bucks, he said himself.'
+
+"'He was maybe born in both counties for all you know.'
+
+"'Alethea,' with a cough and reproving look.
+
+"'At any rate Oi saw him riding in a steeplechase in the spring of '67,
+at Aldershot.'
+
+"'It must, I think, have been '66.  We were at Gibraltar in '67.
+Please be accurate.'
+
+"'Bother your accuracy, for ye are driving the pigs through my story.
+Well, Oi was telling ye about the steeplechase Jimmy Brook rode.  It
+was a mile, and he had led for half, and so he was just four hundred
+yards from the post.'
+
+"'A half would be eight hundred and eighty yards.'
+
+"'Oi wish from my heart that geography, arithmetic, memory, and
+accuracy, and every other work of Satan were drowned with Moses in the
+Red Sea.  Go, for any sake, and bring me a glass of irritated water.'"
+
+"Capital," cried the General.  "I heard that myself, or something like
+it.  Pettigrew was a tiresome wretch, but he was devoted to his wife in
+his own way."
+
+"Which was enough to make a woman throw things at him, as very likely
+Alethea did when they were alone.  What a fool he was to bother about
+facts; the charm of Lithy was that she had none--dates and such like
+would have made her quite uninteresting.  The only dates I can quote
+myself are the Rebellion and the Mutiny, and I 'll add the year we came
+home.  I don't like datey women; but then it's rather cheap for one to
+say that who does n't know anything," and Kate sighed very becomingly
+at the contemplation of her ignorance.
+
+"Except French, which she speaks like a Parisian," murmured the General.
+
+"That's a fluke, because I was educated at the Scotch convent with
+these dear old absurd nuns who were Gordons, and Camerons, and
+Macdonalds, and did n't know a word of English."
+
+"Who can manage her horse like a rough-rider," continued the General,
+counting on his finger, "and dance like a Frenchwoman, and play whist
+like a half-pay officer, and--"
+
+"That's not education; those are simply the accomplishments of a besom.
+You know, dad, I 've never read a word of Darwin, and I got tired of
+George Eliot and went back to Scott."
+
+"I 've no education myself," said the General, ruefully, "except the
+Latin the old dominie thrashed into me; and some French which all our
+set in Scotland used to have, and . . . I can hold my own with the
+broadsword.  When I think of all those young officers know, I wonder we
+old chaps were fit for anything."
+
+"Well, you see, dad," and Kate began to count also, "you were made of
+steel wire, and were never ill; you could march for a day and rather
+enjoy a fight in the evening; you would go anywhere, and the men
+followed just eighteen inches behind; you always knew what the enemy
+was going to do before he did it, and you always did what he did n't
+expect you to do.  That's not half the list of your accomplishments,
+but they make a good beginning for a fighting man."
+
+"It will be all mathematics in the future, Kit, and there will be no
+fighting at close quarters.  The officers will wear gloves and
+spectacles--but where are we now, grumbling as if we were sitting in a
+club window?  Besides, these young fellows can fight as well as pass
+exams.  You were saying that it was a shame of a man to complain of his
+wife flirting," and the General studied the ceiling.
+
+"You know that I never said anything of the kind; some women are flirty
+in a nice way, just as some are booky, and some are dressy, and some
+are witty, and some are horsey; and I think a woman should be herself.
+I should say the right kind of man would be proud of his wife's strong
+point, and give her liberty."
+
+"He is to have none, I suppose, but just be a foil to throw her into
+relief.  Is he to be allowed any opinions of his own? . . .  It looks
+hard, that cushion, Kit, and I 'm an old broken-down man."
+
+"You deserve leather, for you know what I think about a man's position
+quite well.  If he allow himself to be governed by his wife in serious
+matters, he is not worth calling a man."
+
+"Like poor Major Macintosh."
+
+"Exactly.  What an abject he was before that woman, who was simply--"
+
+"Not a besom, Kate," interrupted the General, anxiously--afraid that a
+classical word was to be misused.
+
+"Certainly not, for a besom must be nice, and at bottom a lady--in
+fact, a woman of decided character."
+
+"Quite so.  You 've hit the bull's-eye, Kit, and paid a neat compliment
+to yourself.  Have you a word for Mrs. Macintosh?"
+
+"A vulgar termagant"--the General indicated that would do--"who would
+call her husband an idiot aloud before a dinner-table, and quarrel like
+a fishwife with people in his presence.
+
+"Why, he daren't call his soul his own; he belonged to the kirk, you
+know, and there was a Scotch padre, but she marched him off to our
+service, and if you had seen him trying to find the places in the
+Prayer-book.  If a man has n't courage enough to stand by his faith, he
+might as well go and hang himself.  Don't you think the first thing is
+to stick by your religion, and the next by your country, though it cost
+one his life?"
+
+"That's it, lassie; every gentleman does."
+
+"She was a disgusting woman," continued Kate, "and jingling with money:
+I never saw so many precious stones wasted on one woman; they always
+reminded me of a jewel in a swine's snout."
+
+"Kate!" remonstrated her father, "that's . . ."
+
+"Rather coarse, but it's her blame; and to hear Mrs. Macintosh
+calculating what each officer had--I told her we would live in a Lodge
+at home and raise our own food.  My opinion is that her father was a
+publican, and I 'm sure she had once been a Methodist."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because she was so Churchy, always talking about celebrations and
+vigils, and explaining that it was a sin to listen to a Dissenting
+chaplain."
+
+"Then, Kate, if your man--as they say here--tried to make you hold his
+views?"
+
+"I wouldn't, and I'd hate him."
+
+"And if he accepted yours?"
+
+"I 'd despise him," replied Kate, promptly.
+
+"You are a perfect contradiction."
+
+"You mean I 'm a woman, and a besom, and therefore I don't pretend to
+be consistent or logical, or even fair, but I am right."
+
+Then they went up the west tower to the General's room, and looked out
+on the woods and the river, and on a field of ripe corn upon the height
+across the river, flooded with the moonlight.
+
+"Home at last, lassie, you and I, and another not far off, maybe."
+
+Kate kissed her father, and said, "One in love, dad . . . and faith."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A PLEASAUNCE.
+
+The General read Morning Prayers in brief, omitting the Psalms and
+lessons, and then after breakfast, with much gossip and ancient stories
+from Donald, the father and daughter went out to survey their domain,
+and though there be many larger, yet there can be few more romantic in
+the north.  That Carnegie had a fine eye and a sense of things who, out
+of all the Glen--for the Hays had little in Drumtochty in those
+days--fastened on the site of the Lodge and planted three miles of
+wood, birch and oak, and beech and ash, with the rowan tree, along the
+river that goes out and in seven times in that distance, so that his
+descendants might have a fastness for their habitation and their
+children might grow up in kindly woods on which the south sun beats
+from early spring till late autumn, and within the sight and sound of
+clean, running water.  No wonder they loved their lonely home with
+tenacious hearts, and left it only because it was in their blood to be
+fighting.  They had been out at Langside and Philiphaugh, in the '15
+and the '45, and always on the losing side.  The Lodge had never been
+long without a young widow and a fatherless lad, but family history had
+no warning for him--in fact, seemed rather to be an inspiration in the
+old way--for no sooner had the young laird loved and married than he
+would hear of another rebellion, and ride off some morning to fight for
+that ill-fated dynasty whose love was ever another name for death.
+There was always a Carnegie ready as soon as the white cockade appeared
+anywhere in Scotland, and each of the house fought like the men before
+him, save that he brought fewer at his back and had less in his pocket.
+Little was left to the General and our Kate, and then came the great
+catastrophe that lost them the Lodge, and so the race has now neither
+name nor house in Scotland, save in the vault in Drumtochty Kirk.  It
+is a question whether one is wise to revisit any place where he has
+often been in happier times and see it desolate.  For me, at least, it
+was a mistake, and the melancholy is still upon me.  The deserted house
+falling at last to pieces, the over-grown garden, the crumbling paths,
+the gaping bridges over the little burns, and the loneliness, chilled
+one's soul.  There was no money to spare in the General's time, but it
+is wonderful what one gardener, who has no hours, and works for love's
+sake, can do, even in a place that needed half a dozen.  Then he was
+assisted unofficially by Donald, who declared that working in the woods
+was "fery healthy and good for one or two small cuts I happened to get
+in India," and Kate gave herself to the garden.  The path by the river
+was kept in repair, and one never knew when Kate might appear round the
+corner.  Once I had come down from the cottage on a fine February day
+to see the snowdrops in the sheltered nooks, for there were little
+dells white as snow at that season in Tochty woods, and Kate, hearing
+that I had passed, came of her kindness to take me back to luncheon.
+She had on a jacket of sealskin that we greatly admired, and a felt hat
+with three grouse feathers on the side, and round her throat a red
+satin scarf.  The sun was shining on the bend of the path, and she came
+into the light singing "Jack o' Hazeldean," walking, as Kate ever did
+in song, with a swinging step like soldiers on a march.  It seemed to
+me that day that she was born to be the wife either of a noble or a
+soldier, and I still wish at times within my heart she were Countess of
+Kilspindie, for then the Lodge had been a fair sight to-day, and her
+father had died in his own room.  And other times I have imagined
+myself Kilspindie, who was then Lord Hay, and questioned whether I
+should have ordered Tochty to be dismantled and left a waste as it is
+this day, and would have gone away to the wars, or would not have loved
+to keep it in order for her sake, and visited it in the springtime when
+the primroses are out, and the autumn when the leaves are blood-red.
+Then I declare that Hay, being of a brave stock, and having acted as a
+man of honour--for that is known to all now--ought to have put a good
+face on his disappointment; but all the time I know one man who would
+have followed Lord Hay's suit, and who regrets that he ever again saw
+Tochty Lodge.
+
+[Illustration: One gardener who . . . works for love's sake.]
+
+"First of all," said the General as they sallied forth, "we shall go to
+the Beeches, and see a view for which one might travel many days, and
+pay a ransom."
+
+So they went out into the court with its draw-well, from which they
+must needs have a draught.  Suddenly the General laid down the cup like
+a man in sudden pain, for he was thinking of Cawnpore, and they passed
+quickly through the gateway and turned into a path that wound among
+great trees that had been planted, it was said, by the Carnegie who
+rode with Montrose.  They were walking on a plateau stretching out
+beyond the line of the Lodge, and therefore commanding the Glen, if one
+had eyes to see and the trees were not in the way.  Kate laid her hand
+on the General's arm beneath an ancient beech, and they stood in
+silence to receive the blessing of the place, for surely never is the
+soul so open to the voice of nature as by the side of running water and
+in the heart of a wood.  The fretted sunlight made shifting figures of
+brightness on the ground; above the innumerable leaves rustled and
+whispered; a squirrel darted along a branch and watched the intruders
+with bright, curious eyes; the rooks cawed from the distance; the
+pigeons cooed in sweet, sad cadence close at hand.  They sat down on
+the bare roots at their feet and yielded themselves to the genius of
+the forest--the god who will receive the heart torn and distracted by
+the fierce haste and unfinished labours and vain ambitions of life, and
+will lay its fever to rest and encompass it with the quietness of
+eternity.
+
+"Father," whispered Kate, after a while, as one wishing to share
+confidences, for there must be something to tell, "where are you?"
+
+"You wish to know?  Well, all day I 've been fishing down the stream,
+and am coming home, very tired, very dirty, very happy, and I meet my
+mother just outside those trees.  I am boasting of the fish that I have
+caught, none of which, I 'm sure, can be less than half a pound.  She
+is rating me for my appearance and beseeching me to keep at a distance.
+Then I go home and down into the vaulted kitchen, where Janet's mother
+gives me joyous welcome, and produces dainties saved from dinner for my
+eating.  The trouts are now at biggest only a quarter of a pound, for
+they have to be cooked as a final course, but those that were hooked
+and escaped are each a pound, except one in the hole below Lynedoch
+Bridge, which was two pounds to an ounce.  Afterwards I make a brave
+attempt to rehearse the day in the gunroom to Sandie, who first taught
+me to cast a line, and fall fast asleep, and, being shaken up, sneak
+off to bed, creeping slowly up the stair, where the light is falling,
+to the little room above yours, where, as I am falling over, I seem to
+hear my mother's voice as in this sighing of the wind.  Ah me, what a
+day it was!  And you, Kit?"
+
+"Oh, I was back in the convent with my nuns, and Sister Flora was
+trying to teach me English grammar in good French, and I was correcting
+her in bad French, and she begins to laugh because it is all so droll.
+'I am Scotch, and I teach you English all wrong, and you tell me what I
+ought to say in French which is all wrong; let us go into the garden,'
+for she was a perfect love, and always covered my faults.  I am sitting
+in the arbour, and the Sister brings a pear that has fallen.  'I do not
+think it is wicked,' she says, and I say it is simply a duty to eat up
+fallen pears, and we laugh again.  As we sit, they are singing in the
+chapel, and I hear 'Ave Maria, ora pro nobis.'  Then I think of you,
+and the tears will come to my eyes, and I try to hide my face, but the
+Sister understands and comforts me.  'Your father is a gallant
+gentleman, and the good God pities you, and will keep him in danger,'
+and I fondle the Sister, and wonder whether any more pears have fallen.
+How peaceful it is within that high wall, which is rough and forbidding
+outside, but inside it is hung with greenery, and among the leaves I
+see pears and peaches.  But I missed you, dad," and Kate touched her
+father, for they had a habit of just touching each other gently when
+together.
+
+"Do you really think we have been in India, and that you have a dozen
+medals, and I am . . . an old maid?"
+
+"Certainly not, Kit, a mere invention--we are boy and girl, and . . .
+we 'll go on to the view."
+
+Suddenly they came out from the shade into a narrow lane of light,
+where some one of the former time, with an eye and a soul, had cleared
+a passage among the trees, so that one standing at the inner end and
+looking outwards could see the whole Glen, while the outstretched
+branches of the beeches shaded his eyes.  Morning in the summer-time
+about five o'clock was a favourable hour, because one might see the
+last mists lift, and the sun light up the face of Ben Urtach, and
+evening-tide was better, because the Glen showed wonderfully tender in
+the soft light, and the Grampians were covered with glory.  But it was
+best to take your first view towards noon, for then you could trace the
+Tochty upwards as it appeared and reappeared, till it was lost in woods
+at the foot of Glen Urtach, with every spot of interest on either side.
+Below the kirk it ran broad and shallow, with a bank of brushwood on
+one side and a meadow on the other, fringed with low bushes from behind
+which it was possible to drop a fly with some prospects of success,
+while in quite unprotected situations the Drumtochty fish laughed at
+the tempter, and departed with contemptuous whisks of the tail.  Above
+the haughs was a little mill, where flax was once spun and its lade
+still remained, running between the Tochty and the steep banks down
+which the glen descended to the river.  Opposite this mill the Tochty
+ran with strength, escaping from the narrows of the bridge, and there
+it was that Weelum MacLure drove across Sir George in safety, because
+the bridge was not for use that day.  Whether that bridge was really
+built by Marshall Wade in his great work of pacifying the Highlands is
+very far from certain, but Drumtochty did not relish any trifling with
+its traditions, and had a wonderful pride in its solitary bridge, as
+well it might, since from the Beeches nothing could well be more
+picturesque.  Its plan came nearly to an inverted V, and the apex was
+just long enough to allow the horses to rest after the ascent, before
+they precipitated themselves down the other side.  During that time the
+driver leant on the ledge, and let his eye run down the river, taking
+in the Parish Kirk above and settling on the Lodge, just able to be
+seen among the trees where the Tochty below turned round the bend.
+What a Drumtochty man thought on such occasions he never told, but you
+might have seen even Whinnie nod his head with emphasis.  The bridge
+stood up clear of banks and woods, grey, uncompromising,
+unconventional, yet not without some grace of its own in its high arch
+and abrupt descents.  One with good eyes and a favouring sun could see
+the water running underneath, and any one caught its sheen higher up,
+before a wood came down to the water's edge and seemed to swallow up
+the stream.  Above the wood it is seen again, with a meal mill on the
+Tochty left nestling in among the trees, and one would call it the
+veriest burn, but it was there that Posty lost his life to save a
+little child.  And then it dwindles into the thinnest thread of silver,
+and at last is seen no more from the beeches.  From the Tochty the eye
+makes its raids on north and south.  The dark, massy pine-woods on the
+left side of the glen are broken at intervals by fields as they
+threaten to come down upon the river, and their shelter lends an air of
+comfort and warmth to the glen.  On the right the sloping land is
+tilled from the bank above the river up to the edge of the moor that
+swells in green and purple to the foot of the northern rampart of
+mountains, but on this side also the glen here and there breaks into
+belts of fir, which fling their kindly arms round the scattered
+farm-houses, and break up the monotony of green and gold with squares
+of dark green foliage and the brown of the tall, bare trunks.  Between
+the meandering stream and the cultivated land and the woods and the
+heather and the distant hills, there was such a variety as cannot be
+often gathered into the compass of one landscape.
+
+[Illustration: Among the great trees.]
+
+"And all our own," cried Kate in exultation; "let us congratulate
+ourselves."
+
+"I only wish it were, lassie.  Why, did n't you understand we have only
+these woods and a few acres of ploughed land now?"
+
+"You stupid old dad; I begin to believe that you have had no education.
+Of course the Hays have got the land, but we have the view and the joy
+of it.  This is the only place where one can say to a stranger, 'Behold
+Drumtochty,' and he will see it at a flash and at its best."
+
+"You 're brighter than your father, Kit, and a contented lassie to
+boot, and for that word I'll take you straight to the Pleasaunce."
+
+"What a charming name; it suggests a fairy world, with all sorts of
+beautiful things and people."
+
+"Quite right, Kit"--leading the way down to a hollow, surrounded by
+wood and facing the sun, the General opened a door in an ivy-covered
+wall--"for there is just one Pleasaunce on the earth, and that is a
+garden."
+
+It had been a risk to raise certain people's expectations and then
+bring them into Tochty garden, for they can be satisfied with no place
+that has not a clean-shaven lawn and beds of unvarying circles,
+pyrethrum, calceolaria, and geranium, and brakes of rare roses, and
+glass-houses with orchids worth fifty pound each, which is a garden in
+high life, full of luxury, extravagance, weariness.  As Kate entered, a
+moss rose which wandered at its will caught her skirt, and the General
+cut a blossom which she fastened in her breast, and surely there is no
+flower so winsome and fragrant as this homely rose.
+
+"Like yourself, Miss Carnegie," and the General rallied his simple wit
+for the occasion, "very sweet and true, with a thorn, too, if one
+gripped it the wrong way."
+
+Whereat he made believe to run, and had the better speed because there
+were no gravel walks with boxwood borders here, but alleys of old turf
+that were pleasant both to the touch and the eye.  In the centre where
+all the ways met he capitulated with honours of war, and explained that
+he had intended to compare Kate to a violet, which was her natural
+emblem, but had succumbed to the temptation of her eyes, "which make
+men wicked, Kit, with the gleam that is in them."
+
+"Is n't it a tangle?"  Which it was, and no one could look upon it
+without keen delight, unless he were a horticultural pedant in whom the
+appreciation of nature had been killed by parterres.  There was some
+principle of order, and even now, when the Pleasaunce is a wilderness,
+the traces can be found.  A dwarf fruit tree stood at every corner, and
+between the trees a three-foot border of flowers kept the peas and
+potatoes in their places.  But the borders were one sustained,
+elaborate, glorified disorder.  There were roses of all kinds that have
+ever gladdened poor gardens and simple hearts--yellow tea roses, moss
+roses with their firm, shapely buds, monthly roses that bore nearly all
+the year in a warm spot, the white briar that is dear to north country
+people, besides standards in their glory, with full round purple
+blossom.  Among the roses, compassing them about and jostling one
+another, some later, some earlier in bloom, most of them together in
+the glad summer days, one could find to his hand wall-flowers and
+primroses, sweet-william and dusty-miller, daisies red and white,
+forget-me-nots and pansies, pinks and carnations, marigolds and phloxes
+of many varieties.  The confusion of colours was preposterous, and
+showed an utter want of aesthetic sense.  In fact, one may confess that
+the Lodge garden was only one degree removed from the vulgarity and
+prodigality of nature.  There was no taste, no reserve, no harmony
+about that garden.  Nature simply ran riot and played according to her
+will like a child of the former days, bursting into apple blossom and
+laburnum gold and the bloom of peas and the white strawberry flower in
+early summer, and then, later in the year, weaving garlands of blazing
+red, yellow, white, purple, round beds of stolid roots and brakes of
+currant bushes.  There was a copper beech, where the birds sang, and
+from which they raided the fruit with the skill of Highland caterans.
+The Lodge bees lived all day in this garden, save when they went to
+reinforce their sweetness from the heather bloom.  The big trees stood
+round the place and covered it from every wind except the south, and
+the sun was ever blessing it.  There was one summer-house, a mass of
+honeysuckle, and there they sat down as those that had come back to
+Eden from a wander year.
+
+"Well, Kit?"
+
+"Thank God for our Pleasaunce."  And they would have stayed for hours,
+but there was one other spot that had a fascination for the General
+neither years nor wars had dulled, and he, who was the most
+matter-of-fact and romantic of men, must see and show it to his
+daughter before they ceased.
+
+"A mile and more, Kit, but through the woods and by the water all the
+way."
+
+Sometimes they went down a little ravine made by a small burn fighting
+and wearing its way for ages to the Tochty, and stood on a bridge of
+two planks and a handrail thrown over a tiny pool, where the water was
+resting on a bed of small pebbles.  The oak copse covered the sides of
+the tiny glen and met across the streamlet, and one below could see
+nothing but greenery and the glint of the waterfall where the burn
+broke into the bosky den from the bare heights above.  Other times the
+path, that allowed two to walk abreast if they wished very much and
+kept close together, would skirt the face of the high river bank, and
+if you peeped down through the foliage of the clinging trees you could
+see the Tochty running swiftly, and the overhanging branches dipping in
+their leaves.  Then the river would make a sweep and forsake its bank,
+leaving a peninsula of alluvial land between, where the geranium and
+the hyacinth and the iris grew in deep, moist soil.  One of these was
+almost clear of wood and carpeted with thick, soft turf, and the river
+beside it was broad and shining.
+
+"We shall go down here," said the General, "and I will show you
+something that I count the finest monument in Perthshire, or maybe in
+broad Scotland."
+
+In the centre of the sward, with trees just touching it with the tips
+of their branches, was a little square, with a simple weather-beaten
+railing.  And the General led Kate to the spot, and stood for a while
+in silence.
+
+"Two young Scottish lassies, Kate, who died two hundred years ago, and
+were buried here, and this is the ballad--
+
+  "'Bessie Bell and Mary Grey
+  They were twa bonnie lassies,
+  They biggit a hoose on yonder brae
+  And theikit it ower wi' rashes.'"
+
+
+Then the General and Kate sat down by the river edge, and he told her
+the deathless story,--how in the plague of 1666 they fled to this
+district to escape infection; how a lover came to visit one of them and
+brought death in his kiss; how they sickened and died; how they were
+laid to rest beside the Tochty water; and generations have made their
+pilgrimage to the place, so wonderful and beautiful is love.  They
+loved, and their memory is immortal.
+
+Kate rested her chin on her hand and gazed at the running water, which
+continued while men and women live and love and die.
+
+"He ought not to have come; it was a cowardly, selfish act, but I
+suppose," added the General, "he could not keep away."
+
+"Be sure she thought none the less of him for his coming, and I think a
+woman will count life itself a small sacrifice for love," and Kate went
+over to the grave.
+
+A thrush was singing as they turned to go, and nothing was said on the
+way home till they came near the Lodge.
+
+"Who can that be going in, Kate?  He seems a padre."
+
+"I do not know, unless it be our fellow traveller from Muirtown; but he
+has been redressing himself, and is not improved.
+
+"Father," and Kate stayed the General, as they crossed the threshold of
+their home, "we have seen many beautiful things to-day, for which I
+thank you; but the greatest was love."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION.
+
+Carmichael's aunt, who equipped his house, was determined on one point,
+and would not hear of a clerical housekeeper for her laddie.  Margaret
+Meiklewham--a woman of a severe countenance, and filled with the spirit
+of the Disruption--who had governed the minister of Pitscowrie till his
+decease, and had been the terror of callow young probationers, offered
+herself, and gave instances of her capability.
+
+"Gin ye leave yir nephew in my hands, ye needna hae ony mair concern.
+A 'll manage him fine, an' hand him on the richt road.  Ye may lippen
+tae 't, a' wesna five and thirty year wi' Maister MacWheep for naethin'.
+
+"He wes a wee fractious and self-willed at the off-go, an' wud be
+wantin' this an' that for his denner, but he sune learned tae tak' what
+wes pit afore him; an' as for gaein' oot withoot tellin' me, he wud as
+sune hae thocht o' fleein'; when he cam' in he keepit naethin' back at
+his tea.
+
+"Preachin' wes kittle wark in Pitscoorie, for the fouk were awfu'
+creetics, though they didna maybe think sae muckle o' themselves as
+Drumtochty.  A' aye githered their jidgment through the week, an' gin
+he hed made a slip meddling wi' warks or sic-like in his sermon, it wes
+pit richt next Sabbath, and sovereignty whuppit in at the feenish.
+
+"Ye ken the Auld Kirk hes tae be watchit like a cat wi' a moose, an'
+though a' say it as sudna, Maister MacWheep wud hae made a puir job o'
+the business himsel'.  The pairish meenister wes terrible plausible,
+an' askit oor man tae denner afore he wes settled in his poopit, an' he
+wes that simple, he wud hae gaen," and Margaret indicated by an
+uplifting of her eyebrows the pitiable innocence of MacWheep.
+
+"Ye guidit him, nae doot?" inquired Carmichael's aunt, with interest.
+
+"'Maister MacWheep,' says I," and Miss Meiklewham's lips were very
+firm, "'a 'll no deny that the Auld Kirk is Christian, an' a've never
+said that a Moderate cudna be savit, but the less trokin' (trafficking)
+ye hae wi' them the better.  There 's maybe naethin' wrang wi' a
+denner, but the next thing 'll be an exchange o' poopits, and the day
+ye dae that ye may close the Free Kirk.'
+
+"And the weemen"--here the housekeeper paused as one still lost in
+amazement at the audacity with which they had waylaid the helpless
+MacWheep--"there wes ae madam in Muirtown that hed the face tae invite
+hersel' oot tae tea wi' three dochters, an' the way they wud flatter
+him on his sermons wes shamefu'.
+
+"If they didna begin askin' him tae stay wi' them on Presbytery days,
+and Mrs. MacOmish hed the face tae peety him wi' naebody but a
+hoosekeeper.  He lat oot tae me though that the potatoes were as hard
+as a stone at denner, an' that he hed juist ae blanket on his bed,
+which wesna great management for four weemen."
+
+As Carmichael's aunt seemed to be more and more impressed, Margaret
+moistened her lips and rose higher.
+
+"So the next time ma lady comes oot tae see the spring flowers," she
+said, "a' explained that the minister wes sae delicate that a' didna
+coont it richt for him tae change his bed, and a' thocht it wud be mair
+comfortable for him tae come hame on the Presbytery nichts, an' safer.
+
+"What said she?  No a word," and Miss Meiklewham recalled the ancient
+victory with relish.  "She lookit at me, and a' lookit at her, an'
+naething passed; but that wes the laist time a' saw her at the manse.
+A 've hed experience, and a 'm no feared tae tak' chairge o' yir
+nephew."
+
+Carmichael's aunt was very deferential, complimenting the eminent woman
+on her gifts and achievements, and indicating that it would be hard for
+a young Free Kirk minister to obtain a better guardian; but she had
+already made arrangements with a woman from the south, and could not
+change.
+
+Drumtochty was amazed at her self-will, and declared by the mouth of
+Kirsty Stewart that Carmichael's aunt had flown in the face of
+Providence.  Below her gentle simplicity she was however a shrewd
+woman, and was quite determined that her nephew should not be handed
+over to the tender mercies of a clerical housekeeper, who is said to be
+a heavier yoke than the Confession of Faith, for there be clever ways
+of escape from confessions, but none from Margaret Meiklewham; and
+while all the churches are busy every year in explaining that their
+Articles do not mean what they say, Miss Meiklewham had a snort which
+was beyond all she said, and that was not by any means restricted.
+
+"John," said Carmichael's aunt, one day after they had been buying
+carpets, "I 've got a housekeeper for you that will keep you
+comfortable and can hold her tongue," but neither then nor afterwards,
+neither to her nephew nor to Drumtochty, did Carmichael's aunt tell
+where she secured Sarah.
+
+"That's my secret, John," she used to say, with much roguishness, "an'
+ye maun confess that there 's ae thing ye dinna ken.  Ye 'll hae the
+best-kept manse in the Presbytery, an' ye 'll hae nae concern, sae be
+content."
+
+Which he was, and asked no questions, so that he knew no more of Sarah
+the day she left than the night she arrived; and now he sometimes
+speculates about her history, but he has no clue.
+
+She was an event in the life of the parish, and there are those who
+speak of her unto this day with exasperation.  The new housekeeper was
+a subject of legitimate though ostentatiously veiled curiosity, and it
+was expected that a full biography by Elspeth Macfadyen would be at the
+disposal of the kirkyard, as well as the Free Kirk gate, within ten
+days of her arrival; it might even be on the following Sabbath,
+although it was felt that this was asking too much of Elspeth.
+
+It was on the Friday evening Mrs. Macfadyen called, with gifts of
+butter and cream for the minister, and was received with grave, silent
+courtesy.  While they played with the weather, the visitor made a swift
+examination, and she gave the results on Sabbath for what they were
+worth.
+
+"A tall, black wumman, spare an' erect, no ill-faured nor ill-made; na,
+na, a 'll alloo that; a trig, handy cummer, wi' an eye like a hawk an'
+a voice like pussy; nane o' yir gossipin', haverin', stravaigin' kind.
+He 'll be clever 'at gets onything out o' her or maks much o' a bargain
+wi' her.
+
+"Sall, she 's a madam an' nae mistak'.  If that waefu', cunnin',
+tramping wratch Clockie didna come tae the door, where I was sittin',
+an' askit for the new minister.  Ye ken he used tae come an' hear
+Maister Cunningham on the principles o' the Disruption for an 'oor,
+givin' oot that he wes comin' roond tae the Free Kirk view; then he got
+his denner an' a suit o' claithes."
+
+"A' mind o' Clockie gettin' five shillin's ae day," remarked Jamie
+Soutar, who was at the Free Kirk that morning; "he hed started Dr.
+Chalmers wi' the minister; Dr. Guthrie he coontit to be worth aboot
+half-a-croon; but he aince hed three shillin's oot o' the Cardross
+case.  He wes graund on the doctrine o' speeritual independence, and
+terrible drouthy; but a 'm interruptin' ye, Elspeth."
+
+"'The minister is at dinner,' says she, 'and can't be disturbed; he
+sees no one at the door.'
+
+"'It's reeligion a 'm come aboot,' says Clockie, stickin' in his foot
+tae keep the door open, 'an' a'll juist wait at the fire.'
+
+"'It's more likely to be whisky from your breath, and you will find a
+public-house in the village; we give nothing to vagrants here.'  Then
+she closed the door on his foot, and the language he used in the yard
+wesna connectit wi' reeligion."
+
+Drumtochty admitted that this showed a woman of vigour--although our
+conventions did not allow us to treat Clockie or any known wastrel so
+masterfully--and there was an evident anxiety to hear more.
+
+"Her dress wes black an' fittit like a glove, an' wes set aff wi' a
+collar an' cuffs, an' a' saw she hedna come frae the country, so that
+wes ae thing settled; yon 's either a toon dress or maybe her ain
+makin' frae patterns.
+
+"It micht be Edinburgh or Glesgie, but a' began tae jalouse England
+aifter hearin' her hannel Clockie, sae a' watchit fur a word tae try
+her tongue."
+
+"Wurk is a gude handy test," suggested Jamie; "the English hae barely
+ae r, and the Scotch hae aboot sax in 't."
+
+"She wudna say 't, Jamie, though a' gied her a chance, speakin' aboot
+ae wumman daein' a'thing in the manse, sae a' fell back on church, an'
+that brocht oot the truth.  She didna say 'chich,' so she 's no English
+born, and she didna say 'churrrch,' so she 's been oot o' Scotland.  It
+wes half and between, and so a' said it wud be pleasant for her tae be
+in her ain country again, aifter livin' in the sooth."
+
+Her hearers indicated that Elspeth had not fallen beneath herself, and
+began to wonder how a woman who had lived in London would fit into
+Drumtochty.
+
+"What div ye think she said tae me?"  Then Drumtochty understood that
+there had been an incident, and that Elspeth as a conversationalist, if
+not as a raconteur, had found her equal.
+
+"'You are very kind to think of my movements, but'"--and here Mrs.
+Macfadyen spoke very slowly--"'I'm afraid they don't teach home
+geography at your school.  Paisley is not out of Scotland.'"
+
+"Ye've met yir match, Elspeth," said Jamie, with a hoarse chuckle, and
+the situation was apparent to all.  It was evident that the new
+housekeeper was minded to hide her past, and the choice of her last
+residence was a stroke of diabolical genius.  Paisley is an ancient
+town inhabited by a virtuous and industrious people, who used to make
+shawls and now spin thread, and the atmosphere is so literary that it
+is believed every tenth man is a poet.  Yet people do not boast of
+having been born there, and natives will pretend they came from
+Greenock.  No one can mention Paisley without a smile, and yet no one
+can say what amused him.  Certain names are the source of perennial
+laughter, in which their inhabitants join doubtfully, as persons not
+sure whether to be proud or angry.  They generally end in an apology,
+while the public, grasping vaguely at the purpose of such a place,
+settle on it every good tale that is going about the world unprovided
+for and fatherless.  So a name comes to be bathed in the ridiculous,
+and a mere reference to it passes for a stroke of supreme felicity.
+
+"Paisley"--Jamie again tasted the idea--"she 'll be an acqueesition tae
+the Glen."
+
+It was Sarah's first stroke of character to arrive without
+notice--having utterly baffled Peter at the Junction--and to be in
+complete possession of the manse on the return of Carmichael and his
+aunt from pastoral visits.
+
+"Sarah," cried the old lady in amazement at the sight of the
+housekeeper in full uniform, calm and self-possessed, as one having
+been years in this place, "when did ye come?"
+
+"Two hours ago, m'am, and I think I understand the house.  Shall I
+bring tea into the dining-room, or would you rather have it in the
+study?"  But she did not once glance past his aunt to Carmichael, who
+was gazing in silence at this composed young woman in the doorway.
+
+"This is Sarah, John, who hes come to keep yir house," and his aunt
+stepped back.  "Sarah, this is my dear laddie, the minister."
+
+Perhaps because her eyes were of a flashing black that pierced one like
+a steel blade, Sarah usually looked down in speaking to you, but now
+she gave Carmichael one swift, comprehensive look that judged him soul
+and body, then her eyes fell, and her face, always too hard and keen,
+softened.
+
+"I will try, sir, to make you comfortable, and you will tell me
+anything that is wrong."
+
+"You took us by surprise, Sarah," and Carmichael, after his hearty
+fashion, seized his housekeeper's hand; "let me bid you welcome to the
+manse.  I hope you will be happy here, and not feel lonely."
+
+But the housekeeper only bowed, and turned to his aunt.
+
+"Dinner at six?  As you were not in, and it did not seem any use
+consulting the woman that was here, I am preparing for that hour."
+
+"Well, ye see, Sarah, we have just been taking tea, with something to
+it, but if--"
+
+"Gentlemen prefer evening dinner, ma'am."
+
+"Quite right, Sarah," burst in Carmichael in great glee; "tea-dinner is
+the most loathsome meal ever invented, and we 'll never have it in the
+Free Manse.
+
+"That is an admirable woman, auntie," as Sarah disappeared, "with sound
+views on important subjects.  I 'll never ask again where she came
+from; she is her own testimonial."
+
+"You mauna be extravagant, John; Sarah hes never seen a manse before,
+and I must tell her not to--"
+
+"Ruin me, do you mean, by ten courses every evening, like the dinners
+West-end philanthropists used to give our men to show them how to
+behave at table?  We 'll be very economical, only having meat twice a
+week--salt fish the other days--but it will always be dinner."
+
+"What ails you at tea-dinner, John? it's very tasty and homely."
+
+"It's wicked, auntie, and has done more injury to religion than
+drinking.  No, I'm not joking--that is a childish habit--but giving
+utterance to profound truth, which ought to be proclaimed on the
+house-tops, or perhaps in the kitchens.
+
+"Let me explain, and I 'll make it as plain as day--all heresy is just
+bad thinking, and that comes from bad health, and the foundation of
+health is food.  A certain number of tea-dinners would make a man into
+a Plymouth brother.  It's a mere question of time.
+
+"You see if a man's digestion is good he takes a cheerful view of
+things; but if he is full of bile, then he is sure that everybody is
+going to be lost except himself and his little set, and that's heresy.
+Apologetics is just dietetics; now there 's an epigram made for you on
+the spot, and you don't know what it means, so we 'll have a walk
+instead."
+
+His aunt knew what was coming, but was too late to resist, so she was
+twice taken round the room for exercise, till she cried out for mercy,
+and was left to rest while Carmichael went out to get an appetite for
+that dinner.
+
+Nothing was said during its progress, but when Sarah had finally
+departed after her first triumph, won under every adverse circumstance
+of strangeness and limited resources, Carmichael took his aunt's hand
+and kissed it.
+
+"It is an illuminated address you deserve, auntie, for such a paragon;
+as it is, I shall be the benefactor of a Presbytery, asking the men up
+by turns on fast-days, and sending them home speechless with
+satisfaction."
+
+"Sarah was always a clever woman; if she had only--"  But Carmichael
+heard not, in his boyish excitement of householding.
+
+"Clever is a cold word for such genius.  Mark my words, there is not a
+manse in Perthshire that shall not sound with the praise of Sarah.  I
+vow perpetual celibacy on the spot.  No man would dream of marrying
+that had the privilege of such a housekeeper."
+
+"Ye 're a silly laddie, John; but some day a fair face will change a'
+yer life, an' if she be a good wumman like your mother, I 'll thank
+God."
+
+"No woman can be compared with her," and the minister sobered.  "You
+and she have spoiled me for other women, and now you have placed me
+beyond temptation with such a cook."
+
+So it came to pass that Carmichael, who knew nothing about fine cooking
+till Sarah formed his palate with her cunning sauces, and, after all,
+cared as little what he ate as any other healthy young man, boasted of
+his housekeeper continually by skilful allusions, till the honest wives
+of his fathers and brethren were outraged and grew feline, as any
+natural woman will if a servant is flung in her face in this
+aggravating fashion.
+
+"I 'm glad to hear you 're so well pleased, Mr. Carmichael," Mrs.
+MacGuffie would say, who was full of advice, and fed visitors on the
+produce of her garden, "but no man knows comfort till he marries.  It's
+a chop one day and a steak the next all the year round--nothing tasty
+or appetising; and as for his shirts, most bachelors have to sew on
+their own buttons.  Ah, you all pretend to be comfortable, but I know
+better, for Mr. MacGuffie has often told me what he suffered."
+
+Whereat Carmichael would rage furiously, and then, catching sight of
+MacGuffie, would bethink him of a Christian revenge.  MacGuffie was
+invited up to a day of humiliation--Sarah receiving for once _carte
+blanche_--and after he had powerfully exhorted the people from the
+words, "I am become like a bottle in the smoke," he was conducted to
+the manse in an appropriately mournful condition, and set down at the
+table.  He was inclined to dwell on the decadence of Disruption
+principles during soup, but as the dinner advanced grew wonderfully
+cheerful, and being installed in an arm-chair with a cup of decent
+coffee beside him, sighed peacefully, and said, "Mr. Carmichael, you
+have much cause for thankfulness."  Mr. MacGuffie had not come to the
+age of sixty, however, without learning something, and he only gave his
+curious spouse to understand that Carmichael had done all in his power
+to make his guest comfortable, and was not responsible for his
+servant's defects.
+
+[Illustration: "Mr. Carmichael, you have much cause for thankfulness."]
+
+Ladies coming with their husbands to visit the manse, conceived a
+prejudice against Sarah on the general ground of dislike to all
+housekeepers as a class of servants outside of any mistress's control,
+and therefore apt to give themselves airs, and especially because this
+one had a subtle suggestion of independent personality that was all the
+more irritating because it could not be made plain to the dull male
+intelligence, which was sadly deceived.
+
+"What a lucky man Carmichael is on his first venture!"  Even Dr.
+Dowbiggin, of St. Columba's, Muirtown, grew enthusiastic to his wife in
+the privacy of their bedchamber on a sacramental visit, and every one
+knows that the Doctor was a responsible man, ministering to four
+bailies and making "overtures" to the Assembly, beginning with
+"Whereas" and ending with "Venerable House."  "I am extremely pleased
+to see . . . everything so nice."
+
+"You mean, James, that you have had a good dinner, far too ambitious
+for a young minister's table.  Did you ever see an entree on a
+Disruption table, or dessert with finger glasses?  I call it
+sinful--for the minister of Drumtochty, at least; and I don't believe
+he was ever accustomed to such ways.  If she attended to his clothes,
+it would set her better than cooking French dishes.  Did you notice the
+coat he was wearing at the station?--just like a gamekeeper.  But it is
+easy for a woman to satisfy a man; give him something nice to eat, and
+he 'll ask no more."
+
+"So far as my recollection serves me, Maria"--the Doctor was ruffled,
+and fell into his public style--"I made no reference to food, cooked or
+uncooked, and perhaps I may be allowed to say that it is not a subject
+one thinks of . . . at such seasons.  What gave me much satisfaction
+was to see one of our manses so presentable; as regards the
+housekeeper, so far as I had an opportunity of observing, she seemed a
+very capable woman indeed," and the Doctor gave one of his coughs,
+which were found most conclusive in debate.
+
+"It's easy to be a man's servant," retorted Mrs. Dowbiggin, removing a
+vase of flowers from the dressing-table with contempt, "for they never
+look below the surface.  Did you notice her hands, as white and smooth
+as a lady's?  You may be sure there 's little scrubbing and brushing
+goes on in this manse."
+
+"How do you know, Maria?"--the Doctor was weakening.  "You have never
+been in the house before."
+
+"We 'll soon see that, James, though I dare say it would never occur to
+a man to do such a thing.  Did you ever look below the bed?"
+
+"Never," replied the Doctor, promptly, who was not constructed to
+stoop, "and I am not going to begin after that . . . ah . . . this
+evening, with work before me to-morrow.  But I would be glad to see
+you."
+
+"I have done so every night of my life for fear of robbers, and the
+dust I 've seen in strange houses--it's there you can tell a good
+servant," and Mrs. Dowbiggin nodded with an air of great sagacity.
+
+"Well," demanded the Doctor, anxiously watching the operation, "guilty
+or not guilty?"
+
+"She knew what I would do.  I hate those sharp women," and then the
+Doctor grew so eloquent over uncharitable judgments and unreasonable
+prejudices that his wife denounced Sarah bitterly as a "cunning woman
+who got on the blind side of gentlemen."
+
+Her popularity with Carmichael's friends was beyond question, for
+though she was a reserved woman, with no voluntary conversation, they
+all sent messages to her, inquired for her well-being at Fast-days, and
+brought her gifts of handkerchiefs, gloves, and such like.  When they
+met at Theologicals and Synods they used to talk of Sarah with
+unction--till married men were green with envy--being simple fellows
+and helpless in the hands of elderly females of the Meiklewham genus.
+For there are various arts by which a woman, in Sarah's place, wins a
+man's gratitude, and it may be admitted that one is skilful cooking.
+Sensible and book-reading men do not hunger for six courses, but they
+are critical about their toast and . . . nothing more, for that is the
+pulse.  Then a man also hates to have any fixed hour for
+breakfast--never thinking of houses where they have prayers at 7.50
+without a shudder--but a man refuses to be kept waiting five minutes
+for dinner.  If a woman will find his belongings, which he has
+scattered over three rooms and the hall, he invests her with many
+virtues, and if she packs his portmanteau, he will associate her with
+St. Theresa.  But if his hostess be inclined to discuss problems with
+him, he will receive her name with marked coldness; and if she follow
+up this trial with evil food, he will conceive a rooted dislike for
+her, and will flee her house.  So simple is a man.
+
+When Sarah proposed to Carmichael that she should prepare breakfast
+after he rung for his hot water, and when he never caught a hint of
+reproach on her face though he sat up till three and came down at
+eleven, he was lifted, hardly believing that such humanity could be
+found among women, who always seem to have a time table they are
+carrying out the livelong day.
+
+"The millennium is near at hand," said MacQueen, when the morning
+arrangements of the Free Kirk manse of Drumtochty were made known to
+him--MacQueen, who used to arrive without so much as a nightshirt,
+having left a trail of luggage behind him at various junctions, and has
+written books so learned that no one dares to say that he has not read
+them.  Then he placed an ounce of shag handy, and Carmichael stoked the
+fire, and they sat down, with Beaton, who could refer to the Summa of
+St. Thomas Aquinas from beginning to end, and they discussed the
+Doctrine of Scripture in the Fathers, and the formation of the Canon,
+and the authorship of the Pentateuch till two in the study.  Afterwards
+they went to MacQueen's room to hear him on the Talmud, and next
+adjourned to Beaton's room, who offered a series of twelve preliminary
+observations on the Theology of Rupert of Deutz, whereupon his host
+promptly put out his candle, leaving that man of supernatural memory to
+go to bed in the dark; and as Carmichael pulled up the blind in his own
+room, the day was breaking and a blackbird had begun to sing.  Next
+afternoon Beaton had resumed his observations on Rupert, but now they
+were lying among the heather on the side of Glen Urtach, and Carmichael
+was asleep, while MacQueen was thinking that they would have a good
+appetite for dinner that evening.
+
+Sarah had only one fault to find with her master, and that was his
+Bohemian dress; but since it pleased him to go one button less through
+studied carelessness, she let him have his way; and as for everything
+else, she kept her word to his aunt, and saw that he wanted for
+nothing, serving him with perpetual thoughtfulness and swift capacity.
+
+Little passed between them except a good-natured word or two from him
+and her courteous answer, but she could read him as a book, and when he
+came home that day from Muirtown she saw he was changed.  He was
+slightly flushed, and he could not sit still, wandering in and out his
+study till dinner-time.  He allowed the soup to cool, and when she came
+in with sweets he had barely touched his cutlet.
+
+"It is the sauce you like, sir," with some reproach in her voice.
+
+"So it is, Sarah--and first rate."  Then he added suddenly, "Can you
+put a button on this coat to-night, and give it a good brush?"
+
+In the evening Sarah went down to post a letter, and heard the talk,
+how Miss Carnegie had come home with the General, and was worthy of her
+house; how the minister also had driven up with her from Muirtown; and
+on her return she did her best by the coat, handling it very kindly,
+and singing softly to herself "Robin Adair."
+
+Next morning he came down in his blacks--the worst-made suit ever seen
+on a man, ordered to help a village tailor at his home--and announced
+his intention of starting after lunch for Saunderson's manse, beyond
+Tochty woods, where he would stay all night.
+
+"He will call on the way down, and, if he can, coming back," Sarah said
+to herself, as she watched him go, "but it's a pity he should go in
+such a coat; it might have been put together with a pitchfork.  It only
+makes the difference greater, and 't is wider than he knows already.
+And yet a woman can marry beneath her without loss; but for a man it is
+ruin."
+
+She went up to his room and made it neat, which was ever in disorder on
+his leaving, and then she went to a western window and looked into the
+far distance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION.
+
+Every Sabbath at eleven o'clock, or as soon thereafter as the people
+were seated--consideration was always shown to distant figures coming
+down from the high glen--Carmichael held what might be called High Mass
+in the Free Kirk.  Nothing was used in praise but the Psalms of David,
+with an occasional Paraphrase sanctioned by usage and sound teaching.
+The prayers were expected to be elaborate in expression and careful in
+statement, and it was then that they prayed for the Queen and Houses of
+Parliament.  And the sermon was the event to which the efforts of the
+minister and the thoughts of the people had been moving for the whole
+week.  No person was absent except through sore sickness or urgent farm
+duty; nor did rain or snow reduce the congregation by more than ten
+people, very old or very young.  Carmichael is now minister of a West
+End kirk, and, it is freely rumoured in Drumtochty, has preached before
+Lords of Session; but he has never been more nervous than facing that
+handful of quiet, impenetrable, critical faces in his first kirk.  When
+the service was over, the people broke into little bands that
+disappeared along the west road, and over the moor, and across the
+Tochty.  Carmichael knew each one was reviewing his sermon head by
+head, and, pacing his garden, he remembered the missing points with
+dismay.
+
+It was the custom of the Free Kirk minister to go far afield of a
+summer evening, and to hold informal services in distant parts of the
+parish.  This was the joy of the day to him, who was really very young
+and hated all conventionalities even unto affectation.  He was never
+weary of complaining that he had to wear a gown, which was continually
+falling back and being hitched over with impatient motions, and the
+bands, which he could never tie, and were, he explained to a horrified
+beadle in Muirtown, an invention of Satan to disturb the preacher's
+soul before his work.  Once, indeed, he dared to appear without his
+trappings, on the plea of heat, but the visible dismay and sorrow of
+the people was so great--some failing to find the Psalm till the first
+verse had been sung--that he perspired freely and forgot the middle
+head of his discourse.
+
+"It's a mercy," remarked Mrs. Macfadyen to Burnbrae afterward, "that he
+didna play that trick when there wes a bairn tae be baptised.  It wudna
+hae been lichtsome for its fouk; a'body wants a properly ordained
+minister.  Ye 'll gie him a hint, Burnbrae, for he's young and
+fordersome (rash), but gude stuff for a' his pliskies (frolics)."
+
+No one would have liked to see the sacred robes in the places of
+evening worship, and Carmichael threw all forms to the winds--only
+drawing the line, with great regret and some searchings of heart, at
+his tweed jacket.  His address for these summer evening gatherings he
+studied as he went through the fragrant pine woods or over the moor by
+springy paths that twisted through the heather, or along near cuts that
+meant leaping little burns and climbing dykes whose top stones were apt
+to follow your heels with embarrassing attachment.  Here and there the
+minister would stop as a trout leapt in a pool, or a flock of wild duck
+crossed the sky to Loch Sheuchie, or the cattle thrust inquisitive
+noses through some hedge, as a student snatches a mouthful from some
+book in passing.  For these walks were his best study; when thinking of
+his people in their goodness and simplicity, and touched by nature at
+her gentlest, he was freed from many vain ideas of the schools and from
+artificial learning, and heard the Galilean speak as He used to do
+among the fields of corn.  He came on people going in the same
+direction, but they only saluted, refraining even from the weather,
+since the minister's thoughts must not be disturbed, and they were
+amazed to notice, that he stooped to pluck a violet in the wood.  His
+host would come a little way to meet him and explain the arrangements
+that had been made for a kirk.  Sometimes the meeting-place was the
+granary of the farm, with floor swept clean and the wooden shutters
+opened for light, where the minister preached against a mixed
+background of fanners, corn measures, piles of sacks, and spare
+implements of the finer sort; and the congregation, who had come up a
+ladder cautiously like hens going to roost--being severally warned
+about the second highest step--sat on bags stuffed with straw, boards
+resting on upturned pails, while a few older folk were accommodated
+with chairs, and some youngsters disdained not the floor.  It was
+pleasanter in the barn, a cool, lofty, not unimpressive place of
+worship, with its mass of golden straw and its open door through which
+various kindly sounds of farm life came in and strange visitors
+entered.  The collies, most sociable of animals, would saunter in and
+make friendly advances to Carmichael reading a chapter; then, catching
+their master's eye and detecting no encouragement, would suddenly
+realise that they were at kirk, and compose themselves to sleep--"juist
+like ony Christian," as Hillocks once remarked with envy, his own plank
+allowing no liberties--and never taking any part except in a hymn like
+
+  "See the mighty host advancing,
+    Satan leading on,"
+
+which they regarded as recreation rather than worship.
+
+It was also recalled for years that a pet lamb came into Donald
+Menzies's barn and wandered about for a while, and Carmichael told that
+pretty legend of St. Francis, how he saw a white lamb among the kids,
+and burst into tears at the sight, because it reminded him of Jesus
+among the sinners.  Indeed, these services were very extemporaneous,
+with hymns instead of psalms, and sermons without divisions.
+Carmichael also allowed himself illustrations from the life around, and
+even an anecdote at a time, which was all the more keenly relished that
+it would have been considered a confession of weakness in a regular
+sermon.  He has been heard to say that he came nearer the heart of
+things once or twice in the barns than he has ever done since, not even
+excepting that famous course of sermons every one talked about last
+year, the "Analysis of Doubt," which almost converted two professors to
+Christianity, and were heard by the editor of the _Caledonian_ in the
+disguise of a street preacher.  It was also pleasantly remembered for
+long in the parish that Dr. Davidson appeared one evening in Donald
+Menzies's barn and joined affably in the "Sweet By-and-Bye."
+Afterward, being supplied with a large arm-chair, he heard the address
+with much attention--nodding approval four times, if not five--and
+pronouncing the benediction with such impressiveness that Donald felt
+some hesitation in thrashing his last stack in the place next day.  The
+Doctor followed up this visit with an exhortation from the pulpit on
+the following Sabbath, in which he carefully distinguished such
+services by an ordained minister, although held in a barn, from
+unlicensed Plymouthistic gatherings held in corn rooms--this at
+Milton's amateur efforts--and advised his people in each district to
+avail themselves of "my friend Mr. Carmichael's excellent
+ministrations," which Papal Bull, being distributed to the furthest
+corner of the parish before nightfall, greatly lifted the Free Kirk and
+sweetened the blood of the Glen for years.  It seemed to me, watching
+things in Drumtochty during those days with an impartial mind, that the
+Doctor, with his care for the poor, his sympathy for the oppressed, his
+interest in everything human, his shrewd practical wisdom, and his wide
+toleration, was the very ideal of the parish clergyman.  He showed me
+much courtesy while I lived in the Cottage, although I did not belong
+to his communion, and as my imagination reconstructs the old parish of
+a winter night by the fire, I miss him as he used to be on the road, in
+the people's homes, in his pulpit, among his books--ever an honourable
+and kind-hearted gentleman.
+
+One evening a woman came into Donald Menzies's barn just before the
+hour of service, elderly, most careful in her widow's dress, somewhat
+austere in expression, but very courteous in her manner.  No one
+recognised her at the time, but she was suspected to be the forerunner
+of the Carnegie household, and Donald offered her a front seat.  She
+thanked him for his good-will, but asked for a lower place, greatly
+delighting him by a reference to the parable wherein the Master rebuked
+the ambitious Pharisees who scrambled for chief seats.  Their accent
+showed of what blood they both were, and that their Gaelic had still
+been mercifully left them, but they did not use it because of their
+perfect breeding, which taught them not to speak a foreign tongue in
+this place.  So the people saw Donald offer her a hymn-book and heard
+her reply:
+
+"It iss not a book that I will be using, and it will be a peety to take
+it from other people;" nor would she stand at the singing, but sat very
+rigid and with closed lips.  When Carmichael, who had a pleasant tenor
+voice and a good ear, sang a solo, then much tasted in such meetings,
+she arose and left the place, and the minister thought he had never
+seen anything more uncompromising than her pale set face.
+
+[Illustration: Carmichael sang a solo.]
+
+It was evident that she was Free Kirk and of the Highland persuasion,
+which was once over-praised and then has been over-blamed, but is never
+understood by the Lowland mind; and as Carmichael found that she had
+come to live in a cottage at the entrance to the Lodge, he looked in on
+his way home.  She was sitting at a table reading the Bible, and her
+face was more hostile than in the meeting; but she received him with
+much politeness, dusting a chair and praying him to be seated.  "You
+have just come to the district to reside, I think?  I hope you will
+like our Glen."
+
+"It wass here that I lived long ago, but I hef been married and away
+with my mistress many years, and there are not many that will know me."
+
+"But you are not of Drumtochty blood?" inquired the minister.
+
+"There iss not one drop of Sassenach blood in my veins"--this with a
+sudden flash.  "I am a Macpherson and my husband wass a Macpherson; but
+we hef served the house of Carnegie for four generations."
+
+"You are a widow, I think, Mrs. Macpherson?" and Carmichael's voice
+took a tone of sympathy.  "Have you any children?"
+
+"My husband iss dead, and I had one son, and he iss dead also; that iss
+all, and I am alone;" but in her voice there was no weakening.
+
+"Will you let me say how sorry I am?" pleaded Carmichael, "this is a
+great grief, but I hope you have consolations."
+
+"Yes, I will be having many consolations; they both died like brave men
+with their face to the enemy.  There were six that did not feel fery
+well before Ian fell; he could do good work with the sword as well as
+the bayonet, and he wass not bad with the dirk at a time."
+
+Neither this woman nor her house were like anything in Drumtochty, for
+in it there was a buffet for dishes, and a carved chest and a large
+chair, all of old black oak; and above the mantelpiece two broadswords
+were crossed, with a circle of war medals beneath on a velvet ground,
+flanked by two old pistols.
+
+"I suppose those arms have belonged to your people, Mrs. Macpherson;
+may I look at them?"
+
+"They are not anything to be admiring, and it wass not manners that I
+should hef been boasting of my men.  It iss a pleasant evening and good
+for walking."
+
+"You were at the meeting, I think?" and Carmichael tried to get nearer
+this iron woman.  "We were sorry you had to go out before the end.  Did
+you not feel at home?"
+
+"I will not be accustomed to the theatre, and I am not liking it
+instead of the church."
+
+"But surely there was nothing worse in my singing alone than praying
+alone?" and Carmichael began to argue like a Scotsman, who always
+fancies that people can be convinced by logic, and forgets that many
+people, Celts in especial, are ruled by their heart and not by their
+head; "do you see anything wrong in one praising God aloud in a hymn,
+as the Virgin Mary did?"
+
+"It iss the Virgin Mary you will be coming to next, no doubt, and the
+Cross and the Mass, like the Catholics, although I am not saying
+anything against them, for my mother's cousins four times removed were
+Catholics, and fery good people.  But I am a Presbyterian, and do not
+want the Virgin Mary."
+
+Carmichael learned at that moment what it was to argue with a woman,
+and he was to make more discoveries in that department before he came
+to terms with the sex, and would have left in despair had it not been
+for an inspiration of his good angel.
+
+"Well, Mrs. Macpherson, I did n't come to argue about hymns, but to bid
+you welcome to the Glen and to ask for a glass of water, for preaching
+is thirsty work."
+
+"It iss black shame I am crying on myself for sitting here and offering
+you neither meat nor drink," and she was stung with regret in an
+instant.  "It iss a little spirits you will be tasting, and this iss
+Talisker which I will be keeping for a friend, for whisky iss not for
+women."
+
+She was full of attention, but when Carmichael took milk instead of
+whisky, her suspicions revived, and she eyed him again.
+
+"You are not one of those new people I am hearing of in the Lowlands
+that are wiser than the fery Apostles?"
+
+"What people?" and Carmichael trembled for his new position.
+
+"'Total abstainers' they will call themselves," and the contempt in her
+accent was wonderful.
+
+"No, I am not," Carmichael hastened to reassure his hostess; "but there
+are worse people than abstainers in the world, and it would be better
+if we had a few more.  I will stick to the milk, if you please."
+
+"You will take what you please," and she was again mollified; "but the
+great ministers always had their tasting after preaching; and I hef
+heard one of them say that it wass a sin to despise the Lord's mercies.
+You will be taking another glass of milk and resting a little."
+
+"This hospitality reminds me of my mother, Mrs. Macpherson."
+Carmichael was still inspired, and was, indeed, now in full sail.  "She
+was a Highland woman, and had the Gaelic.  She sometimes called me Ian
+instead of John."
+
+"When you wass preaching about the shepherd finding the sheep, I wass
+wondering how you had the way to the heart, and I might have been
+thinking, oh yes, I might hef known"--all the time Janet was ever
+bringing something new out of the cupboard, though Carmichael only
+sipped the milk.  "And what wass your mother's name?"
+
+"Farquharson; her people came from Braemar; but they are all dead now,
+and I am the last of the race."
+
+"A good clan," cried Janet, in great spirits, "and a loyal; they were
+out with the Macphersons in the '45.  Will you happen to know whether
+your ancestor suffered?"
+
+"That he did, for he shot an English officer dead on his doorstep, and
+had to flee the country; it was not a pretty deed."
+
+"Had the officer broken bread with him?" inquired Janet, anxiously.
+
+"No, he had come to quarter himself and his men on him, and said
+something rude about the Prince."
+
+"Your ancestor gave him back his word like a gentleman; but he would
+maybe hef to stay away for a while.  Wass he of the chief's blood?"
+
+"Oh no, just a little laird, and he lost his bit of land, and we never
+saw the place again."
+
+"He would be a Dunniewassal, and proud it iss I am to see you in my
+house; and the Gaelic, will you hef some words?"
+
+"Just the sound of it, Mrs. Macpherson," and he repeated his three
+sentences, all that he had learned of his mother, who had become a
+Scotswoman in her speech.
+
+"Call me Janet, my dear; and it iss the good Gaelic your mother must
+have had, and it makes my heart glad to think my minister iss a
+Farquharson, by the mother's side."
+
+"We sing nothing but Psalms at church, Mrs. . . . . Janet, so you will
+be pleased, and we stand to pray and sit to sing."
+
+"Tuts, tuts, I am not minding about a bit hime at a time from a friend,
+but it iss those Lowlanders meddling with everything I do not like, and
+I am hoping to hear you sing again, for it wass a fery pretty tune;"
+and the smith, passing along the road when Carmichael left that
+evening, heard Janet call him "my dear," and invoke a thousand
+blessings on his head.
+
+When he called again in the end of the week to cement the alliance and
+secure her presence on Sabbath, Janet was polishing the swords, and was
+willing enough to give their history.
+
+"This wass my great-grandfather's, and these two nicks in the blade
+were made on the dragoons at Prestonpans; and this wass my husband's
+sword, for he wass sergeant-major before he died, a fery brave man,
+good at the fighting and the praying too.
+
+"Maybe I am wrong, and I do not know what you may be thinking, but
+things come into my mind when I am reading the Bible, and I will be
+considering that it wass maybe not so good that the Apostles were
+fishing people."
+
+"What ails you at fishermen, Janet?"
+
+"Nothing at all but one thing; they are clever at their nets and at
+religion, but I am not hearing that they can play with the sword or the
+dirk.
+
+"It wass a fery good intention that Peter had that night, no doubt, and
+I will be liking him for it when he took his sword to the policeman,
+but it wass a mighty poor blow.  If Ian or his father had got as near
+as that, it would not have been an ear that would have been missing."
+
+"Perhaps his head," suggested Carmichael.
+
+"He would not have been putting his nose into honest people's business
+again, at any rate," and Janet nodded her head as one who could see a
+downright blow that left no regrets; "it hass always made me ashamed to
+read about that ear.
+
+"It wass not possible, and it iss maybe no good speaking about it
+now"--Janet felt she had a minister now she could open her mind
+to--"but it would hef been better if our Lord could hef had twelve
+Macphersons for His Apostles."
+
+"You mean they would have been more brave and faithful?"
+
+"There 'wass a price of six thousand pounds, or it might be four, put
+on Cluny's head after Culloden, and the English soldiers were all up
+and down the country, but I am not hearing that any clansman betrayed
+his chief.
+
+"Thirty pieces of silver wass a fery small reward for such a dirty
+deed, and him one of the Chief's tail too; it wass a mistake to be
+trusting to fisher folk instead of Glen's men.
+
+"There iss something I hef wished," concluded Janet, who seemed to have
+given her mind to the whole incident, "that Peter or some other man had
+drawn his skean-dhu and slippit it quietly into Judas.  We would hef
+been respecting him fery much to-day, and it would hef been a good
+lesson--oh yes, a fery good lesson--to all traitors."
+
+As they got more confidential, Janet began to speak of signs and
+dreams, and Carmichael asked her if she had the second sight.
+
+"No; it iss not a lie I will be telling you, my dear, nor will I be
+boasting.  I have not got it, nor had my mother, but she heard sounds,
+oh yes, and knew what wass coming to pass.
+
+"'Janet,' she would say, 'I have heard the knock three times at the
+head of the bed; it will be your Uncle Alister, and I must go to see
+him before he dies.'"
+
+"And was she--"
+
+"Oh yes, she wass in time, and he wass expecting her; and once she saw
+the shroud begin to rise on her sister, but no more; it never covered
+the face before her eyes; but the knock, oh yes, many times."
+
+"Have you known any one that could tell what was happening at a
+distance, and gave warning of danger?" for the latent Celt was
+awakening in Carmichael, with his love of mystery and his sense of the
+unseen.
+
+"Listen, my dear"--Janet lowered her voice as one speaking of sacred
+things--"and I will tell you of Ina Macpherson, who lived to a hundred
+and two, and had the vision clear and sure.
+
+"In the great war with Russia I wass staying in the clachan of my
+people, and then seven lads of our blood were with the Black Watch, and
+every Sabbath the minister would pray for them and the rest of the lads
+from Badenoch that were away at the fighting.
+
+"One day Ina came into my sister's house, and she said, 'It iss danger
+that I am seeing,' and my heart stood still in my bosom for fear that
+it wass my own man Hamish.
+
+"'No,' and she looked at me, 'not yet, and not to-day,' but more she
+would not say about him.  'Is it my son Ronald?' my sister cried, and
+Ina only looked before her.  'It's a sore travail, and round a few
+black tartans I see many men in grey, pressing them hard; ochone,
+ochone.'
+
+"'It 's time to pray,' I said, and there wass a man in the clachan that
+wass mighty in prayer, and we gathered into his kitchen, four and
+twenty women and four men, and every one had a kinsman in the field.
+
+"It iss this minute that I hear Dugald crying to the Almighty,
+'Remember our lads, and be their help in the day of battle, and give
+them the necks of their enemies,' and he might be wrestling for half an
+hour, when Ina rose from her knees and said, 'The prayer is answered,
+for the tartans have the field, and I see blood on Ronald, but it is
+not his own.'"
+
+"And did you ever hear--"
+
+"Wait, my dear, and I will tell you, for the letter came from my
+nephew, and this is what he wrote:
+
+"'It wass three to one, and the gloom came on me, for I thought that I
+would never see Glenfeshie again, nor the water of the loch, nor the
+deer on the side of the hill.  Then I wass suddenly strengthened with
+all might in the inner man, and it iss five Russians that I hef killed
+to my own hands.'
+
+"And so it wass, and a letter came from his captain, who wass of
+Cluny's blood, and it will be read in church, and a fery proud woman
+wass my sister."
+
+These were the stories that Janet told to her minister in the days
+before the Carnegies came home, as well as afterwards, and so she
+prepared him to be an easier prey to a soldier's daughter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE.
+
+They met under the arch of the gate, and Carmichael returned with the
+Carnegies, Kate making much of him and insisting that he should stay to
+luncheon.
+
+"You are our first visitor, Mr. Carmichael, and the General says that
+we need not expect more than six, so we mean to be very kind to them.
+Do you live far from here?"
+
+"Quite near--just two miles west.  I happened to be passing; in fact, I
+'m going down to the next parish, and I . . . I thought that I would
+like to call and . . . and bid you welcome;" for Carmichael had not yet
+learned the art of conversation, which stands mainly in touching
+details lightly and avoiding the letter I.
+
+"It is very cruel of you to be so honest and dispel our flattering
+illusions"--Kate marvelled at his mendacity--"we supposed you had come
+'anes errand'--I'm picking up Scotch--to call on your new neighbours.
+Does the high road pass the Lodge?"
+
+"Oh no; the road is eight miles further; but the Drumtochty people take
+the near way through the woods; it's also much prettier.  I hope you
+will not forbid us, General? two people a week is all the traffic."
+
+"Forbid them--not I," said Carnegie, laughing.  "A man is not born and
+bred in this parish without learning some sense.  It would be a right
+of way case, and Drumtochty would follow me from court to court, and
+would never rest till they had gained or we were all ruined.
+
+"Has it ever struck you, Mr. Carmichael, that one of the differences
+between a Highlander and a Scot is that each has got a pet enjoyment?
+With the one it's a feud, and with the other it's a lawsuit.  A Scot
+dearly loves a 'ganging plea.'
+
+"No, no; Tochty woods will be open so long as Kate and I have anything
+to say in the matter.  The Glen and our people have not had the same
+politics, but we 've lived at peace, as neighbours ought to do, with
+never a lawsuit even to give a fillip to life."
+
+"So you see, Mr. Carmichael," said Kate, "you may come and go at all
+times through our territory; but it would be bare courtesy to call at
+the Lodge for afternoon tea."
+
+"Or tiffin," suggested the General; "and we can always offer curry, as
+you see.  My daughter has a capital recipe she wiled out of an old
+Hindoo rascal that cooked for our mess.  You really need not take it on
+that account," as Carmichael was doing his best in much misery; "it is
+only meant to keep old Indians in fair humour--not to be a test of good
+manners.  By the way, Janet has been sounding your praises, how have
+you won her heart?"
+
+"Oh, very easily--by having some drops of Highland blood in my veins;
+and so I am forgiven all my faults, and am credited with all sorts of
+excellences."
+
+"Then the Highlanders are as clannish as ever," cried the General.
+"Scotland has changed so much in the last half century that the
+Highlanders might have become quite unsentimental and matter-of-fact.
+
+"Lowland civilisation only crossed the Highland line after '45, and it
+will take more than a hundred and thirty years to recast a Celt.
+Scottish education and theology are only a veneer on him, and below he
+has all his old instincts.
+
+"So far as I can make out, a Celt will rather fish than plough, and be
+a gamekeeper than a workman; but if he be free to follow his own way, a
+genuine Highlander would rather be a soldier than anything else under
+the sun."
+
+"What better could a man be?" and Kate's eyes sparkled; "they must envy
+the old times when their fathers raided the Lowlands and came home with
+the booty.  It's a pity everybody is so respectable now, don't you
+think?"
+
+"Certainly the police are very meddlesome," and Carmichael now devoted
+himself to Kate, without pretence of including the General; "but the
+spirit is not dead.  A Celt is the child of generations of
+cattle-stealers, and the raiding spirit is still in the blood.  May I
+offer an anecdote?"
+
+"Six, if you have got so many, and they are all about Highlanders," and
+Kate leant forward and nursed her knee, for they had gone into the
+library.
+
+"Last week I was passing the cattle market in Edinburgh, and a big
+Highland drover stopped me, begging for a little money.
+
+"'It iss from Lochaber I hef come with some beasties, and to-morrow I
+will be walking back all the way, and it iss this night I hef no bed.
+I wass considering that the gardens would be a good place for a night,
+but they are telling me that the police will be disturbing me.'
+
+"He looked so simple and honest that I gave him half-a-crown and said
+that I was half a Highlander.  I have three Gaelic sentences, and I
+reeled them off with my best accent.
+
+"'Got forgive me,' he said, 'for thinking you to be a Sassenach body,
+and taking your money from you.  You are a fery well-made man, and here
+iss your silver piece, and may you always hef one in your pocket.'"
+
+[Illustration: "Here is your silver piece."]
+
+"'But what about your bed?'
+
+"'Tuts, tuts, that will be all right, for I hef maybe got some six or
+five notes of my own that were profit on the beasties; but it iss a
+pity not to be taking anything that iss handy when a body happens to be
+in the south.'"
+
+"Capital."  Kate laughed merrily, and her too rare laugh I used to
+think the gayest I ever heard.  "It was the only opportunity left him
+of following his fathers.  What a fine business it must have been,
+starting from Braemar one afternoon, a dozen men well armed, and
+getting down to Strathmore in the morning; then lying hid in some wood
+all day, and collecting a herd of fat cattle in the evening, and
+driving them up Glen Shee, not knowing when there might be a fight."
+
+"Hard lines on the Scottish farmers, Kit, who might be very decent
+fellows, to lose their cattle or get a cut from a broadsword."
+
+"Oh, they had plenty left; and seriously, dad, without joking, you
+know, what better could a Presbyterian Lowlander do than raise good
+beef for Highland gentlemen?  Mr. Carmichael, I beg pardon; you seem so
+good a Celt, that I forgot you were not of our faith."
+
+"We are not Catholics," the General explained, gravely, "although many
+of our blood have been, and my daughter was educated in a convent.  We
+belong to the Episcopal Church of Scotland, and will go into Muirtown
+at a time, but mostly we shall attend the kirk of my old friend Dr.
+Davidson.  Every man is entitled to his faith, and Miss Carnegie rather
+. . ."
+
+"Forgot herself."  Kate came to her father's relief.  "She often does;
+but one thing Miss Carnegie remembers, and that is that General
+Carnegie likes his cheroot after tiffin.  Do you smoke, Mr. Carmichael?
+Oh, I am allowed to stay, if you don't object, and have forgiven my
+rudeness."
+
+"You make too much of a word, Miss Carnegie."  Carmichael was not a man
+to take offence till his pride was roused.  "Very likely my drover was
+a true blue Presbyterian, and his minister as genuine a cateran as
+himself.
+
+"Years ago I made the acquaintance of an old Highland minister called
+MacTavish, and he sometimes stays with me on his way north in the
+spring.  For thirty years he has started at the first sign of snow, and
+spent winter spoiling the good people of the south.  Some years he has
+gone home with three hundred pounds."
+
+"But how does he get the money?" inquired the General, "and what does
+he use it for?"
+
+"He told me the history of his campaigns when he passed in March, and
+it might interest you; it's our modern raid, and although it's not so
+picturesque as a foray of the Macphersons, yet it has points, and shows
+the old spirit lives.
+
+"'She wass a goot woman, Janet Cameron, oh yes, Mr. John, a fery
+exercised woman, and when she wass dying she will be saying peautiful
+things, and one day she will be speaking of a little field she had
+beside the church.
+
+"'"What do you think I should be doing with that piece of ground," she
+will be saying, "for the end iss not far off, and it iss not earth I
+can be taking with me, oh no, nor cows."
+
+"'"No, Janet," I said, "but it iss a nice field, and lies to the sun.
+It might be doing good after you are gone, if it wass not wasted on
+your mother's cousins twice removed in Inverness, who will be drinking
+every drop of it, and maybe going to the Moderate Kirk."
+
+"'It wass not for two months or maybe six weeks she died, and I will be
+visiting her every second day.  Her experiences were fery good, and I
+hef told them at sacraments in the north.  The people in the south are
+free with their money, but it iss not the best of my stories that I can
+give them; they are too rich for their stomachs.
+
+"'Janet will often be saying to me, "Mister Dugald, it iss a thankful
+woman that I ought to be, for though I lost my man in the big storm and
+two sons in the war, I hef had mercies, oh yes.  There wass the
+Almighty and my cow, and between them I hef not wanted, oh no: they
+just did."
+
+"'"Janet, you will be forgetting your field that iss lying next the
+manse, and the people will be thinking that it iss a glebe; but I am
+telling them that it iss Janet Cameron's, who iss a fery experienced
+woman, and hass nefer seen the inside of a Moderate Kirk since the
+Disruption."
+
+"'Maybe you will be astonished, Mister John, but when Janet's will will
+be read that piece of ground wass left to the Free Kirk, which wass
+fery kind and mindful of Janet, and I made a sermon about her from the
+text of the "elect lady."
+
+"'It wass a good field, but it needed a dyke and some drains, and it
+wass not our people that had the money.  So I made another sermon on
+the text, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast
+of the field doth devour it," and went down to the south.  It wass not
+a dyke and some drains, but enough to build a byre and a stable I came
+back with.  That wass in '55, and before '60 there will be a new manse
+with twelve rooms that iss good for letting to the English people.  But
+it wass ten years the church needed, and a year for the porch to keep
+it warm, for I am not liking stoves, and will not hef one in
+Crianshalloch.
+
+"'It iss wonderful how much money the bodies hef in Glasgow, and it iss
+good for them to be hearing sound doctrine at a time.  There will be no
+Arminianism when I am preaching, and no joking; but maybe there will be
+some parables, oh yes, about the sheep coming in at the manse door for
+want of a fence, and the snow lying in the pulpit.'
+
+"There is a cateran for you, and, mind you, a good fellow too.  It's
+not greed sends him out, but sheer love of spoil.  Would you like to
+see MacTavish next time he passes up with the cattle?" for Carmichael
+was emboldened by the reception of his sketch.
+
+"Nothing we should like better, for the General and I want to know all
+about Scotland; but don't you think that those ministers have injured
+the Highlanders?  Janet, you know, has such gloomy ideas about
+religion."
+
+"There is no doubt, Miss Carnegie, that a load of Saxon theology has
+been landed on the Celt, and it has disfigured his religion.  Sometimes
+I have felt that the Catholic of the west is a truer type of northern
+faith than the Presbyterian of Ross-shire."
+
+"I am so glad to hear you say that," said Miss Carnegie, "for we had
+one or two west Catholics in the old regiment, and their superstitions
+were lovely.  You remember, dad, the MacIvers."
+
+"That was all well enough, Kit, but none of them could get the length
+of corporal; they were fearfully ignorant, and were reported at
+intervals for not keeping their accoutrements clean."
+
+"That only showed how religious they were, did n't it, Mr. Carmichael?
+Hadn't the early Christians a rooted objection to the bath?  I remember
+our Padre saying that in a lecture."
+
+"There are a good many modern Christians of the same mind, Miss
+Carnegie, and I don't think our poor Highlanders are worse than
+Lowlanders; but Catholic or Protestant, they are all subject to the
+gloom.  I cannot give the Gaelic word.
+
+"What is that?  Oh, a southerner would call it depression, and assign
+it to the liver, for he traces all trouble to that source.  But there
+is no word for this mood in English, because it is not an English
+experience.  My mother fell under it at times, and I saw the effect."
+
+"Tell us, please, if all this description does not weary you?" and Kate
+shone on Carmichael, who would have talked on the Council of Nice or
+the rotation of crops to prolong his privileges.
+
+"It comes on quite suddenly, and is quite a spiritual matter--a cloud
+which descends and envelops the soul.  While it lasts a Highlander will
+not laugh nor sing; he will hardly speak, and he loses all hope about
+everything.  One of our men has the gloom at a time, and then he
+believes that he is . . . damned.  I am speaking theologically."
+
+"The regiment must have been fond of theology, dad.  Yes, we
+understand."
+
+"Once he went out to the hill, and lay all night wrestling and
+agonising to be sure whether there was a God.  You know he 's just a
+small farmer, and it seems to me splendid that such a man should give
+himself to the big problems of the universe.  Do you know," and
+Carmichael turned to the General, who was smoking in great peace, "I
+believe that is the reason the Highlanders are such good fighting men.
+They fear God, and they don't fear any other person."
+
+"I 'll vouch for one thing," said the veteran with emphasis; "our men
+put off the gloom, or whatever you call it, when they smelt powder; I
+never saw a panic in a Highland regiment in more than forty years'
+soldiering."
+
+"What's the reason of the gloom?  I believe that I have a touch of it
+myself at times--don't stare at me, dad, it's rude--just a thin mist,
+you know, but distinctly not indigestion.  Is it a matter of race?"
+
+"Of course, but that's no explanation."  Carmichael had fallen into his
+debating society style.  "I mean one has to go further back; all our
+habits are shaped by environment."
+
+"One moment, please.  I have always wanted to ask some clever person
+what environment meant.  I asked Colonel MacLeod once, dad, and he said
+it was out of the new book on tactics, and he was thankful he had
+retired.  Now Mr. Carmichael will make it plain," and Kate was very
+demure.
+
+"It is rather stupid to use the word so much as people do now," and
+Carmichael glanced dubiously at Kate; "scientific men use it for
+circumstances."
+
+"Is that all? then do pray say environment.  Such a word introduces one
+into good society, and gives one the feeling of being well dressed; now
+about a Highlander's environment, is it his kilt you are thinking of,
+or his house, or what?"
+
+"His country"--and Carmichael's tone had a slight note of resentment,
+as of one ruffled by this frivolity--"with its sea lochs, and glens,
+and mists.  Any one who has been bred and reared at the foot of one of
+our mountains will have a different nature and religion from one living
+in Kent or Italy.  He has a sense of reverence, and surely that is a
+good thing."
+
+"Nothing more needed nowadays," the General broke in with much spirit;
+"it seems to me that people nowadays respect nobody, neither the Queen
+nor Almighty God.  As for that man Brimstone, he will never cease till
+he has ruined the Empire.  You need n't look at me, Kate, for Mr. . . .
+Carmichael must know this as well as any other sensible man.
+
+"Why, sir," and now the General was on his feet, "I was told on good
+authority at the club last week by a newspaper man--a monstrously
+clever man--that Mr. Brimstone, when he is going down to the House of
+Commons to disestablish the Church, or the army, or something, will
+call in at a shop and order two hundred silk hats to be sent to his
+house.  What do you call that, sir?"
+
+"I should call it a deliberate--"
+
+[Illustration: "I should call it a deliberate--"]
+
+"_Jeu d'esprit_.  Of course it is, dad," and Kate threw an appealing
+glance to Carmichael, who had sprung to his feet and was standing
+stiffly behind his chair, for he was a fierce Radical.
+
+"Perhaps it was, lassie--those war correspondents used to be sad
+rascals--and, at any rate, politics are bad taste.  Another cheroot,
+Mr. Carmichael?  Oh, nonsense; you must tell my daughter more about
+your Highlanders.  They are a loyal set, at any rate, and we all admire
+that."
+
+"Yes, they are," and Carmichael unbent again, "and will stick by their
+side whether it be right or wrong.  They 're something like a woman in
+their disposition."
+
+"Indeed," said Kate, who did not think Carmichael had responded very
+courteously to her lead, "that is very interesting.  They are, you
+mean, full of prejudices and notions."
+
+"If a Highlander takes you into his friendship, you may say or do what
+you like, he will stand by you, and although his views are as different
+from yours as black from white, will swear he agrees with every one.
+If he 's not your friend, he can see no good in anything you do,
+although you be on his own side."
+
+"In fact, he has very little judgment and no sense of justice; and I
+think you said," Kate went on sweetly, "his nature reminded you of a
+woman's?"
+
+"You're sure that you like cheroots?" for the General did not wish this
+lad, Radical though he was, sacrificed on his first visit; "some men
+are afraid of the opium in them."
+
+"Please do not interrupt Mr. Carmichael when he is making a capital
+comparison," and Kate held him to the point.
+
+"What I intend is really a compliment," went on Carmichael, "and shows
+the superior fineness and sensitiveness of a woman's mind."
+
+Kate indicated that she was sure that was his meaning, but waited for
+details.
+
+"You see," with the spirit of one still fresh to the pulpit, "a man is
+slower, and goes by evidence; a woman is quicker, and goes by her
+instincts."
+
+"Like the lower animals," suggested Kate, sweetly, "by scent, perhaps.
+Well?"
+
+"You are twisting my words, Miss Carnegie."  Carmichael did not like
+being bantered by this self-possessed young woman.  "Let me put it this
+way.  Would a jury of women be as impartial as a jury of men?  Why, a
+bad-looking man would have no chance, for they would condemn him at
+once, not for what he did, but for what they imagined he was."
+
+"Which would save a lot of time and rid society of some precious
+scoundrels," with vivid recollections of her own efforts in this
+direction.  "Then you grant that women have some intelligence, although
+no sense of justice, which is a want?"
+
+"Far brighter than men," said Carmichael, eagerly; "just consider the
+difference between a man's and a woman's speech.  A man arranges and
+argues from beginning to end, and is the slave of connection.  He will
+labour every idea to exhaustion before he allows it to escape, and then
+will give a solemn cough by way of punctuating with a full stop, before
+he goes on to his next point.  Of course the audience look at their
+watches and make for the door."
+
+"What would a woman do?" Kate inquired with much interest.
+
+"A lady was speaking lately at Muirtown for an orphanage at
+Ballyskiddle, and described how Patsy was rescued from starvation, and
+greatly affected us.  'Patsy will never want bread again,' she
+concluded, and two bailies wept aloud.
+
+"Then she went on, and it seemed to me a stroke of genius, 'Speaking
+about Patsy, has any lady present a black dress suitable for a widow
+woman?'  Before we knew that we had left Patsy, the people were in a
+widow's home, and the bailies were again overcome.  I mention them
+because it is supposed that a bailie is the most important human being
+in Scotland, and he feels it his duty not to yield to emotion.
+
+"No, a woman speaker never sacrifices her capital; she carries it with
+her from England to France in her speech, and recognises no channel
+passage.  In fact," and Carmichael plunged into new imagery, "a man's
+progress is after the manner of a mole, while a woman flits from branch
+to branch like a--"
+
+"Squirrel--I know," came in Kate, getting tired.
+
+"Bird, I meant.  Why do you say squirrel?" and Carmichael looked
+suspiciously at Kate.
+
+"Because it's such a careless, senseless, irresponsible little beast.
+Have you met many women, Mr. Carmichael?  Really they are not all
+fools, as you have been trying to suggest for the last ten minutes."
+
+"Highlanders are a safer subject of conversation than women," said the
+General, good-naturedly, as he bade Carmichael good-bye.  "And you must
+tell us more about them next time you call, which I hope will be soon."
+
+Carmichael halted twice on his way through the woods; once he stamped
+his foot and looked like a man whose pride had been ruffled; the other
+time he smiled to himself as one who was thinking of a future pleasure.
+
+It was dusk as he crossed Lynedoch Bridge, and he looked down upon the
+pool below where the trout were leaping.  Half an hour passed, and then
+he started off at high speed for Kilbogie Manse.  "Please God if I am
+worthy," he was saying to himself; "but I fear she is too high above me
+every way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN.
+
+Jeremiah Saunderson had remained in the low estate of a "probationer"
+for twelve years after he left the Divinity Hall, where he was reported
+so great a scholar that the Professor of Apologetics spoke to him
+deprecatingly, and the Professor of Dogmatics openly consulted him on
+obscure writers.  He had wooed twenty-three congregations in vain, from
+churches in the black country where the colliers rose in squares of
+twenty and went out without ceremony, to suburban places of worship
+where the beadle, after due consideration of the sermon, would take up
+the afternoon notices and ask that they be read at once for purposes of
+utility, which that unflinching functionary stated to the minister with
+accuracy and much faithfulness.  Vacant congregations desiring a list
+of candidates made one exception, and prayed that Jeremiah should not
+be let loose upon them, till at last it came home to the unfortunate
+scholar himself that he was an offence and a byeword.  He began to
+dread the ordeal of giving his name, and, as is still told, declared to
+a household, living in the fat wheat lands and without any imagination,
+that he was called Magor Missabib.  When a stranger makes a statement
+of this kind with a sad seriousness, no one judges it expedient to
+offer any remark, but it was skilfully arranged that Missabib's door
+should be locked from the outside, and one member of the household sat
+up all night.  The sermon next day did not tend to confidence--having
+seven quotations in unknown tongues--and the attitude of the
+congregation was one of alert vigilance; but no one gave any outward
+sign of uneasiness, and six able-bodied men collected in a pew below
+the pulpit knew their duty in an emergency.
+
+Saunderson's election to the Free Church of Kilbogie was therefore an
+event in the ecclesiastical world, and a consistent tradition in the
+parish explained its inwardness on certain grounds, complimentary both
+to the judgment of Kilbogie and the gifts of Mr. Saunderson.  On
+Saturday evening he was removed from the train by the merest accident,
+and left the railway station in such a maze of meditation that he
+ignored the road to Kilbogie altogether, although its sign post was
+staring him in the face, and continued his way to Drumtochty.  It was
+half-past nine when Jamie Soutar met him on the high road through our
+Glen, still travelling steadily west, and being arrested by his
+appearance, beguiled him into conversation, till he elicited that
+Saunderson was minded to reach Kilbogie.  For an hour did the wanderer
+rest in Jamie's kitchen, during which he put Jamie's ecclesiastical
+history into a state of thorough repair--making seven distinct
+parallels between the errors that had afflicted the Scottish Church and
+the early heretical sects--and then Jamie gave him in charge of a
+ploughman who was courting in Kilbogie and was not averse to a journey
+that seemed to illustrate the double meaning of charity.  Jeremiah was
+handed over to his anxious hosts at a quarter to one in the morning,
+covered with mud, somewhat fatigued, but in great peace of soul, having
+settled the place of election in the prophecy of Habakkuk as he came
+down with his silent companion through Tochty woods.
+
+Nor was that all he had done.  When they came out from the shadow and
+struck into the parish of Kilbogie--whose fields, now yellow unto
+harvest, shone in the moonlight--his guide broke silence and enlarged
+on a plague of field-mice which had quite suddenly appeared and had
+sadly devastated the grain of Kilbogie, Saunderson awoke from study and
+became exceedingly curious, first of all demanding a particular account
+of the coming of the mice, their multitude, their habits, and their
+determination.  Then he asked many questions about the moral conduct
+and godliness of the inhabitants of Kilbogie, which his companion, as a
+native of Drumtochty, painted in gloomy colours, although indicating
+that even in Kilbogie there was a remnant.  Next morning the minister
+rose at daybreak, and was found wandering through the fields in such a
+state of excitement that he could hardly be induced to look at
+breakfast.  When the "books" were placed before him, he turned promptly
+to the ten plagues of Egypt, which he expounded in order as preliminary
+to a full treatment of the visitations of Providence.
+
+"He cowes (beats) a' ye ever saw or heard," the farmer of Mains
+explained to the elders at the gate.  "He gaed tae bed at half twa and
+wes oot in the fields by four, an' a 'm dootin' he never saw his bed.
+He 's lifted abune the body a'thegither, an' can hardly keep himsel'
+awa' frae the Hebrew at his breakfast.  Ye 'll get a sermon the day, or
+ma name is no Peter Pitillo."  Mains also declared his conviction that
+the invasion of mice would be dealt with after a Scriptural and
+satisfying fashion.  The people went in full of expectation, and to
+this day old people recall Jeremiah Saunderson's trial sermon with
+lively admiration.  Experienced critics were suspicious of candidates
+who read lengthy chapters from both Testaments and prayed at length for
+the Houses of Parliament, for it was justly held that no man would take
+refuge in such obvious devices for filling up the time unless he was
+short of sermon material.  One unfortunate, indeed, ruined his chances
+at once by a long petition for those in danger on the sea--availing
+himself with some eloquence of the sympathetic imagery of the 107th
+Psalm--for this effort was regarded as not only the most barefaced
+padding, but also as evidence of an almost incredible blindness to
+circumstances.  "Did he think Kilbogie wes a fishing village?" Mains
+inquired of the elders afterwards, with pointed sarcasm.  Kilbogie was
+not indifferent to a well-ordered prayer--although its palate was
+coarser in the appreciation of felicitous terms and allusions than that
+of Drumtochty--and would have been scandalised if the Queen had been
+omitted; but it was by the sermon the young man must stand or fall, and
+Kilbogie despised a man who postponed the ordeal.
+
+Saunderson gave double pledges of capacity and fulness before he opened
+his mouth in the sermon, for he read no Scripture at all that day, and
+had only one prayer, which was mainly a statement of the Divine Decrees
+and a careful confession of the sins of Kilbogie; and then, having
+given out his text from the prophecy of Joel, he reverently closed the
+Bible and placed it on the seat behind him.  His own reason for this
+proceeding was a desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject,
+and a painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church
+when he landed a Bible--with clasps--on the head of the precentor in
+the heat of a discourse defending the rejection of Esau.  Our best and
+simplest actions--and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe--can be
+misconstrued, and the only dissentient from Saunderson's election
+insisted that the Bible had been deposited on the floor, and asserted
+that the object of this profanity was to give the preacher a higher
+standing in the pulpit.  This malignant reading of circumstances might
+have wrought mischief--for Saunderson's gaunt figure did seem to grow
+in the pulpit--had it not been for the bold line of defence taken up by
+Mains.
+
+"Gin he wanted tae stand high, wes it no tae preach the word? an' gin
+he wanted a soond foundation for his feet, what better could he get
+than the twa Testaments?  Answer me that."
+
+It was seen at once that no one could answer that, and the captious
+objector never quite recovered his position in the parish, while it is
+not the least of Kilbogie's boasting, in which the Auld Kirk will even
+join against Drumtochty, that they have a minister who not only does
+not read his sermons and does not need to quote his texts, but carries
+the whole book in at least three languages in his head, and once, as a
+proof thereof, preached with it below his feet.
+
+Much was to be looked for from such a man, but even Mains, whetted by
+intercourse with Saunderson, was astonished at the sermon.  It was a
+happy beginning to draw a parallel between the locusts of Joel and the
+mice of Kilbogie, and gave the preacher an opportunity of describing
+the appearance, habits, and destruction of the locusts, which he did
+solely from Holy Scripture, translating various passages afresh and
+combining lights with marvellous ingenuity.  This brief preface of half
+an hour, which was merely a stimulant for the Kilbogie appetite, led up
+to a thorough examination of physical judgments, during which both
+Bible and Church history were laid under liberal contribution.  At this
+point the minister halted, and complimented the congregation on the
+attention they had given to the facts of the case, which were his first
+head, and suggested that before approaching the doctrine of visitations
+they might refresh themselves with a Psalm.  The congregation were
+visibly impressed, and many made up their minds while singing:
+
+  "That man hath perfect blessedness;"
+
+and while others thought it due to themselves to suspend judgment till
+they had tasted the doctrine, they afterwards confessed their
+confidence.  It goes without saying that he was immediately beyond the
+reach of the ordinary people on the second head, and even veterans in
+theology panted after him in vain, so that one of the elders, nodding
+assent to an exposure of the Manichaean heresy, suddenly blushed as one
+who had played the hypocrite.  Some professed to have noticed a
+doctrine that had not been touched upon, but they never could give it a
+name, and it excited just admiration that a preacher, starting from a
+plague of mice, should have made a way by strictly scientific methods
+into the secret places of theology.  Saunderson allowed his hearers a
+brief rest after the second head, and cheered them with the assurance
+that what was still before them would be easy to follow.  It was the
+application of all that had gone before to the life of Kilbogie, and
+the preacher proceeded to convict the parish under each of the ten
+commandments--with the plague of mice ever in reserve to silence
+excuses--till the delighted congregation could have risen in a body and
+taken Saunderson by the hand for his fearlessness and faithfulness.
+Perhaps the extent and thoroughness of this monumental sermon can be
+best estimated by the fact that Claypots, father of the present tenant,
+who always timed his rest to fifty minutes exactly, thus overseeing
+both the introduction and application of the sermon, had a double
+portion, and even a series of supplementary dozes, till at last he sat
+upright through sheer satiety.  It may also be offered as evidence that
+the reserve of peppermint held by mothers for their bairns was pooled,
+doles being furtively passed across pews to conspicuously needy
+families, and yet the last had gone before Saunderson finished.
+
+Mains reported to the congregational meeting that the minister had been
+quiet for the rest of the day, but had offered to say something about
+Habakkuk to any evening gathering, and had cleared up at family worship
+some obscure points in the morning discourse.  He also informed the
+neighbours that he had driven his guest all the way to Muirtown, and
+put him in an Edinburgh carriage with his own hands, since it had
+emerged that Saunderson, through absence of mind, had made his down
+journey by the triangular route of Dundee.  It was quite impossible for
+Kilbogie to conceal their pride in electing such a miracle of learning,
+and their bearing in Muirtown was distinctly changed; but indeed they
+did not boast vainly about Jeremiah Saunderson, for his career was
+throughout on the level of that monumental sermon.  When the Presbytery
+in the gaiety of their heart examined Saunderson to ascertain whether
+he was fully equipped for the work of the ministry, he professed the
+whole Old Testament in Hebrew, and MacWheep of Pitscowrie, who always
+asked the candidate to read the twenty-third Psalm, was beguiled by
+Jeremiah into the Book of Job, and reduced to the necessity of asking
+questions by indicating verbs with his finger.  His Greek examination
+led to an argument between Jeremiah and Dr. Dowbiggin on the use of the
+aorist, from which the minister-elect of Kilbogie came out an easy
+first; and his sermons were heard to within measurable distance of the
+second head by an exact quorum of the exhausted court, who were kept by
+the clerk sitting at the door, and preventing MacWheep escaping.  His
+position in the court was assured from the beginning, and fulfilled the
+function of an Encyclopaedia with occasional amazing results, as when
+information was asked about some Eastern sect for whose necessities the
+Presbytery were asked to collect, and to whose warm piety affecting
+allusion was made, and Jeremiah showed clearly, with the reporters
+present, that the Cappadocians were guilty of a heresy beside
+which Morisonianism was an unsullied whiteness.  His work as
+examiner-in-general for the court was a merciful failure, and
+encouraged the students of the district to return to their district
+court, who on the rumour of him had transferred themselves in a body to
+a Highland Presbytery, where the standard question in Philosophy used
+to be, "How many horns has a dilemma, and distinguish the one from the
+other."  No man knew what the minister of Kilbogie might not ask--he
+was only perfectly certain that it would be beyond his knowledge; but
+as Saunderson always gave the answer himself in the end, and imputed it
+to the student, anxiety was reduced to a minimum.  Saunderson, indeed,
+was in the custom of passing all candidates and reporting them as
+marvels of erudition, whose only fault was a becoming modesty--which,
+however, had not concealed from his keen eye hidden treasures of
+learning.  Beyond this sphere the good man's services were not used by
+a body of shrewd ecclesiastics, as the inordinate length of an
+ordination sermon had ruined a dinner prepared for the court by "one of
+our intelligent and large-hearted laymen," and it is still pleasantly
+told how Saunderson was invited to a congregational _soiree_--an
+ancient meeting where the people ate oranges and the speaker rallied
+the minister on being still unmarried--and discoursed---as a carefully
+chosen subject--on the Jewish feasts, with illustrations from the
+Talmud, till some one burst a paper bag and allowed the feelings of the
+people to escape.  When this history was passed round Muirtown Market,
+Kilbogie thought still more highly of their minister, and indicated
+their opinion of the other parish in severely theological language.
+
+Saunderson's reputation for unfathomable learning and saintly
+simplicity was built up out of many incidents, and grew with the lapse
+of years to a solitary height in the big strath, so that no man would
+have dared to smile had the Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie appeared in
+Muirtown in his shirt sleeves, and Kilbogie would only have been a
+trifle more conceited.  Truly he was an amazing man, and, now that he
+is dead and gone, the last of his race, I wish some man of his
+profession had written his life, for the doctrine he taught and the way
+he lived will not be believed by the new generation.  The arrival of
+his goods was more than many sermons to Kilbogie, and I had it from
+Mains's own lips.  It was the kindly fashion of those days that the
+farmers carted the new minister's furniture from the nearest railway
+station, and as the railway to Kildrummie was not yet open, they had to
+go to Stormont Station on the north line; and a pleasant procession
+they made passing through Pitscowrie, ten carts in their best array,
+and drivers with a semi-festive air.  Mr. Saunderson was at the
+station, having reached it by some miracle without mistake, and was in
+a condition of abject nervousness about the handling and conveyance of
+his belongings.
+
+"You will be careful--exceeding careful," he implored; "if one of the
+boxes were allowed to descend hurriedly to the ground, the result to
+what is within would be disastrous.  I am much afraid that the weight
+is considerable, but I am ready to assist;" and he got ready.
+
+"Dinna pit yirsel' intae a ferry tarry (commotion)," but Mains was
+distinctly pleased to see a little touch of worldliness, just enough to
+keep the new minister in touch with humanity.  "It 'll be queer stuff
+oor lads canna lift, an' a 'll gie ye a warranty that the' 'll no be a
+cup o' the cheeny broken," and then Saunderson conducted his
+congregation to the siding.
+
+"Dod, man," remarked Mains to the station-master, examining a truck
+with eight boxes; "the manse 'll no want for dishes at ony rate; but
+let's start on the furniture; whar hae ye got the rest o' the
+plenishing?
+
+"Naething mair? havers, man, ye dinna mean tae say they pack beds an'
+tables in boxes; a' doot there 's a truck missin'."  Then Mains went
+over where the minister was fidgeting beside his possessions.
+
+"No, no," said Saunderson, when the situation was put before him, "it's
+all here.  I counted the boxes, and I packed every box myself.  That
+top one contains the fathers--deal gently with it; and the Reformation
+divines are just below it.  Books are easily injured, and they feel it.
+I do believe there is a certain life in them, and . . . and . . . they
+don't like being ill-used," and Jeremiah looked wistfully at the
+ploughmen.
+
+"Div ye mean tae say," as soon as Mains had recovered, "that ye 've
+brocht naethin' for the manse but bukes, naither bed nor bedding?
+Keep's a'," as the situation grew upon him, "whar are ye tae sleep, and
+what are ye to sit on?  An' div ye never eat?  This croons a';" and
+Mains gazed at his new minister as one who supposed that he had taken
+Jeremiah's measure and had failed utterly.
+
+"_Mea culpa_--it's . . . my blame," and Saunderson was evidently
+humbled at this public exposure of his incapacity; "some slight
+furnishing will be expedient, even necessary, and I have a plan for
+book-shelves in my head; it is ingenious and convenient, and if there
+is a worker in wood . . ."
+
+"Come awa' tae the dog-cart, sir," said Mains, realising that even
+Kilbogie did not know what a singular gift they had obtained, and that
+discussion on such sublunary matters as pots and pans was useless, not
+to say profane.  So eight carts got a box each; one, Jeremiah's ancient
+kist of moderate dimensions; and the tenth--that none might be left
+unrecognised--a handbag that had been on the twelve years' probation
+with its master.  The story grew as it passed westwards, and when it
+reached us we were given to understand that the Free Kirk minister of
+Kilbogie had come to his parish with his clothing in a paper parcel and
+twenty-four packing cases filled with books, in as many languages--half
+of them dating from the introduction of printing, and fastened by
+silver clasps--and that if Drumtochty seriously desired to hear an
+intellectual sermon at a time, we must take our way through Tochty
+woods.
+
+Mrs. Pitillo took the minister into her hands, and compelled him to
+accompany her to Muirtown, where she had him at her will for some time,
+so that she equipped the kitchen (fully), a dining-room (fairly), a
+spare bedroom (amply), Mr. Saunderson's own bedroom (miserably), and
+secured a table and two chairs for the study.  This success turned her
+head.  Full of motherly forethought, and having a keen remembrance that
+probationers always retired in the afternoon at Mains to think over the
+evening's address, and left an impress of the human form on the bed
+when they came down to tea, Mrs. Pitillo suggested that a sofa would be
+an admirable addition to the study.  As soon as this piece of
+furniture, of a size suitable for his six feet, was pointed out to the
+minister, he took fright, and became quite unmanageable.  He would not
+have such an article in his study on any account, partly because it
+would only feed a tendency to sloth--which, he explained, was one of
+his besetting sins--and partly because it would curtail the space
+available for books, which, he indicated, were the proper furniture of
+any room, but chiefly of a study.  So great was his alarm that he
+repented of too early concessions about the other rooms, and explained
+to Mrs. Pitillo that every inch of space must be rigidly kept for the
+overflow from the study, which he expected--if he were spared--would
+reach the garrets.  Several times on their way back to Kilbogie,
+Saunderson looked wistfully at Mrs. Pitillo, and once opened his mouth
+as if to speak, from which she gathered that he was grateful for her
+kindness, but dared not yield any farther to the luxuries of the flesh.
+
+What this worthy woman endured in securing a succession of reliable
+housekeepers for Mr. Saunderson and overseeing the interior of that
+remarkable home, she was never able to explain to her own satisfaction,
+though she made many honest efforts, and one of her last intelligible
+utterances was a lamentable prophecy of the final estate of the Free
+Church manse of Kilbogie.  Mr. Saunderson himself seemed at times to
+have some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her
+name to Carmichael in feeling terms.  There had been some delay in
+providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles'
+walk from Drumtochty, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to
+take his meal standing for want of a chair.
+
+"While Mrs. Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting
+to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better
+ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree,
+and was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.
+
+"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an
+unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange
+them after an artificial fashion.  This she called tidying, and, in its
+most extreme form, cleaning."
+
+[Illustration: "She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my
+books."]
+
+"With all her excellencies, there was also in her what I have noticed
+in most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I
+was making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of
+comely editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the
+garden and dusted.  It was the space of two years before I regained
+mastery of my library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on
+the service book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second
+edition, to say nothing of an original edition of Rutherford's _Lex
+Rex_.
+
+"It does not become me, however, to reflect on the efforts of that
+worthy matron, for she was by nature a good woman, and if any one could
+be saved by good works, her place is assured.  I was with her before
+she died, and her last words to me were, 'Tell Jean tae dust yir bukes
+aince in the sax months, and for ony sake keep ae chair for sittin'
+on.'  It was not the testimony one would have desired in the
+circumstances, but yet, Mr. Carmichael, I have often thought that there
+was a spirit of . . . of unselfishness, in fact, that showed the
+working of grace."  Later in the same evening Mr. Saunderson's mind
+returned to his friend's spiritual state, for he entered into a long
+argument to show that while Mary was more spiritual, Martha must also
+have been within the Divine Election.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+IN THE GLOAMING.
+
+August is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it
+pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie.  The softness of the
+gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the
+honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the
+fields--for harvest is earlier down there than with us--and the cattle
+chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed
+peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination.  Fancies
+he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except
+his mother and his aunt.  There had been times when he and his set
+declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to
+be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union.  It was
+never completed--and therefore never signed--because the brotherhood
+could not agree about the duration of the vows--the draftsman, who has
+been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity,
+while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in
+the Moderator of Assembly.
+
+This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure
+boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk,
+but Carmichael had more of a mind on the matter.  There was in him an
+ascetic bent, inherited from some Catholic ancestor, and he was almost
+convinced that a minister would serve God with more abandonment in the
+celibate state.  As an only child, and brought up by a mother given to
+noble thoughts, he had learned to set women in a place by themselves,
+and considered marriage for ordinary men to flavour of sacrilege.  His
+mother had bound it as a law upon him that he was never to exercise his
+tongue on a woman's failings, never to argue with a woman unto her
+embarrassment, never to regard her otherwise than as his superior.
+Women noticed that Carmichael bore himself to them as if each were a
+Madonna, and treated him in turn according to their nature.  Some were
+abashed, and could not understand the lad's shyness; those were saints.
+Some were amused, and suspected him of sarcasm; those were less than
+saints.  Some horrified him unto confusion of face because of the
+shameful things they said.  One middle-aged female, whose conversation
+oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to
+sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak
+about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterwards described
+him as a prude.  It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by some
+women because he thought more highly of them than they thought of
+themselves.
+
+Carmichael was much tried by the baser of his fellow-students,
+especially a certain class of smug, self-contented, unctuous men, who
+neither had endured hardship to get to college, nor did any work at
+college.  They were described in reports as the "fruits of the
+revival," and had been taken from behind counters and sent to the
+University, not because they had any love of letters, like Domsie's
+lads at Drumtochty, but because rich old ladies were much impressed by
+the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they
+would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could
+gain by their own merits.  As Carmichael grew older, and therefore more
+charitable, he discovered with what faulty tools the work of the world
+and even of kirks is carried on, and how there is a root of good in
+very coarse and common souls.  When he was a young judge--from whom may
+the Eternal deliver us all--he was bitter against the "fruits," as he
+called them, because they did their best to escape examinations, and
+spoke in a falsetto voice, and had no interest in dogs, and because
+they told incredible tales of their spiritual achievements.  But
+chiefly did Carmichael's gorge rise against those unfortunates because
+of the mean way they spoke of marriage, and on this account, being a
+high-spirited young fellow, he said things which could hardly be
+defended, and of which afterwards he honestly repented.
+
+"Yes, religion is profitable for both worlds," one of them would exhort
+by the junior common-room fire, "and if you doubt it, look at me;
+five-and-twenty shillings a week as a draper's assistant was all I had,
+and no chance of rising.  Now I 'm a gentleman"--here Carmichael used
+to look at the uncleanly little man and snort--"and in two years I
+could ask any girl in religious society, and she would take me.  A
+minister can marry any woman, if he be evangelical.  Ah," he would
+conclude, with a fine strain of piety, "the Gospel is its own reward."
+
+What enraged Carmichael as he listened in the distance to these paeans
+of Pharisaism was the disgusting fact that the "fruits" did carry off
+great spoil in the marriage field, so that to a minister without
+culture, manners, or manliness, a middle-class family would give their
+pet daughter, when they would have refused her to a ten times better
+man fighting his way up in commerce.  If she died, then this
+enterprising buccaneer would achieve a second and third conquest, till
+in old age he would rival the patriarchs in the number of his wives and
+possessions.  As for the girl, Carmichael concluded that she was still
+under the glamour of an ancient superstition, and took the veil after a
+very commonplace and squalid Protestant fashion.  This particular
+"fruit" against whom Carmichael in his young uncharitableness
+especially raged, because he was more self-complacent and more
+illiterate than his fellows, married the daughter of a rich self-made
+man, and on the father's death developed a peculiar form of throat
+disease, which laid him aside from the active work of the ministry--a
+mysterious providence, as he often explained--but allowed him to enjoy
+life with a guarded satisfaction.  What Carmichael said to him about
+his ways and his Gospel was very unpleasant and quite unlike
+Carmichael's kindly nature, but the only revenge the victim took was to
+state his conviction that Scotland would have nothing to do with a man
+that was utterly worldly, and in after years to warn vacant churches
+against one who did not preach the Cross.
+
+After one of those common-room encounters, Carmichael used to fling
+himself out into the east wind and greyness of Edinburgh, fuming
+against the simplicity of good people, against the provincialism of his
+college, against the Pharisaism of his church, against the Philistinism
+of Scottish life.  He would go down to Holyrood and pity Queen Mary,
+transported from the gay court of France to Knox's Scotland, divided
+between theology and bloodshed.  In the evening he would sweep his
+table clean of German books on the Pentateuch, and cover it with prints
+of the old masters, which he had begun to collect, and ancient books of
+Catholic devotion, and read two letters to his mother from her uncle,
+who had been a Vicar-General, and died in an old Scottish convent in
+Spain.  There was very little in the letters beyond good wishes, and an
+account of the Vicar-General's health, but they seemed to link a Free
+Kirk divinity student on to the Holy Catholic Church.  Mother Church
+cast her spell over his imagination, and he envied the lot of her
+priests, who held a commission no man denied and administered a
+world-wide worship, whom a splendid tradition sanctioned, whom each of
+the arts hastened to aid; while he was to be the minister of a local
+sect and work with the "fruits," who knew nothing of Catholic
+Christianity, but supposed their little eddy, whereon they danced like
+rotten sticks, to be the main stream.  Next day a reaction would set
+in, and Carmichael would have a fit of Bohemianism, and resolve to be a
+man of letters.  So the big books on theology would again be set aside,
+and he would write an article for _Ferrier's Journal_, that kindliest
+of all journals to the young author, which he would receive back in a
+week "with thanks."  The Sunday night came, and Carmichael sat down to
+write his weekly letter to his mother--she got notes between, he found
+them all in her drawers, not a scrap missing--and as he wrote, his
+prejudices, and petulances, and fancies, and unrest passed away.
+Before he had told her all that happened to him during the
+week--touching gently on the poor Revivalist--although his mother had a
+saving sense of humour, and was a quite wonderful mimic--and saying
+nothing of his evening with St. Francis de Sales--for this would have
+alarmed her at once--he knew perfectly well that he would be neither a
+Roman nor a reporter, but a Free Kirk minister, and was not utterly
+cast down; for notwithstanding the yeasty commotion of youth and its
+censoriousness, he had a shrewd idea that a man is likely to do his
+life-work best in the tradition of his faith and blood.  Next morning
+his heart warmed as he went in through the college gates, and he would
+have defended Knox unto the death, as the maker of Scotland.  His
+fellow-students seemed now a very honest set of men, as indeed they
+were, although a trifle limited in horizon, and he hoped that one of
+the "fruits" was "satisfied with his Sunday's work," which shows that
+as often as a man of twenty-one gets out of touch with reality, he
+ought straightway to sit down and write to his mother.  Carmichael
+indeed told me one evening at the Cottage that he never had any
+mystical call to the ministry, but only had entered the Divinity Hall
+instead of going to Oxford because his mother had this for her heart's
+desire, and he loved her.  As a layman it perhaps did not become me to
+judge mysteries, but I dared to say that any man might well be guided
+by his mother in religion, and that the closer he kept to her memory
+the better he would do his work.  After which both of us smoked
+furiously, and Carmichael, two minutes later, was moved to remark that
+some Turkish I had then was enough to lure a man up Glen Urtach in the
+month of December.
+
+The young minister was stirred on the way to Kilbogie, and began to
+dream dreams in the twilight.  Love had come suddenly to him, and after
+an unexpected fashion.  Miss Carnegie was of another rank and another
+faith, nor was she even his ideal woman, neither conspicuously
+spiritual nor gentle, but frank, outspoken, fearless, self-willed.  He
+could also see that she had been spoiled by her father and his friends,
+who had given her _carte blanche_ to say and do what she pleased.  Very
+likely--he could admit that even in the first blush of his emotion--she
+might be passionate and prejudiced on occasion, even a fierce hater.
+This he had imagined in the Tochty woods, and was not afraid, for her
+imperfections seemed to him a provocation and an attraction.  They were
+the defects of her qualities--of her courage, candour, generosity,
+affection.  Carmichael leant upon a stile, and recalled the carriage of
+her head, the quick flash of her eye, the tap of her foot, the
+fascination of her manner.  She was free from the affectations,
+gaucheries, commonplaces, wearinesses of many good women he had known.
+St. Theresa had been the woman enshrined in the tabernacle of his
+heart, but life might have been a trifle tiresome if a man were married
+to a saint.  The saints have no humour, and do not relax.  Life with a
+woman like Miss Carnegie would be effervescent and stimulating, full of
+surprises and piquancy.  No, she was not a saint, but he felt by an
+instinct she was pure, loyal, reverent, and true at the core.  She was
+a gallant lass, and . . . he loved her.
+
+[Illustration: Mother Church cast her spell over his imagination.]
+
+What an absurdity was this revery, and Carmichael laughed aloud at
+himself.  Twice he had met Miss Carnegie--on one occasion she had found
+him watering strange dogs out of his hat, and on the other he had given
+her to understand that women were little removed from fools.  He had
+made the worst of himself, and this young woman who had lived with
+smart people must have laughed at him.  Very likely she had made him
+into a story, for as a raconteur himself he knew the temptation to work
+up raw material, or perhaps Miss Carnegie had forgotten long ago that
+he had called.  Suppose that he should call to-morrow on his way home
+and say, "General Carnegie, I think it right to tell you that I admire
+your daughter very much, and should like your permission to pay my
+addresses.  I am Free Church minister in Drumtochty, and my stipend is
+200 pounds a year" . . . his laugh this time was rather bitter.  The
+Carnegies would be at once admitted into the county set, and he would
+only meet them at a time . . .  Lord Hay was a handsome and pleasant
+young fellow.  He would be at Glen Urtach House for the shooting in a
+few days . . . that was a likely thing to happen . . . the families
+were old friends . . . there would be great festivities in the
+Glen . . . perhaps he would be asked to propose the bride's
+health . . .  It really seemed a providence that Saunderson should come
+along the road when he was playing the fool like a puling boy, for if
+any man could give a douche to love-sickness it was the minister of
+Kilbogie.
+
+Carmichael was standing in the shadow as Saunderson came along the
+road, and the faint light was a perfect atmosphere for the dear old
+bookman.  Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but
+with much poring over books and meditation he had descended some three
+inches.  His hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to
+genius, but because he forgot to get it cut, and with his flowing,
+untrimmed beard, was now quite grey.  Within his clothes he was the
+merest skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out in
+sharp outline, and his hands were almost transparent.  The redeeming
+feature in Saunderson was his eyes, which were large and eloquent, of a
+trustful, wistful hazel, the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal.  Whether
+he was expounding doctrines of an incredible disbelief in humanity or
+exalting, in rare moments, the riches of a divine love in which he did
+not expect to share, or humbly beseeching his brethren to give him
+information on some point in scholarship no one knew anything about
+except himself, or stroking the hair of some little child sitting upon
+his knee, those eyes were ever simple, honest, and most pathetic.
+Young ministers coming to the Presbytery full of self-conceit and new
+views were arrested by their light shining through the glasses, and
+came in a year or two to have a profound regard for Saunderson,
+curiously compounded of amusement at his ways, which for strangeness
+were quite beyond imagination, admiration for his knowledge, which was
+amazing for its accuracy and comprehensiveness, respect for his
+honesty, which feared no conclusion, however repellent to flesh and
+blood, but chiefly of love for the unaffected and shining goodness of a
+man in whose virgin soul neither self nor this world had any part.  For
+years the youngsters of the Presbytery knew not how to address the
+minister of Kilbogie, since any one who had dared to call him
+Saunderson, as they said "Carmichael" and even "MacWheep," though he
+was elderly, would have been deposed, without delay, from the
+ministry--so much reverence at least was in the lads--and "Mister"
+attached to this personality would be like a silk hat on the head of an
+Eastern sage.  Jenkins of Pitrodie always considered that he was
+inspired when he one day called Saunderson "Rabbi," and unto the day of
+his death Kilbogie was so called.  He made protest against the title as
+being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be
+understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it on
+the ground of his slender attainments.  The lads saw the force of this
+objection, and admitted that the honourable word belonged by rights to
+MacWheep, but it was their fancy to assign it to Saunderson--whereat
+Saunderson yielded, only exacting a pledge that he should never be so
+called in public, lest all concerned be condemned for foolishness.
+When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to
+confer the degree of D. D. on him for his distinguished learning and
+great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was
+delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an
+ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone
+out in a body and compelled him to accept.  They also purchased a
+Doctor's gown and hood, and invested him with them in the name of
+Kilbogie two days before the capping.  One of them saw that he was duly
+brought to the Tolbooth Kirk, where the capping ceremonial in those
+days took place.  Another sent a list of Saunderson's articles to
+British and foreign theological and philological reviews, which filled
+half a column of the _Caledonian_, and drew forth a complimentary
+article from that exceedingly able and caustic paper, whose editor lost
+all his hair through sympathetic emotion the morning of the Disruption,
+and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of the Free Kirk with much
+frankness.  The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so spread abroad that a
+great cheer went up as he came in with the other Doctors elect, in
+which he cordially joined, considering it to be intended for his
+neighbour, a successful West-end clergyman, the author of a Life of
+Dorcas and other pleasing booklets.  For some time after his boys said
+"Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common
+title, and fell back on Rabbi, by which he was known unto the day of
+his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.
+
+The Rabbi was tasting some morsel of literature as he came along, and
+halted opposite Carmichael, whom he did not see in the shadow, that he
+might enjoy it aloud.
+
+"That is French verse, Rabbi, I think, but it sounds archaic; is it
+from a Huguenot poet?"
+
+"Assuredly," replied the Rabbi, not one whit astonished that a man
+should come out from a hedge on Kilbogie road and recognise his
+quotation; "from Clement Marot, whom, as you remember, there is good
+evidence Queen Mary used to read.  It is you, John Carmichael."  The
+Rabbi awoke from the past, and held Carmichael's hand in both of his.
+"This was very mindful.  You were going home from Pitscowrie and turned
+aside to visit me.
+
+"It is unfortunate that I am hastening to a farm called the Mains, on
+the border of Pitscourie parish, to expound the Word; but you will go
+on to the Manse and straitly charge Barbara to give you food, and I
+will hasten to return."  And the Rabbi looked forward to the night with
+great satisfaction.
+
+"No, I am not coming from Pitscowrie, and you are not going there, as
+far as one can see.  Why, you are on your way to Tochty woods; you are
+going west instead of east; Rabbi, tell the truth, have you been
+snuffing?"
+
+This was a searching question, and full of history.  When the Rabbi
+turned his back against the wind to snuff with greater comfort, he was
+not careful to resume his original position, but continued cheerfully
+in the new direction.  This weakness was so well known that the school
+bairns would watch till he had started, and stand in a row on the road
+to block his progress.  Then there would be a parley, which would end
+in the Rabbi capitulating and rewarding the children with peppermints,
+whereupon they would see him fairly off again and go on their
+way--often looking back to see that he was safe, and somehow loving him
+all the more for his strange ways.  So much indeed was the Rabbi
+beloved that a Pitscowrie laddie, who described Saunderson freely as a
+"daftie" to Mains' grandson, did not see clearly for a week, and never
+recovered his lost front tooth.
+
+"That," remarked young Mains, "'ll learn Pitscowrie tae set up
+impidence aboot the minister."
+
+"There is no doubt, that I snuffed--it was at Claypots steading--but
+there was no wind that I should turn.  This is very remarkable, John,
+and . . . disconcerting.
+
+"These humiliations are doubtless a lesson," resumed the Rabbi as they
+hurried to Mains, "and a rebuke.  Snuffing is in no sense a necessity,
+and I have long recognised that the habit requires to be
+restricted--very carefully restricted.  For some time I have had fixed
+times--once in the forenoon, once in the afternoon, and again in the
+evening.  Had I restrained myself till my work was over and I had
+returned home this misadventure would not have occurred, whereby I have
+been hindered and the people will have been kept waiting for their
+spiritual food.
+
+"It is exactly twenty years to-night since I began this meeting in
+Mains," the Rabbi explained to Carmichael, "and I have had great
+pleasure in it and some profit.  My subject has been the Epistle to the
+Romans, and by the goodness of God we are approaching the last
+chapters.  The salutations will take about a year or so; Rufus, chosen
+in the Lord, will need careful treatment; and then I thought, if I were
+spared, of giving another year to a brief review of the leading points
+of doctrine; eh?"
+
+Carmichael indicated that the family at Mains would almost expect
+something of the sort, and inquired whether there might not be a few
+passages requiring separate treatment at fuller length than was
+possible in this hurried commentary.
+
+"Quite so, John, quite so; no one is more bitterly conscious of the
+defects of this exposition than myself--meagre and superficial to a
+degree, both in the patristic references and the experimental
+application; but we are frail creatures, John, and it is doubtful
+whether the exposition of any book should extend unto a generation.  It
+has always caused me regret that Mains--I mean the father of the
+present tenant--departed before we had come to the comfort of the
+eighth chapter."
+
+The Rabbi's mind was much affected by this thought, and twice in the
+kitchen his eye wandered to the chair where his friend had sat, with
+his wife beside him.  From Priscilla and Aquila he was led into the
+question of hospitality, on which he spoke afterwards till they came to
+the Manse, where he stationed Carmichael on the doorstep till he
+secured a light.
+
+"There is a parcel of books on the floor, partially opened, and the way
+of passing is narrow and somewhat dangerous in the darkness."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+KILBOGIE MANSE.
+
+Ministers there were in the great strath so orderly that they kept
+their sealing-wax in one drawer and their string in another, while
+their sermons were arranged under the books of the Bible, and tied with
+green silk.  Dr. Dowbiggin, though a dull man and of a heavy carriage,
+could find in an instant the original draft of a motion on instrumental
+music he made in the Presbytery of Muirtown in the year '59, and could
+also give the exact page in the blue-books for every word he had
+uttered in the famous case when he showed that the use of a harmonium
+to train MacWheep's choir was a return to the bondage of Old Testament
+worship.  His collection of pamphlets was supposed to be unique, and
+was a terror to controversialists, no man knowing when a rash utterance
+on the bottomless mystery of "spiritual independence" might not be
+produced from the Doctor's coat-tail pocket.  He retired to rest at
+10.15, and rose at six, settling the subject of his next sermon on
+Sabbath evening, and finishing the first head before breakfast on
+Monday morning.  He had three hats--one for funerals, one for
+marriages, one for ordinary occasions--and has returned from the
+Presbytery door to brush his coat.  Morning prayers in Dr. Dowbiggin's
+house were at 8.05, and the wrath of the Doctor was so dangerous that
+one probationer staying at the manse, and not quite independent of
+influence, did not venture to undress, but snatched a fearful doze
+sitting upright on a cane-bottomed chair, lest he should not be in at
+the psalm.  Young ministers of untidy habits regarded Dr. Dowbiggin's
+study with despair, and did not recover their spirits till they were
+out of Muirtown.  Once only did this eminent man visit the manse of
+Kilbogie, and in favourable moments after dinner he would give his
+choicer experiences.
+
+"It is my invariable custom to examine the bed to see that everything
+is in order, and any one sleeping in Kilbogie Manse will find the good
+of such a precaution.  I trust that I am not a luxurious person--it
+would ill become one who came out in '43--but I have certainly become
+accustomed to the use of sheets.  When I saw there were none on the
+bed, I declined to sleep without them, and I indicated my mind very
+distinctly on the condition of the manse.
+
+"Would you believe it?" the Doctor used to go on.  "Saunderson
+explained, as if it were a usual occurrence, that he had given away all
+the spare linen in his house to a girl that had to marry in . . .
+urgent circumstances, and had forgotten to get more.  And what do you
+think did he offer as a substitute for sheets?"  No one could even
+imagine what might not occur to the mind of Saunderson.
+
+"Towels, as I am an honourable man; a collection of towels, as he put
+it, 'skilfully attached together, might make a pleasant covering.'
+That is the first and last time I ever slept in the Free Church Manse
+of Kilbogie.  As regards Saunderson's study, I will guarantee that the
+like of it cannot be found within Scotland," and at the very thought of
+it that exact and methodical ecclesiastic realised the limitations of
+language.
+
+His boys boasted of the Rabbi's study as something that touched genius
+in its magnificent disorderliness, and Carmichael was so proud of it
+that he took me to see it as to a shrine.  One whiff of its atmosphere
+as you entered the door gave an appetite and raised the highest
+expectations.  For any bookman can estimate a library by scent--if an
+expert he could even write out a catalogue of the books and sketch the
+appearance of the owner.  Heavy odour of polished mahogany, Brussels
+carpets, damask curtains and tablecloths; then the books are kept
+within glass, consist of sets of standard works in half calf, and the
+owner will give you their cost wholesale to a farthing.  Faint
+fragrance of delicate flowers, and Russia leather, with a hint of
+cigarettes; prepare yourself for a marvellous wall-paper, etchings,
+bits of oak, limited editions, and a man in a velvet coat.  Smell of
+paste and cloth binding and general newness means yesterday's books and
+a man racing through novels with a paper knife.  Those are only
+book-rooms by courtesy, and never can satisfy any one who has breathed
+the sacred air.  It is a rich and strong spirit, not only filling the
+room, but pouring out from the door and possessing the hall, redeeming
+an opposite dining-room from grossness, and a more distant drawing-room
+from frivolity, and even lending a goodly flavour to bedrooms on upper
+floors.  It is distilled from curious old duodecimos packed on high
+shelves out of sight, and blows over folios, with large clasps, that
+once stood in monastery libraries, and gathers a subtle sweetness from
+parchments that were illuminated in ancient scriptoriums, that are now
+grass grown, and is fortified with good old musty calf.  The wind was
+from the right quarter on the first day I visited Kilbogie Manse, and
+as we went up the garden walk the Rabbi's library already bade us
+welcome, and assured us of our reward for a ten miles' walk.
+
+Saunderson was perfectly helpless in all manner of mechanics--he could
+not drive a tack through anything except his own fingers, and had given
+up shaving at the suggestion of his elders--and yet he boasted, with
+truth, that he had got three times as many books into the study as his
+predecessor possessed in all his house.  For Saunderson had shelved the
+walls from the floor to the ceiling, into every corner and over the
+doors, and above the windows, as well as below them.  The wright had
+wished to leave the space clear above the mantelpiece.
+
+"Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there, or maybe John Knox, and a bit
+clock 'll be handy for letting ye ken the 'oors on Sabbath."
+
+[Illustration: "Ye 'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there."]
+
+The Rabbi admitted that he had a Knox, but was full of a scheme for
+hanging him over his own history, which he considered both appropriate
+and convenient.  As regards time, it was the last thing of which that
+worthy man desired to be reminded--going to bed when he could no longer
+see for weariness, and rising as soon as he awoke, taking his food when
+it was brought to him, and being conducted to church by the beadle
+after the last straggler was safely seated.  He even cast covetous eyes
+upon the two windows, which were absurdly large, as he considered, but
+compromised matters by removing the shutters and filling up the vacant
+space with slender works of devotion.  It was one of his conceits that
+the rising sun smote first on an A Kempis, for this he had often
+noticed as he worked of a morning.
+
+Book-shelves had long ago failed to accommodate Rabbi's treasures, and
+the floor had been bravely utilised.  Islands of books, rugged and
+perpendicular, rose on every side; long promontories reached out from
+the shore, varied by bold headlands; and so broken and varied was that
+floor that the Rabbi was pleased to call it the Aegean Sea, where he
+had his Lesbos and his Samos.  It is absolutely incredible, but it is
+all the same a simple fact, that he knew every book and its location,
+having a sense of the feel as well as the shape of his favourites.
+This was not because he had the faintest approach to orderliness--for
+he would take down twenty volumes and never restore them to the same
+place by any chance.  It was a sort of motherly instinct by which he
+watched over them all, even loved prodigals that wandered over all the
+study and then set off on adventurous journeys into distant rooms.  The
+restoration of an emigrant to his lawful home was celebrated by a feast
+in which, by a confusion of circumstances, the book played the part of
+the fatted calf, being read afresh from beginning to end.  During his
+earlier and more agile years the Rabbi used to reach the higher levels
+of his study by wonderful gymnastic feats, but after two falls--one
+with three Ante-Nicene fathers in close pursuit--he determined to call
+in assistance.  This he did after an impressive fashion.  When he
+attended the roup at Pitfoodles--a day of historical prices--and
+purchased in open competition, at three times its value, a small stack
+ladder, Kilbogie was convulsed, and Mains had to offer explanations.
+
+"He 's cuttit aff seevin feet, and rins up it tae get his tapmaist
+bukes, but that's no a'," and then Mains gave it to be understood that
+the rest of the things the minister had done with that ladder were
+beyond words.  For in order that the rough wood might not scar the
+sensitive backs of the fathers, the Rabbi had covered the upper end
+with cloth, and for that purpose had utilised a pair of trousers.  It
+was not within his ability in any way to reduce or adapt his material,
+so that those interesting garments remained in their original shape,
+and, as often as the ladder stood reversed, presented a very impressive
+and diverting spectacle.  It was the inspiration of one of Carmichael's
+most successful stories--how he had done his best to console a woman on
+the death of her husband, and had not altogether failed, till she
+caught sight of the deceased's nether garments waving disconsolately on
+a rope in the garden, when she refused to be comforted.  "Toom (empty)
+breeks tae me noo," and she wept profusely, "toom breeks tae me."
+
+One of the great efforts of the Rabbi's life was to seat his visitors,
+since, beyond the one chair, accommodation had to be provided on the
+table, wheresoever there happened to be no papers, and on the ledges of
+the bookcases.  It was pretty to see the host suggesting from a long
+experience those coigns of vantage he counted easiest and safest,
+giving warnings also of unsuspected danger in the shape of restless
+books that might either yield beneath one's feet or descend on one's
+head.  Carmichael, however, needed no such guidance, for he knew his
+way about in the marvellous place, and at once made for what the boys
+called the throne of the fathers.  This was a lordly seat, laid as to
+its foundation in mediaeval divines of ponderous content, but
+excellently finished with the Benedictine edition of St. Augustine,
+softened by two cushions, one for a seat and another for a back.  Here
+Carmichael used to sit in great content, smoking and listening while
+the Rabbi hunted an idea through Scripture with many authorities, or
+defended the wildest Calvinism with strange, learned arguments; from
+this place he would watch the Rabbi searching for a lost note on some
+passage of Holy Writ amid a pile of papers two feet deep, through which
+he burrowed on all fours, or climbing for a book on the sky-line, to
+forget his errand and to expound some point of doctrine from the top of
+the ladder.
+
+"You 're comfortable, John, and you do not want to put off your boots
+after all that travelling to and fro? then I will search for Barbara,
+and secure some refreshment for our bodies," and Carmichael watched the
+Rabbi depart with pity, for he was going on a troublous errand.
+
+Housekeepers are, after beadles, the most wonderful functionaries in
+the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, and every species could be found
+within a day's journey of Drumtochty.  Jenkins, indeed, suggested that
+a series of papers on Church Institutions read at the clerical club
+should include one on housekeepers, and offered to supply the want,
+which was the reason why Dr. Dowbiggin refused to certify him to a
+vacancy, speaking of him as "frivolous and irresponsible."  The class
+ranged from Sarah of Drumtochty, who could cook and knew nothing about
+ecclesiastical affairs, to that austere damsel, Margaret Meiklewham of
+Pitscowrie, who had never prepared an appetising meal in her life, but
+might have sat as an elder in the Presbytery.
+
+Among all her class, Barbara MacCluckie stood an easy worst, being the
+most incapable, unsightly, evil-tempered, vexatious woman into whose
+hands an unmarried man had ever been delivered.  MacWheep had his own
+trials, but his ruler saw that he had sufficient food and some comfort,
+but Barbara laid herself out to make the Rabbi's life a misery.  He
+only obtained his meals as a favour, and an extra blanket had to be won
+by a week's abject humiliation.  Fire was only allowed him at times,
+and he secured oil for his lamp by stratagems.  Latterly he was glad to
+send strange ministers to Mains, and his boys alone forced lodgment in
+the manse.  The settlement of Barbara was the great calamity of the
+Rabbi's life, and was the doing of his own good nature.  He first met
+her when she came to the manse one evening to discuss the unlawfulness
+of infant baptism and the duty of holding Sunday on Saturday, being the
+Jewish Sabbath.  His interest deepened on learning that she had been
+driven from twenty-nine situations through the persecution of the
+ungodly; and on her assuring him that she had heard a voice in a dream
+bidding her take charge of Kilbogie Manse, the Rabbi, who had suffered
+many things at the hands of young girls given to lovers, installed
+Barbara, and began to repent that very day.  A tall, bony, forbidding
+woman, with a squint and a nose turning red, as she stated, from
+chronic indigestion, let it be said for her that she did not fall into
+the sins of her predecessors.  It was indeed a pleasant jest in
+Kilbogie for four Sabbaths that she allowed a local Romeo, who knew not
+that his Juliet was gone, to make his adventurous way to her bedroom
+window, and then showed such an amazing visage that he was laid up for
+a week through the suddenness of his fall.  What the Rabbi endured no
+one knew, but his boys understood that the only relief he had from
+Barbara's tyranny was on Sabbath evening, when she stated her
+objections to the doctrine, and threatened henceforward to walk into
+Muirtown in order to escape from unsound doctrine.  On such occasions
+the Rabbi laid himself out for her instruction with much zest, and he
+knew when he had produced an impression, for then he went supperless to
+bed.  Between this militant spirit and the boys there was an undying
+feud, and Carmichael was not at all hurt to hear her frank references
+to himself.
+
+[Illustration: A tall, bony, forbidding woman.]
+
+"What need he come stravagin' doon frae Drumtochty for? it wud set him
+better tae wait on his ain fouk.  A licht-headed fellow, they say as
+kens; an' as for his doctrine--weel, maybe it 'll dae for Drumtochty.
+
+"Tea?  Did ye expect me tae hae biling water at this 'oor o' the nicht?
+My word, the money wud flee in this hoose gin a' wesna here.  Milk 'll
+dae fine for yon birkie: he micht be gled tae get onything, sorning on
+a respectable manse every ither week."
+
+"You will pardon our humble provision"--this is how the Rabbi prepared
+Carmichael; "we have taken my worthy Abigail unawares, and she cannot
+do for us what in other circumstances would be her desire.  She has a
+thorn in the flesh which troubles her, and makes her do what she would
+not; but I am convinced that her heart is right."
+
+That uncompromising woman took no notice of Drumtochty, but busied
+herself in a search for the Rabbi's bag, which he insisted had been
+brought home from Muirtown that morning, and which was at last found
+covered with books.
+
+"Do not open it at present, Barbara; you can identify the contents
+later if it be necessary, but I am sure they are all right," and the
+Rabbi watched Barbara's investigations with evident anxiety.
+
+"Maybe ye hae brocht back what ye started wi', but gin ye hev, it's the
+first time a' can mind.  Laist sacrament at Edinburgh ye pickit up twal
+books, ae clothes brush, an' a crochet cover for a chair, an' left
+a'thing that belonged tae ye."
+
+"It was an inadvertence; but I obtained a drawer for my own use this
+time, and I was careful to pack its contents into the bag, leaving
+nothing."  But the Rabbi did not seem over-confident.
+
+"There 's nae question that ye hev filled the pack," said Barbara, with
+much deliberation and an ominous calmness; "but whether wi' yir ain
+gear or some ither body's, a'll leave ye tae judge yirsel'.  A 'll
+juist empty the bag on the bukes;" and Barbara selected a bank of
+Puritans for the display of her master's spoil.
+
+"Ae slipbody (bodice), well hemmed and gude stuff--ye didna tak' that
+wi' ye, at ony rate; twa pillow slips--they 'll come in handy, oor ain
+are wearin' thin; ae pair o' sheets--'ll juist dae for the next trimmie
+that ye want tae set up in her hoose; this 'll be a bolster slip, a 'm
+judgin'--"
+
+"It must be the work of Satan," cried the poor Rabbi, who constantly
+saw the hand of the great enemy in the disorder of his study.  "I
+cannot believe that my hands packed such garments in place of my own."
+
+"Ye 'll be satisfied when ye read the name; it's plain eneuch; ye
+needna gang dodderin' aboot here and there lookin' for yir glasses;
+there's twa pair on your head already;" for it was an hour of triumph
+to Barbara's genial soul.
+
+"It's beyond understanding," murmured the Rabbi.  "I must have mistaken
+one drawer for another in the midst of meditation;" and then, when
+Barbara had swept out of the room with the varied linen on her arm,
+"this is very humiliating, John, and hard to bear."
+
+"Nonsense, Rabbi; it's one of the finest things you have ever done.
+Half a dozen journeys of that kind would refurnish the manse; it's just
+a pity you can't annex a chair;" but he saw that the good man was
+sorely vexed.
+
+"You are a good lad, John, and it is truly marvellous what charity I
+have received at the hands of young men who might have scorned and
+mocked me.  God knows how my heart has been filled with gratitude, and
+I . . . have mentioned your names in my unworthy prayers that God may
+do to you all according to the kindness ye have shown unto me."
+
+It was plain that this lonely, silent man was much moved, and
+Carmichael did not speak.
+
+"People consider that I am ignorant of my failings and weaknesses, and
+I can bear witness with a clear conscience that I am not angry when
+they smile and nod the head; why should I be?  But, John, it is known
+to myself only and Him before whom all hearts are open how great is my
+suffering in being among my neighbours as a sparrow upon the housetop.
+
+"May you never know, John, what it is to live alone and friendless till
+you lose the ways of other men and retire within yourself, looking out
+on the multitude passing on the road as a hermit from his cell, and
+knowing that some day you will die alone, with none to . . . give you a
+draught of water."
+
+"Rabbi, Rabbi"--for Carmichael was greatly distressed at the woe in the
+face opposite him, and his heart was tender that night--"why should you
+have lived like that?  Do not be angry, but . . . did God intend . . .
+it cannot be wrong . . .  I mean . . . God did give Eve to Adam."
+
+"Laddie, why do ye speak with fear and a faltering voice?  Did I say
+aught against that gracious gift or the holy mystery of love, which is
+surely the sign of the union betwixt God and the soul, as is set forth
+after a mystical shape in the Song of Songs?  But it was not for
+me--no, not for me.  I complain not, neither have I vexed my soul.  He
+doeth all things well."
+
+"But, dear Rabbi"--and Carmichael hesitated, not knowing where he stood.
+
+"Ye ask me why"--the Rabbi anticipated the question--"and I will tell
+you plainly, for my heart has ever gone forth to you.  For long years I
+found no favour in the eyes of the Church, and it seemed likely I would
+be rejected from the ministry as a man useless and unprofitable.  How
+could I attempt to win the love of any maiden, since it did not appear
+to be the will of God that I should ever have a place of habitation?
+It consisted not with honour, for I do hold firmly that no man hath any
+right to seek unto himself a wife till he have a home."
+
+"But . . ."
+
+"Afterwards, you would say.  Ah, John, then had I become old and
+unsightly, not such a one as women could care for.  It would have been
+cruel to tie a maid for life to one who might only be forty years in
+age, but was as seventy in his pilgrimage, and had fallen into unlovely
+habits."
+
+Then the Rabbi turned on Carmichael his gentle eyes, that were shining
+with tears.
+
+"It will be otherwise with you, and so let it be.  May I live to see
+you rejoicing with the wife of your youth."
+
+So it came to pass that it was to this unlikely man Carmichael told his
+new-born love, and he was amazed at the understanding of the Rabbi, as
+well as his sympathy and toleration.
+
+"A maid of spirit--and that is an excellent thing; and any excess will
+be tamed by life.  Only see to it that ye agree in that which lieth
+beneath all churches and maketh souls one in God.  May He prosper you
+in your wooing as He did the patriarch Jacob, and far more abundantly."
+
+Very early in the morning Carmichael awoke, and being tempted by the
+sunrise, arose and went downstairs.  As he came near the study door he
+heard a voice in prayer, and knew that the Rabbi had been all night in
+intercession.
+
+"Thou hast denied me wife and child; deny me not Thyself. . . .  A
+stranger Thou hast made me among men; refuse me not a place in the
+City. . . .  Deal graciously with this lad who has been to me as a son
+in the Gospel. . . .  He has not despised an old man; put not his heart
+to confusion. . . ."
+
+Carmichael crept upstairs again, but not to sleep, and at breakfast he
+pledged the Rabbi to come up some day and see Kate Carnegie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT.
+
+English folk have various festivals in the religious year, as becometh
+a generous country, but in our austere and thrifty Glen there was only
+one high day, and that was Sacrament Sabbath.  It is rumoured--but one
+prefers not to believe scandals--that the Scottish Kirk nowadays is
+encouraging a monthly Sacrament, after which nothing remains in the way
+of historical declension except for people to remain for the Sacrament
+as it may occur to them, and for men like Drumsheugh to get up at
+meetings to give their religious experiences, when every one that has
+any understanding will know that the reserve has gone out of Scottish
+character, and the reverence from Scottish faith.  Dr. Davidson's
+successor, a boisterous young man of bourgeois manners, elected by
+popular vote, has got guilds, where Hillocks' granddaughter reads
+papers on Emerson and refers to the Free Kirk people as Dissenters, but
+things were different in the old days before the Revolution.  The
+Doctor had such unquestioning confidence in himself that he considered
+his very presence a sufficient defence for the Kirk, and was of such
+perfect breeding that he regarded other Kirks with unbroken charity.
+He was not the man to weary the parish with fussy little schemes, and
+he knew better than level down the Sacrament.  It was the summit of the
+year to which the days climbed, from which they fell away, and it was
+held in the middle of August.  Then nature was at her height in the
+Glen, and had given us of her fulness.  The barley was golden, and,
+rustling in the gentle wind, wearied for the scythe; the oats were
+changing daily, and had only so much greenness as would keep the
+feathery heads firm for the handling; the potatoes having received the
+last touch of the plough, were well banked up and flowering pleasantly;
+the turnips, in fine levels, like Hillocks', or gently sloping fields,
+like Menzies', were so luxuriant that a mere townsman could not have
+told the direction of the drills; the hay had been gathered into long
+stacks like unto the shape of a two-storied house, and the fresh
+aftermath on the field was yielding sweet morsels for the horses of an
+evening; the pasture was rich with the hardy white clover, and one
+could hear from the road the cattle taking full mouthfuls; young spring
+animals, like calves and lambs, were now falling into shape and
+beginning independent life, though with an occasional hankering after
+the past, when the lambs would fall a-bleating for their mothers, and
+calves would hang about the gate at evening, where they had often
+fought shamelessly to get a frothy nose once more into the milk-pail.
+
+Our little gardens were full a-blow, a very blaze and maze of colour
+and foliage, wherein the owner wandered of an evening examining flowers
+and fruit with many and prolonged speculations--much aided by the smoke
+of tobacco--as to the chance of gaining a second at our horticultural
+show with his stocks, or honourable mention for a dish of mixed fruit.
+The good wife might be seen of an afternoon about that time, in a
+sun-bonnet and a gown carefully tucked up, gathering her berry harvest
+for preserves, with two young assistants, who worked at a modest
+distance from their mother, very black as to their mouths, and
+preserving the currants, as they plucked them, by an instantaneous
+process of their own invention.  Next afternoon a tempting fragrance of
+boiling sugar would make one's mouth water as he passed, and the same
+assistants, never weary in well-doing, might be seen setting saucers of
+black jam upon the window-sill to "jeel," and receiving, as a kind of
+blackmail, another saucerful of "skim," which, I am informed, is really
+the refuse of the sugar, but, for all that, wonderfully toothsome.
+Bear with a countryman's petty foolishness, ye mighty people who live
+in cities, and whose dainties come from huge manufactories.  Some man
+reading these pages will remember that red-letter day of the
+summer-time long ago, and the faithful hands that plucked the fruit,
+and the old kitchen, with its open beams, and the peat fire glowing
+red, and the iron arm that held the copper-lined pan--much lent round
+the district--and the smack of the hot, sweet berries, more grateful
+than any banquet of later days.
+
+[Illustration: Gathering her berry harvest.]
+
+The bees worked hard in this time of affluence, and came staggering
+home with spoil from the hills, but it was holiday season on the farms.
+Between the last labours on the roots and the beginning of harvest
+there was no exacting demand from the land, and managing farmers
+invented tasks to fill up the hours.  An effort was made to restore
+carts and implements to their original colour, which was abruptly
+interrupted by the first day of cutting, so that one was not surprised
+to see a harvest cart blue on one side and a rich crusted brown on the
+other.  Drumsheugh would even send his men to road-making, and
+apologise to the neighbours--"juist reddin' up aboot the doors"--while
+Saunders the foreman and his staff laboured in a shamefaced manner like
+grown-ups playing at a children's game.  Hillocks used to talk vaguely
+about going to see a married sister in Glasgow, and one year got as far
+as Kildrummie, where he met Piggie Walker, and returned to have a deal
+in potatoes with that enterprising man.  More than once Drumsheugh--but
+then his position was acknowledged--set off on the Monday for
+Carnoustie with a large carpet bag containing, among other things, two
+pounds of butter and two dozen eggs, and announced his intention of
+spending a fortnight at the "saut water."  The kirkyard would bid him
+good-bye, and give him a united guarantee that Sabbath would be kept at
+Drumtochty during his absence, but the fathers were never astonished to
+see the great man drop into Muirtown market next Friday on his way
+west--having found four days of unrelieved gaiety at that Scottish
+Monaco enough for flesh and blood.
+
+This season of small affairs was redeemed by the Sacrament, and
+preparations began far off with the cleaning of the kirk.  As early as
+June our beadle had the face of one with something on his mind, and
+declined to pledge himself for roups of standing corn, where his
+presence was much valued, not on business grounds, but as an official
+sanction of the proceedings.  Drumtochty always felt that Dr. Davidson
+was fully represented by his man, and John could no longer disentangle
+the two in his own mind--taking a gloomy view of the parish when he was
+laid up by lumbago and the Doctor had to struggle on single-handed, and
+regarding the future when both would be gone with despair.
+
+"Ay, ay, Hillocks," he once remarked to that worthy, "this 'll be a
+queer-like place when me an' the Doctor 's awa'.
+
+"Na, na, a' daurna promise for the roup, but ye can cairry it on
+whether a 'm there or no; prices dinna hang on a beadle, and they 're
+far mair than appearances.  A 'm juist beginning tae plan the reddin'
+up for the Saicrament, an' a 've nae speerit for pleesure; div ye ken,
+Hillocks, a' wud actually coont a funeral distrackin'."
+
+"Ye hev an awfu' responsibility, there 's nae doot o' that, John, but
+gin ye juist jined the fouk for ae field, it wud be an affset tae the
+day, an' the auctioneer wud be lifted."
+
+With the beginning of July, John fairly broke ground in the great
+effort, and was engaged thereon for six weeks, beginning with the
+dusting of the pulpit and concluding with the beating of Drumsheugh's
+cushion.  During that time the Doctor only suggested his wants to John,
+and the fathers themselves trembled of a Sabbath morning lest in a
+moment of forgetfulness they might carry in some trace of their farms
+with them and mar the great work.  It was pretty to see Whinnie
+labouring at his feet in a grassy corner, while John watched him from
+the kirk door with an unrelenting countenance.
+
+The elders also had what might be called their cleaning at this season,
+examining into the cases of any who had made a "mistak'" since last
+August, and deciding whether they should be allowed to "gang forrit."
+These deliberations were begun at the door, where Drumsheugh and Domsie
+stood the last five minutes before the Doctor appeared, and were open
+to the congregation, who from their places within learned the
+offenders' prospects.
+
+"The Doctor 'll dae as he considers richt, an' he 's juist ower easy
+pleased wi' onybody 'at starts a-greetin', but yon's ma jidgment,
+Dominie."
+
+"I do not wish to dispute with you, Drumsheugh"--Domsie always spoke
+English on such occasions--"and the power of the keys is a solemn
+charge.  But we must temper a just measure of severity with a spirit of
+mercy."
+
+"Ye may temper this or temper that," said Drumsheugh, going to the root
+of the matter, "but a' tell ye, Dominie, there's ower mony o' thae
+limmers in the country juist noo, an' a 'm for making an example o'
+Jean Ferguson."
+
+So Jean did not present herself for a token on the approaching
+Fast-day, and sat out with the children during the Sacrament with as
+becoming an expression of penitence as her honest, comely face could
+accomplish.  Nor did Jean or her people bear any grudge against the
+Doctor or the Session for their severity.  She had gone of her own
+accord to confess her fault, and was willing that her process of
+cleansing should be thorough before she received absolution.  When a
+companion in misfortune spoke of the greater leniency of Pitscowrie,
+Jean expressed her thankfulness that she was of Drumtochty.
+
+"Nane o' yir loose wys for me--gie me a richt minister as dis his
+duty;" which showed that whatever might be her deflections in practice,
+Jean's ideas of morals were sound.
+
+Preparations in the parish at large began two weeks before the
+Sacrament, when persons whose attendance had been, to say the least,
+irregular slipped in among the fathers without ostentation, and
+dropping into a conversation on the weather, continued, as it were,
+from last Sabbath, used it skilfully to offer an apology for past
+failures in church observance.
+
+"It's keepit up wonderfu' through the week, for a' never like ower
+bricht mornin's," old Sandie Ferguson would remark casually, whose
+arrival, swallow-like, heralded the approach of the great occasion.
+"The roads are graund the noo frae the heich (high glen); we 've hed an
+awfu' winter, neeburs, up oor wy--clean blockit up.  Them 'at lives
+ablow are michty favoured, wi' the kirk at their door."
+
+"It's maist extraordinar' hoo the seasons are changin'"--Jamie Soutar
+could never resist Sandie's effrontery--"A' mind when Mairch saw the
+end o' the snow, an' noo winter is hangin' aboot in midsummer.  A'm
+expeckin' tae hear, in another five year, that the drifts last through
+the Sacrament in August.  It 'll be a sair trial for ye, Sandie, a
+wullin' kirkgoer--but ye 'll hae the less responsibility."
+
+"Millhole 's here, at ony rate, the day, an' we 're gled tae see
+him"--for Drumsheugh's pride was to have a large Sacrament--and so
+Sandie would take his place at an angle to catch the Doctor's eye, and
+pay such rapt attention to the sermon that any one not knowing the
+circumstances might have supposed that he had just awaked from sleep.
+
+Ploughmen who on other Sabbaths slept in the forenoon and visited their
+sweethearts the rest of the day, presented themselves for tokens on the
+Fast-day, and made the one elaborate toilette of the year on Saturday
+evening, when they shaved in turns before a scrap of glass hung outside
+the bothy door, and the foreman, skilled in the clipping of horses, cut
+their hair, utilising a porridge bowl with much ingenuity to secure a
+round cut.  They left early on the Sabbath morning, and formed
+themselves into a group against the gable of the kirk,--being reviewed
+with much satisfaction by Drumsheugh, who had a keen eye for absentees
+from the religious function of the year.  At the first sound of the
+bell the ploughmen went into kirk a solid mass, distributing themselves
+in the servants' pews attached to the farmers' pews, and maintaining an
+immovable countenance through every part of the service, any tendency
+to somnolence being promptly and effectually checked by the foreman,
+who allowed himself some ease when alone on other days, but on
+Sacrament Sabbath realised his charge and never closed an eye.  The
+women and children proceeded to their places on arrival, and the
+fathers followed them as the bell gave signs of ceasing.  Drumsheugh
+and Domsie then came in from the plate and the administration of
+discipline, and the parish waited as one man for the appearance of John
+with the Bible, the Doctor following, and envied those whose seat
+commanded the walk from the manse down which the procession came every
+Sabbath with dignity, but once a year with an altogether peculiar
+majesty.
+
+Drumtochty exiles meeting in London or other foreign places and
+recalling the Glen, never part without lighting on John and passing
+contempt on all officials beside him.  "Ye mind John?" one will say,
+wagging his head with an amazement that time and distance has in no
+wise cooled, and his fellow glensman will reply, "Ay, ye may traivel
+the warld ower or ye see his marrow."  Then they will fall into a
+thoughtful silence, and each knows that his neighbour is following John
+as he comes down the kirkyard on the great day.  "Comin' in at the door
+lookin' as if he didna ken there wes a body in the kirk, a' aye coontit
+best," but his friend has another preference.  "It wes fine, but, man,
+tae see him set the bukes doon on the pulpit cushion, and then juist
+gie ae glisk roond the kirk as much as tae say, 'What think ye o'
+that?' cowed a' thing."  It has been given to myself amid other
+privileges to see (and store in a fond memory) the walk of a University
+mace-bearer, a piper at the Highland gathering, a German stationmaster
+(after the war), and an alderman (of the old school), but it is bare
+justice to admit, although I am not of Drumtochty, but only as a
+proselyte of the gate, that none of those efforts is at all to be
+compared with John's achievement.  Within the manse the Doctor was
+waiting in pulpit array, grasping his father's snuff-box in a firm
+right hand, and it was understood that, none seeing them, and as a
+preparation for the strain that would immediately be upon them, both
+the minister and his man relaxed for a minute.
+
+"Is there a respectable attendance, John?" and the Doctor would take a
+preliminary pinch.  "Drumsheugh does not expect many absentees."
+
+"Naebody 's missin' that a' cud see, sir, except that ill gettit
+wratch, Tammie Ronaldson, and a' coont him past redemption.  A' gaed in
+as a' cam doon, and gin he wesna lyin' in his bed sleepin' an' snorin'
+like a heathen."
+
+"Well, John, did you do your duty as an officer of the church?"
+
+"A' stood ower him, Doctor, an' a' juist said tae masel', 'Shall a'
+smite wi' the sword?' but a' left him alane for this time."  And so
+they started--John in front with the books, and the Doctor a pace
+behind, his box now in the left hand, with a handkerchief added, and
+the other holding up his gown, both dignitaries bare-headed,
+unself-conscious, absorbed in their office.
+
+The books were carried level with the top button of John's
+waistcoat--the Psalm-book being held in its place by the two extended
+thumbs--and neither were allowed to depart from the absolute horizontal
+by an eighth of an inch, even going up the pulpit stairs.  When they
+had been deposited in their place, and slightly patted, just to settle
+them, John descended to make way for the Doctor, who had been waiting
+beneath in a commanding attitude.  He then followed the minister up,
+and closed the door--not with a bang, but yet so that all might know he
+had finished his part of the work.  If any one had doubted how much
+skill went to this achievement, he had his eyes opened when John had
+the lumbago, and the smith arrived at the kirk door three yards ahead
+of the Doctor, and let the Psalm-book fall on the pulpit floor.
+
+"We 're thankfu' tae hae ye back, John," said Hillocks.  "Yon wes a
+temptin' o' Providence."
+
+Once only had I the privilege of seeing John in this his glory, and the
+sight of him afflicted me with a problem no one has ever solved.  It
+might, indeed, be made a branch of scientific investigation, and would
+then be called the Genesis of Beadles.  Was a beadle ever a baby?  What
+like was he before he appeared in his office?  Was he lying as a
+cardinal in petto till the right moment, and then simply showed himself
+to be appointed as one born unto this end?  No one dared to hint that
+John had ever followed any other avocation, and an effort to connect
+John with the honourable trade of plumbing in the far past was justly
+regarded as a disgraceful return of Tammie Ronaldson's for much
+faithful dealing.  Drumtochty refused to consider his previous history,
+if he had any, and looked on John in his office as a kind of
+Melchizedek, a mysterious, isolated work of Providence.
+
+He was a mere wisp of a man, with a hard, keen face, iron-grey hair
+brushed low across his forehead, and clean-shaven cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: He was a mere wisp of a man.]
+
+"A 've naething tae say against a beard," on being once consulted, "an'
+a 'm no prepared tae deny it maun be in the plan o' Providence.  In
+fact, gin a' wes in a private capaucity, a' michtna shave, but in ma
+public capaucity, a 've nae alternative.  It wud be a fine story tae
+gang roond the Presbytery o' Muirtown that the Beadle o' Drumtochty hed
+a beard."
+
+His authority was supreme under the Doctor, and never was disputed by
+man or beast save once, and John himself admitted that the
+circumstances were quite peculiar.  It was during the Doctor's famous
+continental tour, when Drumsheugh fought with strange names in the
+kirkyard, and the Presbytery supplied Drumtochty in turn.  The minister
+of St. David's, Muirtown, was so spiritual that he left his voice at
+the foot of the pulpit stairs, and lived in the Song of Solomon, with
+occasional excursions into the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and it was
+thoughtless not to have told Mr. Curlew that two or three dogs--of
+unexceptionable manners--attended our kirk with their masters.  They
+would no more have thought of brawling in church than John himself, and
+they knew the parts of the service as well as the Doctor, but dogs have
+been so made by our common Creator that they cannot abide falsetto, and
+Mr. Curlew tried them beyond endurance.  When he lifted up his voice in
+"Return, return, O Shulamite, return, return," a long wail in reply,
+from below a back seat where a shepherd was slumbering, proclaimed that
+his appeal had not altogether failed.  "Put out that dog," said the
+preacher in a very natural voice, with a strong suggestion of bad
+temper, "put that dog out immediately; it's most disgraceful that such
+. . . eh, conduct should go, on in a Christian church.  Where is the
+church officer?"
+
+"A'm the Beadle o' Drumtochty"--standing in his place--"an' a'll dae
+yir pleesure;" and the occasion was too awful for any one, even the
+dog's master, to assist, far less to laugh.
+
+So Laddie was conducted down the passage--a dog who would not
+condescend to resist--and led to the outer gate of the kirkyard, and
+John came in amid a dead silence--for Mr. Curlew had not yet got his
+pulpit note again--and faced the preacher.
+
+"The dog 's oot, sir, but a' tak this congregation tae witness, ye
+begood (began) it yirsel'," and it was said that Mr. Curlew's pious and
+edifying chant was greatly restricted in country kirks from that day.
+
+It was not given to the beadle to sit with the elders in that famous
+court of morals which is called the Kirk Session, and of which strange
+stories are told by Southern historians, but it was his to show out and
+in the culprits with much solemnity.  He was able to denote the exact
+offence in the language of Kirk law, and was considered happy in his
+abbreviations for technical terms.  As a familiar of the Inquisition,
+he took oversight of the district, and saw that none escaped the
+wholesome discipline of the Church.
+
+"Ye 're back," he said, arresting Peter Ferguson as he tried to escape
+down a byroad, and eyeing the prodigal sternly, who had fled from
+discipline to London, and there lost a leg; "the' 'll be a meetin' o'
+Session next week afore the Saicrament; wull a' tell the Doctor ye're
+comin'?"
+
+"No, ye 'll dae naething o' the kind, for a 'll no be there.  A 've nae
+suner got hame aifter ma accident but ye're tormentin' me on the verra
+road wi' yir Session.  Ye drave me awa' aince, an' noo ye wud harry
+(hunt) me aft again."
+
+"A weel, a weel"--and John was quite calm--"dinna pit yirsel' in a
+feery farry (excitement); ye 'll gang yir ain wy and earn yir ain
+jidgment.  It wes for yir gude a' spoke, and noo a 've dune ma pairt,
+an' whatever comes o't, ye 'll no hae me or ony ither body tae blame."
+
+"What think ye 'll happen?"--evidently sobered by John's tone, yet
+keeping up a show of defiance.  "Ye wud think the Session wes the
+Sheriff o' Perthshire tae hear ye blawin' and threatenin'."
+
+"It's no for me tae say what may befa' ye, Peter Ferguson, for a 'm no
+yir jidge, but juist a frail mortal, beadle though I be; but a' may hev
+ma thochts.
+
+"Ye refused the summons sax month syne, and took yir wys tae
+London--that wes contumacy added tae yir ither sin.  Nae doot ye made
+certain ye hed escapit, but hed ye?  A' leave it tae yirsel', for the
+answer is in yir body," and John examined Peter's wooden leg with an
+austere interest.
+
+"Ay, ay, ma man," he resumed--for Peter was now quite silenced by this
+uncompromising interpretation of the ways of Providence--"ye aff tae
+London, an' the Lord aifter ye, an' whuppit aff ae leg.  Noo ye declare
+ye 'll be as countermacious as ever, an' a 'm expeckin' the Lord 'll
+come doon here an' tak the ither leg, an' gin that disna dae, a' that
+remains is tae stairt on yir airms; and, man Peter, ye 'll be a
+bonnie-like sicht before a' 's dune."
+
+This was very faithful dealing, and it had its desired effect, for
+Peter appeared at next meeting, and in due course was absolved, as
+became an obedient son of the Church.
+
+John did not, however, always carry the sword, but bore himself gently
+to young people so long as they did not misbehave in church, and he had
+a very tender heart toward probationers, as being callow members of
+that great ecclesiastical guild in which he was one of the heads.
+
+When one of those innocents came to take the Doctor's place, John used
+to go in to visit them in the dining-room on Saturday evening, partly
+to temper the severity of his wife, Dr. Davidson's housekeeper, who
+dealt hardly with the lads, and partly to assist them with practical
+hints regarding pulpit deportment and the delivery of their sermons.
+One unfortunate was so nervous and clinging that John arranged his
+remarks for him into heads--with an application to two classes--and
+then, having suggested many points, stopped under the yew arch that
+divided the kirkyard from the manse garden, and turned on the shaking
+figure which followed.
+
+"Ae thing mair; aifter ye 're dune wi' yir sermon, whether ye 're
+sweatin' or no, for ony sake fa' back in yir seat and dicht (wipe) yir
+broo," which being done by the exhausted orator, made a great
+impression on the people, and was so spread abroad that a year
+afterwards it won for him the parish of Pitscowrie.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A MODERATE.
+
+As a matter of fact, Dr. Davidson, minister of Drumtochty, stood
+exactly five feet nine in his boots, and was therefore a man of quite
+moderate height; but this is not what you had dared to state to any
+loyal and self-respecting person in the parish.  For "the Doctor"--what
+suggestions of respect and love were in that title on a Drumtochty
+tongue--was so compactly made and bore himself with such dignity, both
+in walk and conversation, that Drumsheugh, although not unaccustomed to
+measurement and a man of scrupulous accuracy, being put into the
+witness-box, would have sworn that Dr. Davidson was "aboot sax feet aff
+and on--maybe half an inch mair, standin' at his full hicht in the
+pulpit."  Which fond delusion seemed to declare abroad, as in a
+parable, the greatness of the Doctor.
+
+Providence had dealt bountifully with Dr. Davidson, and had bestowed on
+him the largest benefit of heredity.  He was not the first of his house
+to hold this high place of parish minister--the only absolute monarchy
+in the land--and he must not receive over-praise for not falling into
+those personal awkwardnesses and petty tyrannies which are the
+infallible signs of one called suddenly to the throne.  His were the
+pride of blood, the inherent sense of authority, the habit of rule, the
+gracious arts of manner, the conviction of popular devotion, the grasp
+of affairs, the interest in the people's life, which are the marks and
+aids of a royal caste.  It was not in the nature of things that the
+Doctor should condescend to quarrel with a farmer or mix himself up
+with any vulgar squabble, because his will was law in ninety cases in a
+hundred, and in the other ten he skilfully anticipated the people's
+wishes.  When the minister of Nether Pitfoodles--who had sermons on
+"Love, Courtship, and Marriage," and was much run after in
+Muirtown--quarrelled with his elders about a collection, and asked the
+interference of the Presbytery, Dr. Davidson dealt severely with him in
+open court as one who had degraded the ministry and discredited
+government.  It was noticed also that the old gentleman would afterward
+examine Nether Pitfoodles curiously for minutes together in the
+Presbytery, and then shake his head.
+
+"Any man," he used to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as
+they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle
+with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a
+fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of
+Scotland."  And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry
+over their wine in Kildrummie Manse--being both of the same school,
+cultured, clean-living, kind-hearted, honourable, but not extravagantly
+evangelical clergymen.  They agreed in everything except the matter of
+their after-dinner wine, Dr. Davidson having a partiality for port,
+while the minister of Kildrummie insisted that a generous claret was
+the hereditary drink of a Scottish gentleman.  This was only, however,
+a subject of academic debate, and was not allowed to interfere with
+practice--the abbe of Drumtochty taking his bottle of claret, in an
+appreciative spirit, and the cure of Kildrummie disposing of his two or
+three glasses of port with cheerful resignation.
+
+If Drumtochty exalted its minister above his neighbours, it may be
+urged in excuse that Scottish folk are much affected by a man's birth,
+and Dr. Davidson had a good ancestry.  He was the last of his line, and
+represented a family that for two centuries had given her sons to the
+Kirk.  Among those bygone worthies, the Doctor used to select one in
+especial for honourable mention.  He was a minister of Dunleith, whose
+farmers preferred to play ball against the wall of the kirk to hearing
+him preach, and gave him insolence on his offering a pious
+remonstrance.  Whereupon the Davidson of that day, being, like all his
+race, short in stature, but mighty in strength, first beat the champion
+player one Sabbath morning at his own game to tame an unholy pride, and
+then thrashed him with his fist to do good to his soul.  This happy
+achievement in practical theology secured an immediate congregation,
+and produced so salutary an effect on the schismatic ball-player that
+he became in due course an elder, and was distinguished for his
+severity in dealing with persons absenting themselves from public
+worship, or giving themselves overmuch to vain amusements.
+
+At the close of the last century the Doctor's grandfather was minister
+of the High Kirk, Muirtown, where he built up the people in loyalty to
+Kirk and State, and himself recruited for the Perthshire Fencibles.  He
+also delivered a sermon entitled "The French Revolution the just
+judgment of the Almighty on the spirit of insubordination," for which
+he received a vote of thanks from the Lord Provost and Bailies of
+Muirtown in council assembled, as well as a jewel from the Earl of
+Kilspindie, the grandfather of our lord, which the Doctor inherited and
+wore on the third finger of his left hand.  Had Carmichael or any other
+minister decked himself after this fashion, it had not fared well with
+him, but even the Free Kirk appreciated a certain pomp in Dr. Davidson,
+and would have resented his being as other men.  He was always pleased
+to give the history of the ring, and generally told a story of his
+ancestor, which he had tasted much more frequently than the sermon.  A
+famous judge had asked him to dinner as he made his circuit, and they
+had disputed about the claret, till at last its excellence compelled
+respect at the close of the first bottle.
+
+"'Now, Reverend Sir,' said the judge, 'this wine has been slandered and
+its fair fame taken away without reason.  I demand that you absolve it
+from the scandal.'
+
+"'My Lord,' said my worthy forbear, 'you are a great criminal lawyer,
+but you are not well read in Kirk law, for no offender can be absolved
+without three appearances.'
+
+"My grandfather," the Doctor used to conclude, "had the best of that
+jest besides at least two bottles of claret, for in those days a
+clergyman took more wine than we would now think seemly, although, mark
+you, the old gentleman always denounced drunkenness on two grounds:
+first, because it was an offence against religion, and second, because
+it was a sign of weakness."
+
+Some old folk could remember the Doctor's father, who never attained to
+the Doctorate, but was a commanding personage.  He published no
+sermons, but as the first Davidson in Drumtochty, he laid the
+foundations of good government.  The Kilspindie family had only
+recently come into the parish--having purchased the larger part of the
+Carnegies' land--and Drumtochty took a thrawn fit, and among other acts
+of war pulled down time after time certain new fences.  The minister
+was appealed to by his lordship, and having settled the rights of the
+matter, he bade the factor wait in patience till the Sacrament, and
+Drumsheugh's father used to tell unto the day of his death, as a
+historical event, how the Doctor's father stood at the communion-table
+and debarred from the Sacrament evil livers of all kinds, and that day
+in especial all who had broken Lord Kilspindie's fences,--which was an
+end of the war.  There was a picture of him in the Doctor's study,
+showing a very determined gentleman, who brought up both his parish and
+his family upon the stick, and with undeniable success.
+
+With such blood in his veins it was not to be expected that our Doctor
+should be after the fashion of a modern minister.  No one had ever seen
+him (or wished to see him) in any other dress than black cloth, and a
+broad-brimmed silk hat, with a white stock of many folds and a bunch of
+seals depending from some mysterious pocket.  His walk, so assured, so
+measured, so stately, was a means of grace to the parish, confirming
+every sound and loyal belief, and was crowned, so to say, by his stick,
+which had a gold head, and having made history in the days of his
+father, had reached the position of a hereditary sceptre.  No one could
+estimate the aid and comfort that stick gave to the Doctor's visits,
+but one quite understood the force of the comparison Hillocks once
+drew, after the Doctor's death, between the coming to his house of the
+Doctor and a "cry" from his energetic successor under the new _regime_.
+
+"He 's a hard-workin' body, oor new man, aye rin rinnin', fuss fussin'
+roond the pairish, an' he 's a pop'lar hand in the pulpit, but it's a
+puir business a veesit frae him.
+
+"It's juist in an' oot like a cadger buyin' eggs, nae peace an' nae
+solemnity.  Of coorse it's no his blame that he 's naethin' tae look
+at, for that's the wy he wes made, an' his father keepit a pig (china)
+shop, but at ony rate he micht get a wise-like stick.
+
+"Noo, there wes the Doctor 'at's dead an' gone; he didna gang
+scrammelin' an' huntin' aifter the fouk frae Monday tae Saiturday.  Na,
+na, he didna lower himsel' preachin' an' paiterin' like a missionary
+body.  He announced frae the pulpit whar he wes gaein' and when he wes
+comin'.
+
+"'It's my purpose,'" and Hillocks did his best to imitate the Doctor,
+"'to visit the farm of Hillocks on Wednesday of this week, and I desire
+to meet with all persons living thereon;' it wes worth callin' an
+intimation, an' gied ye pleesure in yir seat.
+
+"On Tuesday aifternoon John wud juist drap in tae see that a'thing wes
+ready, and the next aifternoon the Doctor comes himsel', an' the first
+thing he dis is tae lay the stick on the table an' gin he hed never
+said a word, tae see it lyin' there wes a veesitation.  But he 's a
+weel-meanin' bit craturie, Maister Peebles, an' handy wi' a magic
+lantern.  Sall," and then Hillocks became incapable of speech, and you
+knew that the thought of Dr. Davidson explaining comic slides had quite
+overcome him.
+
+This visitation counted as an event in domestic life, and the Doctor's
+progress through the Glen was noted in the kirkyard, and any special
+remark duly reported.  Nothing could be more perfect than his manner on
+such occasions, being leisurely, comprehensive, dignified, gracious.
+First of all he saluted every member of the family down to the bairns
+by name, for had he not at least married the heads of the household,
+and certainly baptised all the rest?  Unto each he made some kindly
+remark also--to the good man a commendation of his careful farming, to
+the good-wife a deserved compliment on her butter; the eldest daughter
+was praised for the way in which she was sustaining the ancient
+reputation of Hillocks' dairy; there was a word to Hillocks' son on his
+masterly ploughing; and some good word of Dominie Jamieson's about the
+little lassie was not forgotten.  After which the Doctor sat
+down--there was some difficulty in getting the family to sit in his
+presence--and held a thorough review of the family history for the last
+year, dwelling upon the prospects of Charlie, for whom the Doctor had
+got a situation, and Jean, the married daughter, whose husband might
+one day have a farm with four pair of horses in the carse of Gowrie.
+The Doctor would then go out to give his opinion on the crops, which
+was drawn from keen practical knowledge--his brochure on "The Potato
+Disease: Whence it Came and How it is to be Met" created much stir in
+its day--and it was well known that the Doctor's view on bones or guano
+as a preferable manure was decisive.  On his return the servants came
+in--to whom also he said a word--and then from the head of the table he
+conducted worship--the ploughmen looking very uneasy and the children
+never taking their eyes off his face, while the gude-wife kept a
+watchful eye on all.  At the prayer she was careful to be within arm's
+reach of Hillocks, since on one memorable occasion that excellent man
+had remained in an attitude of rapt devotion after the others had risen
+from their knees, which sight profoundly affected the family, and led
+the Doctor to remark that it was the only time he had seen Hillocks
+play the Pharisee in public.  The Doctor's favourite passages were the
+eulogium on the model housewife in Proverbs, the parable of the Good
+Samaritan, and the 12th chapter of Romans, from which he deduced many
+very searching and practical lessons on diligence, honesty, mercy, and
+hospitality.  Before he left, and while all were under the spell of his
+presence, the Doctor would approach the delicate subject of Hillocks'
+"tout-mout" (dispute) with Gormack over a purchase at a roup, in which
+it was freely asserted that Gormack had corrupted the Kildrummie
+auctioneer, a gentleman removed above pecuniary bribes, but not
+unaffected by liquid refreshment.  So powerfully did the Doctor appeal
+to Hillocks' neighbourliness that he took snuff profusely, and
+authorised the Doctor to let it be understood at Gormack that the
+affair was at an end, which treaty was confirmed by the two parties in
+Kildrummie train, when Hillocks lent Gormack his turnip-sowing machine
+and borrowed in turn Gormack's water-cart.  Mr. Curlew had more than
+once hinted in the Presbytery of Muirtown that Dr. Davidson was not so
+evangelical as might be desired, and certainly Mr. Curlew's visitation
+was of a much more exciting nature; but St. David's congregation was
+never without a quarrel, while the Doctor created an atmosphere in
+Drumtochty wherein peace and charity flourished exceedingly.
+
+Whatever might be urged in praise of his visitation, surely the Doctor
+could never be more stately or fatherly than on Sacrament Sabbath, as
+he stood in his place to begin service.  His first act was to wipe
+elaborately those gold eye-glasses, without which nothing would have
+been counted a sermon in Drumtochty Kirk, and then, adjusting them with
+care, the Doctor made a deliberate survey of the congregation,
+beginning at his right hand and finishing at his left.  Below him sat
+the elders in their blacks, wearing white stocks that had cost them no
+little vexation that morning, and the precentor, who was determined no
+man, neither Saunders Baxter nor another, should outsing him that day
+in Coleshill.  Down the centre of the kirk ran a long table, covered
+with pure white linen, bleached in the June showers and wonderfully
+ironed, whereon a stain must not be found, for along that table would
+pass the holy bread and wine.  Across the aisle on either side, the
+pews were filled with stalwart men, solemn beyond their wonted gravity,
+and kindly women in simple finery, and rosy-cheeked bairns.  The women
+had their tokens wrapped in snowy handkerchiefs, and in their Bibles
+they had sprigs of apple-ringy and mint, and other sweet-scented
+plants.  By-and-by there would be a faint fragrance of peppermint in
+the kirk--the only religious and edifying sweet, which flourishes
+wherever sound doctrine is preached and disappears before new views,
+and is therefore now confined to the Highlands of Wales and Scotland,
+the last home of our fathers' creed.  The two back seats were of black
+oak, richly carved.  In the one sat the General and Kate, and across
+the passage Viscount Hay, Lord Kilspindie's eldest son, a young man of
+noble build and carriage, handsome and debonair, who never moved during
+the sermon save twice, and then he looked at the Carnegies' pew.
+
+When the Doctor had satisfied himself that none were missing of the
+people, he dropped his eye-glass--each act was so closely followed that
+Drumsheugh below could tell where the Doctor was--and took snuff after
+the good old fashion, tapping the box twice, selecting a pinch,
+distributing it evenly, and using first a large red bandana and then a
+delicate white cambric handkerchief.  When the cambric disappeared,
+each person seized his Bible, for the Doctor would say immediately with
+a loud, clear voice, preceded by a gentlemanly clearance of the throat,
+"Let us compose our minds for the worship of Almighty God by singing to
+His praise the first Psalm.
+
+  "'That man hath perfect blessedness
+  Who walketh not astray--'"
+
+Then Peter Rattray, of the high Glen, would come in late, and the
+Doctor would follow him with his eye till the unfortunate man reached
+his pew, where his own flesh and blood withdrew themselves from him as
+if he had been a leper, and Peter himself wished that he had never been
+born.
+
+"Five minutes earlier, Peter, would have prevented this unseemly
+interruption--ahem.
+
+  "'In counsel of ungodly men,
+  Nor stands in sinners' way.'"
+
+
+Before the Sacrament the Doctor gave one of his college sermons on some
+disputed point in divinity, and used language that was nothing short of
+awful.
+
+"Grant me those premises," he would say, while the silence in the kirk
+could be felt, "and I will show to any reasonable and unprejudiced
+person that those new theories are nothing but a resuscitated and
+unjustifiable Pelagianism."  Such passages produced a lasting
+impression in the parish, and once goaded Drumsheugh's Saunders into
+voluntary speech.
+
+"Yon wes worth ca'in' a sermon.  Did you ever hear sic words out o' the
+mouth o' a man?  Noo that bleatin' cratur Curlew 'at comes frae
+Muirtown is jist pittin' by the time.  Sall, ae sermon o' the Doctor's
+wud last yon body for a year."
+
+After the sermon the people sang,
+
+  "'T was on that night when doomed to know,"
+
+and the elders, who had gone out a few minutes before, entered the kirk
+in procession, bearing the elements, and set them before the Doctor,
+now standing at the table.  The people came from their pews and took
+their seats, singing as they moved, while the children were left to
+their own devices, tempered by the remembrance that their doings could
+be seen by the Doctor, and would receive a just recompense of reward
+from their own kin in the evening.  Domsie went down one side and
+Drumsheugh the other, collecting the tokens, whose clink, clink in the
+silver dish was the only sound.
+
+"If there be any other person who desires to take the Sacrament at this
+the first table" (for the Sacrament was given then to detachments),
+"let him come without delay."
+
+"Let us go, dad," whispered Kate.  "He is a dear old padre, and . . .
+they are good people and our neighbours."
+
+"But they won't kneel, you know, Kit; will you . . . ?"
+
+"We 'll do as they do; it is not our Sacrament."  So the father and
+daughter went up the kirk and took their places on the Doctor's left
+hand.  A minute later Lord Hay rose and went up his aisle, and sat down
+opposite the Carnegies, looking very nervous, but also most modest and
+sincere.
+
+The Doctor gave the cup to the General, who passed it to Kate, and from
+her it went to Weelum MacLure, and another cup he gave to Hay, whom he
+had known from a child, and he handed it to Marget Howe, and she to
+Whinnie, her man; and so the two cups passed down from husband to wife,
+from wife to daughter, from daughter to servant, from lord to tenant,
+till all had shown forth the Lord's death in common fellowship and love
+as becometh Christian folk.  In the solemn silence the sunshine fell on
+the faces of the communicants, and the singing of the birds came in
+through the open door with the scent of flowers and ripe corn.  Before
+the congregation left, the Doctor addressed a few words of most
+practical advice, exhorting them, in especial, to live in the spirit of
+the Sermon on the Mount, and to be good neighbours.  It was on one of
+those occasions that he settled a dispute between masters and
+men--whether the cutting of grass for the horses' breakfast should be
+included in the day's work--and ended the only bitterness known in
+Drumtochty.
+
+At the kirk gate Hay introduced himself to his father's friend, and the
+General looked round to find his daughter, but Kate had disappeared.
+She had seen the face of Marget Howe after the Sacrament as the face of
+one in a vision, and she had followed Marget to the road.
+
+"Will you let me walk with you for a little?  I am General Carnegie's
+daughter, and I would like to speak to you about the Sacrament; it was
+lovely."
+
+[Illustration: "Will you let me walk with you for a little?"]
+
+"Ye dae me much honour, Miss Carnegie," and Marget slightly flushed,
+"an' much pleasure, for there is naething dearer tae me than keeping
+the Sacrament; it is my joy every day and muckle comfort in life."
+
+"But I thought you had it only once a year?" questioned Kate.
+
+"With bread and wine in outward sign that is once, and maybe eneuch,
+for it makes ane high day for us all, but div ye not think, Miss
+Carnegie, that all our life should be ane Sacrament?"
+
+"Tell me," said Kate, looking into Marget's sweet, spiritual face.
+
+"Is it no the picture of His Luve, who thocht o' everybody but Himsel',
+an' saved everybody but Himsel', an' didna He say we maun drink His cup
+and live His life?"
+
+Kate only signed that Marget should go on.
+
+"Noo a 'm judgin' that ilka ane o's is savit juist as we are baptised
+intae the Lord's death, and ilka time ane o's keeps back a hot word, or
+humbles a proud heart, or serves anither at a cost, we have eaten the
+Body and drunk the Blood o' the Lord."
+
+"You are a good woman," cried Kate, in her impulsive way, so quick to
+be pleased or offended.  "May I come to see you some day?"
+
+"Dinna think me better than I am: a woman who had many sins tae fecht
+and needit many trials tae chasten her; but ye will be welcome at
+Whinny Knowe for yir ain sake and yir people's, an' gin it ever be in
+ma pooer tae serve ye, Miss Carnegie, in ony wy, it wull be ma joy."
+
+Twice as she came through the woods Kate stopped; once she bit her lip,
+once she dashed a tear from her eye.
+
+"Where did you go to, lassie?" and the General met Kate at the gateway.
+"Lord Hay came to the drive with me, and was quite disappointed not to
+meet you--a very nice lad indeed, manly and well-mannered."
+
+"Never mind Lord Hay, dad; I 've been with the most delightful woman I
+'ve ever seen."
+
+"Do you mean she was in kirk?"
+
+"Yes, sitting across the table--she is a farmer's wife, and a better
+lady than we saw in India.
+
+"Oh, dad," and Kate kissed her father, "I wish I had known my mother;
+it had been better for me, and . . . happier for you."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+JOINT POTENTATES.
+
+Among all the houses in a Scottish parish the homeliest and kindliest
+is the manse, for to its door some time in the year comes every
+inhabitant, from the laird to the cottar woman.  Within the familiar
+and old-fashioned study, where the minister's chair and writing-table
+could not be changed without discomposing the parish, and where there
+are fixed degrees of station, so that the laird has his chair and the
+servant lass hers, the minister receives and does his best for all the
+folk committed to his charge.  Here he consults with the factor about
+some improvement in the arrangements of the little commonwealth, he
+takes counsel with a farmer about his new lease and promises to say a
+good word to his lordship, he confirms the secret resolution of some
+modest gifted lad to study for the holy ministry, he hears the
+shamefaced confession of some lassie whom love has led astray, he gives
+good advice to a son leaving the Glen for the distant dangerous world,
+he comforts the mother who has received bad news from abroad.
+Generations have come in their day to this room, and generations still
+unborn will come in their joys and sorrows, with their trials and their
+affairs, while the manse stands and human life runs its old course.
+And when, as was the case with Dr. Davidson in Drumtochty, the minister
+is ordained to the parish in his youth, and, instead of hurrying hither
+and thither, preaching in vacancies, scheming and intriguing, he dwells
+all his days among his own people, he himself knows three generations,
+and accumulates a store of practical wisdom for the help of his people.
+What may be the place of the clergyman in an English parish, and what
+associations of sympathy and counsel the rectory may have for the
+English farm-labourer, it is not permitted to a northern man to know,
+but it is one good thing at least in our poor land that the manse is
+another word for guidance and good cheer, so that Jean advises Jock in
+their poor little perplexity about a new place to "slip doon an' see
+the Doctor," and Jock, although appearing to refuse, does "gie a cry at
+the manse," and comes home to the gude-wife mightily comforted.
+
+The manse builders of the ancient days were men of a shrewd eye and
+much wisdom.  If anywhere the traveller in the north country sees a
+house of moderate size peeping from among a clump of trees in the lap
+of a hill where the north-easter cannot come and the sun shines full
+and warm, then let him be sure that is the manse, with the kirk and
+God's acre close beside, and that the fertile little fields around are
+the glebe, which the farmers see are ploughed and sown and reaped first
+in the parish.  Drumtochty Manse lay beneath the main road, so that the
+cold wind blowing from the north went over its chimneys, and on the
+east it was sheltered by the Tochty woods.  Southwards it overlooked
+the fields that sloped towards the river, and westwards, through some
+ancient trees, one study window had a peep of the west, although it was
+not given to the parish manse to lie of an evening in the glory of the
+setting sun, as did the Free Kirk.  Standing at the gate and looking
+down beneath the beeches that stood as sentinels on either side of the
+little drive, one caught a pleasant glimpse of the manse garden, with
+its close-cut lawn and flower-beds and old summer-house and air of
+peace.  No one troubled the birds in that place, and they had grown
+shameless in their familiarity with dignities--a jackdaw having once
+done his best to steal the Doctor's bandana handkerchief and the robins
+settling on his hat.  Irreverence has limits, and in justice to a
+privileged friend it ought to be explained that the Doctor wore on
+these occasions an aged wide-awake and carried no gold-headed stick.
+His dog used to follow him step by step as he fed the birds and
+pottered among the flowers, and then it always ended in the old man
+sitting down on a seat at the foot of the lawn, with Skye at his feet,
+and looking across the Glen where he had been born and where for nearly
+half a century he had ministered.  Kate caught him once in this
+attitude, and was so successful in her sketch that some have preferred
+it to the picture in oils that was presented to the Doctor by the
+Presbytery of Muirtown, and was painted by an R. A. who spent a
+fortnight at the manse and departed with some marvellous heads, still
+to be identified in certain councillors and nobles of the past.  Both
+are hanging in the same house now, far from Drumtochty, and there they
+call one "Public Capaucity" and the other "Private Capaucity," and you
+require to have seen both to know our kindly, much-loved Moderate.
+
+[Illustration: "Private Capaucity."]
+
+As John grew old with his master and mellowed, he would make believe to
+work close by, so that at times they might drop into talk, recalling
+names that had died out of the Glen, shrewd sayings that fell from lips
+now turned to dust, curious customs that had ceased forever, all in
+great charity.  Then there would come a pause, and John would say, "Ay,
+ay," and go away to the bees.  Under the influence of such
+reminiscences John used to become depressed, and gently prepare Rebecca
+for the changes that were not far off, when Drumtochty would have a new
+minister and a new beadle.
+
+"The Doctor's failin', Becca, an' it's no tae be expeckit that a 'll be
+lang aifter him; it wudna be fittin', an' a 'm no wantin' 't.  Aifter
+ye 've carried the bukes afore ae minister for five and thirty year,
+ye're no anxious for a change; naebody 'll ever come doon the kirkyaird
+like the Doctor, an' a' cudna brak ma step; na, na, there's no mony
+things a' michtna learn, but a' cudna brak ma step."
+
+Rebecca went on with her dinner in silence; even capable men had
+weaknesses somewhere, and she was accustomed to those moralisings.
+
+"A 'm the auldest beadle in the Presbytery o' Muirtown--though a' say
+it as sudna--an' the higher the place the mair we 'll hae tae answer
+for, Becca.  Nae man can hold the poseetion a 'm in withoot anxieties.
+Noo there wes the 'Eruption' in '43"--it could not be ignorance which
+made John cling to this word, and so we supposed that the word was
+adopted in the spirit of historical irony--"that wes a crisis.  Did a'
+ever tell ye, Rebecca, that there wes juist ae beadle left the next
+morning tae cairry on the Presbytery of Muirtown?"
+
+"Ay, forty times an' mair," replied that uncompromising woman, "an' it
+wud set ye better tae be servin' the Doctor's lunch than sittin'
+haverin' an' blawin' there."
+
+No sane person in Drumtochty would have believed that any human being
+dared to address John after this fashion, and it is still more
+incredible that the great man should have risen without a word and gone
+about his duty.  Such a surprising and painful incident suggests the
+question whether a beadle or any other person in high position ought to
+be married, and so be exposed to inevitable familiarities.  Hillocks
+took this view strongly in the kirkyard at the time of John's
+marriage--although neither he nor any one knew with how much
+reason--and he impressed the fathers powerfully.
+
+"Becca cam frae Kilspindie Castle near thirty year syne, and John's
+took the bukes aboot the same time; they've agreed no that ill for sic
+a creetical poseetion a' that time, him oot an' her in, an' atween them
+the Doctor's no been that ill-servit; they micht hae lat weel alane.
+
+"She 's no needin' a man tae keep her," and Hillocks proceeded to
+review the situation, "for Becca's hed a gude place, an' she disna
+fling awa' her siller on dress.  As for John, a' canna mak him oot, for
+he gets his stockin's darned and his white stock dune as weel an' maybe
+better than if he wes mairried."
+
+The kirkyard could see no solution of the problem, and Hillocks grew
+pessimistic.
+
+"It 'll be a doon-come tae him, a 'm judgin', an' 'll no be for the
+gude o' the parish.  He 's never been crossed yet, an' he 'll no tak
+weel wi' contradickin' . . ."
+
+"She wudna daur," broke in Whinny, "an' him the beadle."
+
+"Ye ken little aboot weemen," retorted Hillocks, "for yir gude-wife is
+by hersel' in the pairish, an' micht be a sanct; the maist o' them are
+a camsteary lot.  A 'm no sayin'," he summed up, "that Becca 'll gie
+the beadle the word back or refuse to dae his biddin', but she 'll be
+pittin' forrit her ain opeenions, an' that's no what he 's been
+accustomed tae in Drumtochty."
+
+They were married one forenoon in the study, with Drumsheugh and Domsie
+for witnesses--the address given by the Doctor could hardly be
+distinguished from an ordination charge--and John announced his
+intention of accompanying his master that afternoon to the General
+Assembly, while Rebecca remained in charge of the manse.
+
+"It wudna be wise-like for us twa," exclaimed the beadle, "tae be
+stravagin' ower the country for three or fower days like wild geese,
+but the pairish micht expect something.  Noo, a 've hed ma share o' a
+Presbytery an' a Synod, tae say naethin' o' Kirk Sessions, but a 've
+never seen an Assembly.
+
+"Gin you cud get a place, a' wud spend ma time considering hoo the
+officer comes in, and hoo he lays doon the buke an' sic-like; a' micht
+get a hint," said John, with much modesty.
+
+So John went alone for his wedding tour, and being solemnly introduced
+to Thomas, the chief of all beadles, discussed mysteries with him unto
+great edification; but he was chiefly impressed by the Clerk of the
+Free Kirk Assembly--into which he had wandered on an errand of
+exploration--who was a fiery-faced old gentleman with a stentorian
+voice and the heart of a little child.
+
+"Ye never heard him cry, 'Officer, shut the door,' afore a vote?" he
+inquired of the Doctor.  "Weel, ye 've missed a real pleesure, sir; gin
+ye stude on Princes Street, wi' the wind frae the richt airt, ye micht
+hear him.  A' never heard onything better dune; hoo ony man wi' sic a
+face and voice cud be content ootside the Auld Kirk passes me."
+
+John was so enamoured of this performance that after much cogitation he
+unburdened his mind to the Doctor, and showed how such a means of grace
+might be extended to Drumtochty.
+
+"Noo, if there wes nae objection in order, aifter ye hed settled in the
+pulpit, an' hed yir first snuff, ye micht say, 'Officer, shut the
+door.'  Then a' wud close the kirk door deleeberately in sicht o' the
+hale congregation an' come back tae ma place, an' Peter Rattray himsel'
+wudna daur tae show his face aifter that.  Ye hae the voice an' the
+manner, Doctor, an' it's no richt tae wyste them."
+
+In public John defended the Doctor's refusal as a proof of his
+indulgence to the prodigals of the parish, but with his intimates he
+did not conceal his belief that the opportunity had been lost of
+bringing the service in Drumtochty Kirk to absolute perfection.  John's
+own mind still ran on the mighty utterance, and so it came to pass that
+the question of mastery in the kitchen of the manse under the new
+_regime_ was settled within a week after his ecclesiastical honeymoon.
+
+"Rebecca"--this with a voice of thunder from the fireplace, where the
+beadle was reading the _Muirtown Advertiser_--"shut the door."
+
+The silence was so imperative that John turned round, and saw his
+spouse standing with a half-dried dish in her hand.
+
+[Illustration: Standing with a half-dried dish in her hand.]
+
+"Ma name is Rebecca," as she recovered her speech, "an' there 's nae
+ither wumman in the hoose, but a 'm judgin' ye werena speakin' tae me
+or"--with awful severity--"ye 've made a mistak', an' the suner it's
+pit richt the better for baith you an' me an' the manse o' Drumtochty.
+
+"For near thirty year ye 've gane traivellin' in an' oot o' this
+kitchen withoot cleanin' yir feet, and ye 've pit yir shoon on the
+fender, an' hung up yir weet coat on the back o' the door, an'
+commandit this an' that as if ye were the Doctor himsel', an' a' cud
+dae naethin', for ye were beadle o' Drumtochty.
+
+"So a' saw there wes nae ither wy o't but tae mairry ye an' get some
+kind of order in the hoose; noo ye 'll understand the poseetion an' no
+need anither tellin'; ootside in the kirk an' pairish ye 're maister,
+an' a 'll never conter ye, for a' ken ma place as a kirk member an' yir
+place as beadle; inside in this hoose a 'm maister, an' ye 'll dae what
+ye 're bid, always in due submission tae the Doctor, wha 's maister
+baith in an' oot.  Tak yir feet aff that steel bar this meenut"--this
+by way of practical application; and when after a brief pause, in which
+the fate of an empire hung in the balance, John obeyed, the two chief
+officials in the parish had made their covenant.
+
+Perhaps it is unnecessary to add that they carefully kept their bounds,
+so that Becca would no more have thought of suggesting a new attitude
+to John as he stood at the foot of the pulpit stair waiting for the
+Doctor's descent than John would have interfered with the cooking of
+the Doctor's dinner.  When the glass was set at fair, they even
+exchanged compliments, the housekeeper expressing her sense of
+unworthiness as she saw John in his high estate, while he would
+indicate that the Doctor's stock on Sacrament Sabbath reached the
+highest limits of human attainment.  The Doctor being left to the
+freedom of his own will, laboured at a time to embroil the powers by
+tempting them to cross one another's frontiers, but always failed,
+because they foresaw the consequences with a very distinct imagination.
+If he asked Rebecca to convey a message to Drumsheugh, that cautious
+woman would send in John to receive it from the Doctor's own lips, and
+if the Doctor gave some directions regarding dinner to John, Rebecca
+would appear in a few minutes to learn what the Doctor wanted.  It was
+an almost complete delimitation of frontiers, and the Doctor used to
+say that he never quite understood the Free Kirk theory of the relation
+between Church and State till he considered the working agreement of
+his two retainers.  It was, he once pleasantly said to the minister of
+Kildrummie, a perfect illustration of "co-ordinate jurisdiction with
+mutual subordination."  It is just possible that some one may not fully
+grasp those impressive words, in which case let him appreciate other
+people's accomplishments and mourn his ignorance, for they were common
+speech in Drumtochty, and were taught at their porridge to the Free
+Kirk children.
+
+It is an unfortunate circumstance, however, that even a scientific
+frontier wavers at places, and leaves a piece of doubtful territory
+that may at any moment become a cause of war.  Surely there is not on
+the face of the Scottish earth a more unoffending, deferential,
+conciliatory person than a "probationer," who on Saturdays can be seen
+at every country junction, bag in hand, on his patient errand of
+"supply," and yet it was over his timid body the great powers of the
+manse twice quarrelled disastrously.  As a guest in the manse, to be
+received on Saturday evening, to be conducted to his room, to be fed
+and warmed, to go to his bed at a proper hour--ten on Saturday and
+ten-thirty on Sabbath--to be sent away on Monday morning in good time
+for the train, he was within the province of Rebecca.  As a minister to
+be examined, advised, solemnised, encouraged, to be got ready on
+Sabbath morning and again disrobed, to be edified with suitable
+conversation and generally made as fit as possible for his work, he was
+evidently within John's sphere of influence.  It was certainly the
+beadle's business to visit the dining-room on Saturday evening, where
+the young man was supposed to be meditating against the ordeal of the
+morrow, to get the Psalms for the precentor, to answer strictly
+professional questions, and generally to advise the neophyte about the
+sermon that would suit Drumtochty, and the kind of voice to be used.
+One thing John knew perfectly well he ought not to do, and that was to
+invite a probationer to spend the evening in the Doctor's study, for on
+this point Rebecca was inexorable.
+
+"A' dinna say that they wud read the Doctor's letters, an' a' dinna say
+they wud tak a buke as a keepsake, but a' can never forget ane o'
+them--he hed a squint and red hair--comin' oot frae the cupboard as a'
+opened the door.
+
+"'There 's juist ae wy oot o' the room, an' it's by the door ye cam in
+at,' a' said; 'maybe ye wud like tae come an' sit in the dinin'-room;
+ye 'll be less distrackit.'"  And Rebecca charged John that no
+probationer should in future be allowed to enter the Doctor's sanctum
+on any consideration.
+
+John's excuse for his solitary fault was that the lad thought that he
+could study his sermon better with books round him, and so Rebecca
+found the young gentleman seated in the Doctor's own chair and working
+with the Doctor's own pen, unblushing and shameless.
+
+"Gin ye want Cruden's _Concordance_"--this was when Rebecca had led him
+out a chastened man--"or Matthew Henry tae fill up yir sermon, the
+books 'll be brocht by the church officer."
+
+Rebecca's intrusion, in turn, into John's sphere was quite without
+excuse, and she could only explain her conduct by a general reference
+to the foolishness of the human heart.  It came out through the
+ingenuousness of the probationer, who mentioned casually that he was
+told Drumtochty liked four heads in the sermon.
+
+"May I ask the name of yir adviser?" said the beadle, with awful
+severity.  "The hoosekeeper?  A' thocht so, an' a' wud juist gie ye due
+intimation that the only person qualified an' entitled tae gie ye
+information on sic subjects is masel', an' ony ither is unjustified an'
+unwarranted.
+
+"Fower heads?  Three an' an application is the Doctor's invariable
+rule, an' gin a probationer gied oot a fourth, a' winna undertake tae
+say what michtna happen.  Drumtochty is no a pairish tae trifle wi',
+an' it disna like new-fangled wys.  Power!" and the scorn for this
+unorthodox division was withering.
+
+Rebecca realised the gravity of the situation in the kitchen, and
+humbled herself greatly.
+
+"It wes as a hearer that he askit ma opinion, an' no as an authority.
+He said that the new wy wes tae leave oot heads, an' a' saw a' the hay
+spread oot across the field, so a' told him tae gither it up intae
+'coles' (hay-cocks), an' it wud be easier lifted.  Maybe a' mentioned
+fower--a 'll no deny it; but it's the first time a' ever touched on
+heads, an' it 'll be the laist."
+
+Upon those terms of penitence, John granted pardon, but it was noticed
+on Sabbath that when Becca got in the way of the retiring procession to
+the manse, the beadle was heard in the kirkyard, "Oot o' ma road,
+wumman," in a tone that was full of judgment, and that Rebecca withdrew
+to the grass as one justly punished.
+
+This excellent woman once accomplished her will, however, in spite of
+John, and had all her days the pleasant relish of a secret triumph.
+Her one unfulfilled desire was to see the Doctor in his court dress
+which he wore as Moderator of the Kirk of Scotland during the Assembly
+time, and which had lain ever since in a box with camphor and such
+preservatives amid the folds.  It was aggravating to hear Drumsheugh
+and Hillocks--who had both gone to the Assembly that year for the sole
+purpose of watching the Doctor enter and bow to the standing
+house--enlarging on his glory in velvet and lace and silver buckles,
+and growing in enthusiasm with the years.
+
+"It's little better than a sin," she used to insist, "tae see the
+bonnie suit gien the Doctor by the Countess o' Kilspindie, wi' dear
+knows hoo much o' her ain auld lace on 't, lyin' useless, wi' naebody
+tae get a sicht o't on his back.  Dinna ye think, man"--this with much
+persuasiveness--"that ye cud get the Doctor tae pit on his velvets on
+an occasion, maybe a Saicrament?  The pairish wud be lifted; an' ye wud
+look weel walkin' afore him in his lace."
+
+"Dinna plead wi' me, wumman; a' wud gie a half-year's wages tae see him
+in his grandeur; but it 's offeecial, div ye no see, an' canna be used
+except by a Moderator.  Na, na, ye can dust and stroke it, but ye 'll
+never see yon coat on the Doctor."
+
+This was little less than a challenge to a woman of spirit, and Rebecca
+simply lived from that day to clothe the Doctor in embroidered
+garments.  Her opportunity arrived when Kate's birthday came round, and
+the Doctor insisted on celebrating it by a party of four.  By the
+merest accident his housekeeper met Miss Carnegie on the road, and
+somehow happened to describe the excellent glory of the Doctor's full
+dress, whereupon that wilful young woman went straight to the manse,
+nor left till the Doctor had promised to dine in ruffles, in which case
+she pledged herself that the General would come in uniform, and she
+would wear the family jewels, so that everything would be worthy of the
+Doctor's dinner.
+
+"Hoo daur ye," began John, coming down from the Doctor's room, where
+the suit was spread upon the bed; but his wife did not allow him to
+continue, explaining that the thing was none of her doing, and that it
+was only becoming that honour should be shown to Miss Carnegie when she
+dined for the first time at the manse of Drumtochty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+DRIED ROSE LEAVES.
+
+Townspeople are so clever, and know so much, that it is only just
+something should be hidden from their sight, and it is quite certain
+that they do not understand the irresistible and endless fascination of
+the country.  They love to visit us in early autumn, and are vastly
+charmed with the honeysuckle in the hedges, and the corn turning
+yellow, and the rivers singing in the sunlight, and the purple on the
+hill-side.  It is then that the dweller in cities resolves to retire,
+as soon as may be, from dust and crowds and turmoil and hurry, to some
+cottage where the scent of roses comes in at the open window, and one
+is wakened of a morning by the birds singing in the ivy.  When the corn
+is gathered into the stack-yard, and the leaves fall on the road, and
+the air has a touch of frost, and the evenings draw in, then the
+townsman begins to shiver and bethink him of his home.  He leaves the
+fading glory with a sense of relief, like one escaping from approaching
+calamity, and as often as his thoughts turn thither, he pities us in
+our winter solitude.  "What a day this will be in Drumtochty," he says,
+coming in from the slushy streets, and rubbing his hands before the
+fire.
+
+This good man is thankful to Providence for very slight mercies, since
+he knows only one out of the four seasons that make our glorious year.
+He had been wise to visit us in the summer-time, when the light hardly
+dies out of the Glen, and the grass and young corn presents six shades
+of green, and the scent of the hay is everywhere, and all young
+creatures are finding themselves with joy.  Perhaps he had done better
+to have come north in our spring-time, when nature, throwing off the
+yoke of winter, bursts suddenly into an altogether indescribable
+greenery, and the primroses are blooming in Tochty woods, and every
+cottage garden is sweet with wallflowers, and the birds sing of love in
+every wood, and the sower goes forth to sow.  And though this will
+appear quite incredible, it had done this comfortable citizen much good
+to have made his will, and risked his life with us in the big snowstorm
+that used to shut us up for fourteen days every February.  One might
+well endure many hardships to stand on the side of Ben Urtach, and see
+the land one glittering expanse of white on to the great strath on the
+left, and the hills above Dunleith on the right, to tramp all day
+through the dry, crisp snow, and gathering round the wood fire of an
+evening, tell pleasant tales of ancient days, while the wind powdered
+the glass with drift, and roared in the chimney.  Then a man thanked
+God that he was not confined to a place where the pure snow was trodden
+into mire, and the thick fog made it dark at mid-day.
+
+This very season of autumn, which frightened the townsfolk, and sent
+them home in silence, used to fill our hearts with peace, for it was to
+us the crown and triumph of the year.  We were not dismayed by the
+leaves that fell with rustling sound in Tochty woods, nor by the bare
+stubble fields from which the last straw had been raked by thrifty
+hands, nor by the touch of cold in the northwest wind blowing over Ben
+Urtach, nor by the greyness of the running water.  The long toil of the
+year had not been in vain, and the harvest had been safely gathered.
+The clump of sturdy little stacks, carefully thatched and roped, that
+stood beside each homestead, were the visible fruit of the long year's
+labour, and the assurance of plenty against winter.  Let it snow for a
+week on end, and let the blast from the mouth of Glen Urtach pile up
+the white drift high against the outer row of stacks, the horses will
+be put in the mill-shed, and an inner stack will be forked into the
+threshing loft, and all day long the mill will go with dull, rumbling
+sound that can be heard from the road, while within the grain pours
+into the corn-room, and the clean yellow straw is piled in the barn.
+Hillocks was not a man given to sentiment, yet even he would wander
+among the stacks on an October evening, and come into the firelight
+full of moral reflections.  A vague sense of rest and thankfulness
+pervaded the Glen, as if one had come home from a long journey in
+safety, bringing his possessions with him.
+
+The spirit of October was on the Doctor as he waited for his guests in
+the drawing-room of the manse.  The Doctor had a special affection for
+the room, and would often sit alone in it for hours in the gloaming.
+Once Rebecca came in suddenly, and though the light was dim and the
+Doctor was seated in the shadow by the piano, she was certain that he
+had been weeping.  He would not allow any change to be made in the
+room, even the shifting of a table, and he was very particular about
+its good keeping.  Twice a year Rebecca polished the old-fashioned
+rosewood furniture, and so often a man came from Muirtown to tune the
+piano, which none in the district could play, and which the Doctor kept
+locked.  Two little pencil sketches, signed with a childish hand, Daisy
+Davidson, the minister always dusted himself, as also a covered picture
+on the wall, and the half-yearly cleaning of the drawing-room was
+concluded when he arranged on the backs of two chairs one piece of
+needlework showing red and white roses, and another whereon was wrought
+a posy of primroses.  The room had a large bay window opening on the
+lawn, and the Doctor had a trick of going out and in that way, so that
+he often had ten minutes in its quietness; but no visitor was taken
+there, except once a year, when the wife of the Doctor's old friend,
+Lord Kilspindie, drove up to lunch, and the old man escorted her
+ladyship round the garden and brought her in by the window.  On that
+occasion, but only then, the curtain was lifted from the picture, and
+for a brief space they stood in silence.  Then he let the silken veil
+fall and gently arranged its folds, and offering her his arm with a
+very courtly bow, led the Countess into the dining-room, where Rebecca
+had done her best, and John waited in fullest Sabbath array.
+
+[Illustration: The old man escorted her ladyship.]
+
+The Doctor wandered about the room--looking out on the garden,
+mysterious in the fading light, changing the position of a chair,
+smoothing the old-fashioned needlework with caressing touch, breaking
+up a log in the grate.  He fell at last into a revery before the
+fire--which picked out each bit of silver on his dress and shone back
+from the black velvet--and heard nothing, till John flung open the door
+and announced with immense majesty, "General Carnegie and Miss
+Carnegie."
+
+"Welcome, Kate, to the house of your father's friend, and welcome for
+your own sake, and many returns of this day.  May I say how that white
+silk and those rubies become you?  It is very kind to put on such
+beautiful things for my poor little dinner.  As for you, Jack, you are
+glorious," and the Doctor must go over Carnegie's medals till that
+worthy and very modest man lost all patience.
+
+"No more of this nonsense; but, Sandie, that is a desperately becoming
+get-up of yours; does n't he suit it well, Kit?  I never saw a better
+calf on any man."
+
+"You are both 'rael bonnie,' and ought to be very grateful to me for
+insisting on full dress.  I 'm sorry that there is only one girl to
+admire two such handsome men; it's a poor audience, but at any rate it
+is very appreciative and grateful," and Kate courtsied to each in turn,
+for all that evening she was in great good-humour.
+
+"By the way, there will be one more to laugh at us, for I 've asked the
+Free Kirk minister to make a fourth for our table.  He is a nice young
+fellow, with more humanity than most of his kind; but did not I hear
+that he called at the Lodge to pay his respects?"
+
+"Certainly he did," said the General, "and I rather took a fancy to
+him.  He has an honest eye and is not at all bad-looking, and tells a
+capital story.  But Kit fell upon him about something, and I had to
+cover him.  It's a wonder that he ever came near the place again."
+
+"He has been at the Lodge eight times since then," explained Kate, with
+much composure; "but he will on no account be left alone with the head
+of the household.  The General insulted him on politics, and I had to
+interfere; so he looks on me as a kind of protector, and I walk him out
+to the Beeches lest he be massacred."
+
+"Take care, my dear Catherine," for the Doctor was a shrewd old
+gentleman; "protecting comes perilously near loving, and Carmichael's
+brown eyes are dangerous."
+
+"They are dark blue."  Kate was off her guard, and had no sooner spoken
+than she blushed, whereat the Doctor laughed wickedly.
+
+"You need not be afraid for Kate," said the General, cheerfully; "no
+man can conquer her; and as for the poor young padres, she made their
+lives miserable."
+
+"They were so absurd," said Kate, "so innocent, so ignorant, so
+authoritative, that it was for their good to be reduced to a proper
+level.  But I rather think your guest has forgotten his engagement.  He
+will be so busy with his book that even a manse dinner will have no
+attraction."  The Doctor looked again at Kate, but now she wore an air
+of great simplicity.
+
+It was surely not Carmichael's blame that he was late for Dr.
+Davidson's dinner, since he had thought of nothing else since he rose,
+which was at the unearthly hour of six.  He went out for a walk, which
+consisted of one mile east and another west from the village, and, with
+pauses, during which he rested on gates and looked from him, lasted two
+hours.  On his return he explained to Sarah that his health had
+received much benefit, and that she was not to be surprised if he went
+out every morning at or before daybreak.  He also mentioned casually
+that he was to dine at the manse that day, and Sarah, who had been
+alarmed lest this unexpected virtue might mean illness, was at rest.
+His habit was to linger over breakfast, propping a book against the
+sugar basin, and taking it and his rasher slice about, which was, he
+insisted, the peculiar joy of a bachelor's breakfast; but this morning
+Sarah found him at ten o'clock still at table, gazing intently at an
+untouched cutlet, and without any book.  He swallowed two mouthfuls
+hurriedly and hastened to the study, leaving her to understand that he
+had been immersed in a theological problem.  It seemed only reasonable
+that a man should have one pipe before settling down to a forenoon of
+hard study, but there is no doubt that the wreaths of smoke, as they
+float upwards, take fantastic shapes, and lend themselves to visions.
+Twelve o'clock--it was outrageous--six hours gone without a stroke of
+work.  Sarah is informed that, as he has a piece of very stiff work to
+do, luncheon must be an hour later, and that the terrier had better go
+out for a walk.  Then Carmichael cleared his table and set himself down
+to a new German critic, who was doing marvellous things with the
+Prophet Isaiah.  In three thick volumes--paper bound and hideous to
+behold--and in a style of elaborate repulsiveness, Schlochenboshen
+showed that the book had been written by a syndicate, on the principle
+that each member contributed one verse in turn, without reference to
+his neighbours.  It was, in fact, the simple plan of a children's game,
+in which you write a noun and I an adjective, and the result greatly
+pleases the company; and the theory of the eminent German was
+understood to throw a flood of light on Scripture.  Schlochenboshen had
+already discovered eleven alternating authors, and as No. 4 would
+occasionally, through pure perversity and just contrary to rules, pool
+his contribution with No. 6, several other interesting variations were
+introduced.  In such circumstances one must fix the list of authors in
+his head, and this can be conveniently done by letters of the alphabet.
+Carmichael made a beginning with four, KATE, and then he laid down his
+pen and went out for a turn in the garden.  When he came in with a
+resolute mind, he made a precis of the Professor's introduction, and it
+began, "Dear Miss Carnegie," after which he went to lunch and ate three
+biscuits.  As for some reason his mind could not face even the most
+fascinating German, Carmichael fell back on the twelve hundredth book
+on Mary Queen of Scots, which had just come from the library, and which
+was to finally vindicate that very beautiful, very clever, and very
+perplexing young woman.  An hour later Carmichael was on the moor, full
+of an unquenchable pity for Chatelard, who had loved the sun and
+perished in his rays.  The cold wind on the hill braced his soul, and
+he returned in a heroic mood.  He only was the soldier of the Cross,
+who denied himself to earthly love and hid a broken heart.  And now he
+read A Kempis and the _Christian Year_.  Several passages in the latter
+he marked in pencil with a cross, and when his wife asked him the
+reason only last week, he smiled, but would give no answer.  Having
+registered anew his vow of celibacy, he spent an hour in dressing, an
+operation, he boasted, which could be performed in six minutes, and
+which, on this occasion, his housekeeper determined to review.
+
+With all the women in the Glen, old and young, she liked the lad, for a
+way that he had and the kindness of his heart, and was determined that
+he should be well dressed for once in his life.  It was Sarah, indeed,
+that kept Carmichael late, for she not only laid out his things for him
+with much care and judgment, but on sight of the wisp of white round
+his neck she persuaded him to accept her services, and at last she was
+satisfied.  He also lost a little time as he came near the manse, for
+he grew concerned lest his tie was not straight, and it takes time to
+examine yourself in the back of your watch, when the light is dimming
+and it is necessary to retire behind a hedge lest some keen Drumtochty
+eye should detect the roadside toilet.
+
+John had brought in the lamp before Carmichael entered, and his
+confusion was pardonable, for he had come in from the twilight, and
+none could have expected such a sight.
+
+"Glad to see you, Carmichael"--the Doctor hastened to cover his
+embarrassment.  "It is very good of you to honour my little party by
+your presence.  You know the General, I think, and Miss Carnegie, whose
+first birthday in Drumtochty we celebrate to-night.
+
+"No wonder you are astonished," for Carmichael was blushing furiously;
+"and I must make our defence, eh, Carnegie? else it will be understood
+in Free Kirk circles that the manse is mad.  We seem, in fact, a pair
+of old fools, and you can have your jest at us; but there is an excuse
+even for our madness.
+
+"It is long since we have had a young lady in our Glen, and now that
+she has come to live among us--why, sir, we must just do her bidding.
+
+"Our Queen has but a little court, but her courtiers are leal and true;
+and when she ordered full dress, it was our joy to obey.  And if you
+choose to laugh, young sir--why, you may; we are not ashamed with such
+a Queen, and I do her homage."
+
+The Doctor stooped and kissed Kate's hand in the grand manner which is
+now lost, after which he drew out his snuff-box and tapped it
+pleasantly, as one who had taken part in a state function; but there
+was the suspicion of a tear in his eye, for these things woke old
+memories.
+
+"Kate 's a wilfu' lassie," said the General, fondly, "and she has long
+ruled me, so I suppose her father must do likewise."  And the General
+also kissed Kate's hand.
+
+"You are both perfectly absurd to-night," said Kate, confused and red,
+"but no Queen ever had truer hearts to love her, and if I cannot make
+you knights, I must reward you as I can."  And Kate, ignoring
+Carmichael, kissed first her father and then the Doctor.  Then she
+turned on him with a proud air, "What think you of my court, Mr.
+Carmichael?"
+
+"It is the best in Christendom, Miss Carnegie"--and his voice trembled
+with earnestness--"for it has the fairest Queen and two gentlemen of
+Christ for its servants."
+
+"Very prettily said"--the Doctor thought the little scene had gone far
+enough--"and as a reward for that courteous speech you shall take Her
+Majesty in to dinner, and we old battered fellows shall follow in
+attendance."  There was a moment's silence, and then Carmichael spoke.
+
+"If I had only known, Miss Carnegie, that I might have . . . put on
+something to do you honour too, but I have nothing except a white silk
+hood.  I wish I had been a Militiaman or . . . a Freemason."
+
+"This is your second remarkable wish in my hearing," and Kate laughed
+merrily; "last time you wished you were a dog on Muirtown platform.
+Your third will be your last, I suppose, and one wonders what it will
+be."
+
+"It is already in my heart"--Carmichael spoke low--"and some day I will
+dare to tell it to you."
+
+"Hush," replied Kate quickly, lifting her hand; "the padre is going to
+say grace."  As this was an official function in John's eyes, that
+worthy man allowed himself to take a general view, and he was pleased
+to express his high approval of the company, enlarging especially on
+Carmichael, whom, as a Free Kirkman, he had been accustomed rather to
+belittle.
+
+"Of coorse," he explained loyally, "he's no tae be compared wi' the
+Doctor, for there's nae minister ootside the Auld Kirk can hae sic an
+air, and he 's no set up like the General, but he lookit weel an'
+winsome.
+
+"His hair wes flung back frae his forehead, his een were fair dancin',
+an' there wes a bit o' colour in his cheek.  He hes a wy wi' him, a 'll
+no deny, 'at taks wi' fouk.
+
+"A 'm no sure that he 's been at mony denners though, Becca, for he
+hardly kent what he wes daein'.  A' juist pit the potatoes on his
+plate, for he never lat on he saw me; an' as for wine, a' cudna get a
+word oot o' him."
+
+"Ye 're lilted above ordinary concerns, John, an' it's no tae be
+expeckit that a beadle sud notice the way o' a lad wi' a lass," and
+Becca nodded her head with much shrewdness.
+
+"Div ye mean that, Rebecca?  That cowes a'; but it's no possible.  The
+General's dochter an' a Free Kirk minister, an' her an Esculopian--"
+
+"Love kens naither rank nor creeds; see what ye did yersel', and you
+beadle o' Drumtochty;" and John--every man has some weak
+point--swallowed the compliment with evident satisfaction.
+
+Meanwhile they had fallen on this very subject of creeds in the
+dining-room, and Kate was full of curiosity.
+
+"Will you two padres do me a favour?  I knew you would.  Well, I want
+to know for certain what is the difference between the two Kirks in
+Drumtochty.  Now which of you will begin?" and Kate beamed on them both.
+
+"Whatever you wish we will do, Kate," said the Doctor; "but you will
+have me excused in this matter, if you please, and hear my friend.  I
+am tired of controversy, and he has a fair mind, and, as I know well, a
+pleasant wit.  Tell Miss Carnegie how your people left the Kirk of
+Scotland."
+
+"Well, the dispute began"--and Carmichael faced his task
+manfully--"about the appointment of clergymen, whether it should lie
+with a patron or the people.  Lord Kilspindie had the nomination of
+Drumtochty, and if every patron had been as wise as our house, then
+there had been no Disruption."
+
+The Doctor bowed, and motioned to Carnegie to fortify himself with port.
+
+"Other patrons had no sense, and put in unsuitable men, and the people
+rebelled, since it is a sad thing for a country parish to have a
+minister who is not . . ."
+
+"A gentleman? or straight?  Quite so," chimed in Kate; "it must be
+beastly."
+
+"So a party fought for the rights of the people," resumed Carmichael,
+"and desired that the parish should have a voice in choosing the man
+who was to take charge of . . . their souls."
+
+"Isn't that like soldiers electing their officers?" inquired the
+General, doubtfully.
+
+"Go on, Carmichael; you are putting your case capitally; don't plunge
+into theology, Jack, whatever you do . . . it is Sandeman's--a sound
+wine."
+
+"Then what happened?" and Kate encouraged Carmichael with her eyes.
+
+"Four hundred clergymen threw up their livings one day and went out to
+begin a Free Kirk, where there are no patrons.
+
+"You have no idea--for I suppose you never heard of this before--how
+ministers suffered, living and dying in miserable cottages--and the
+people met for service on the sea-shore or in winter storms--all for
+conscience sake."
+
+Carmichael was glowing, and the Doctor sipped his port approvingly.
+
+"Perhaps they ought not to have seceded, and perhaps their ideas were
+wrong; but it was heroism, and a good thing for the land."
+
+"It was splendid!"  Kate's cheek flushed.  "And Drumtochty?"
+
+"Ah, something happened here that was by itself in Scotland.  Will you
+ask Dr. Davidson not to interrupt or browbeat me?  Thank you; now I am
+safe.
+
+"Some one of influence went to old Lord Kilspindie, who had no love to
+the Free Kirk, and told him that a few of his Drumtochty men wanted to
+get a site for a Free Kirk, and that he must give it.  And he did."
+
+"Now, Carmichael," began the Doctor, who had scented danger; but Kate
+held up her hand with an imperious gesture, and Carmichael went on:--
+
+"The same person used to send to the station for the Free Kirk
+probationer, and entertain him after a lordly fashion--with port, if he
+were worthy--and send him on his way rejoicing--men have told me.
+But," concluded Carmichael, averting his face from the foot of the
+table, "wild horses will not compel me to give that good Samaritan's
+name."
+
+"Was it you, Davidson, that sanctioned such a proceeding?  Why, it was
+mutiny."
+
+"Of course he did, dad," cried Kate; "just the very thing he would do;
+and so, I suppose, the Free Kirk love him as much as they do yourself,
+sir?"
+
+"As much? far more . . ."
+
+"Had I known what downright falsehood the Free Kirk minister of
+Drumtochty was capable of, I would never have allowed him to open his
+mouth."
+
+"Well, I am satisfied, at any rate," said Kate, "and I propose to
+retire to the drawing-room, and I know who would love a rubber of whist
+by-and-by.  We are just the number."
+
+A minute later Carmichael asked leave to join Kate, as he believed she
+was to have him for partner, and he must understand her game.
+
+"How adroit he is to-night, Jack;" but the General rather pitied the
+lad, with whom he imagined Kate was playing as a cat with a mouse.
+
+"Have you ever seen the face below the veil?" for they did not talk
+long about whist in the drawing-room.  "I do not think it would be
+wrong to look, for the padre told me the story.
+
+"Yes, a very winning face.  His only sister, and he simply lived for
+her.  She was only twelve when she died, and he loves her still,
+although he hardly ever speaks of her."
+
+They stood together before the happy girl-face enshrined in an old
+man's love.  They read the inscription: "My dear sister Daisy."
+
+"I never had a sister," and Carmichael sighed.
+
+"And I have now no brother."  Their hands met as they gently lowered
+the veil.
+
+"Well, have you arranged your plans?" and the Doctor came in intent on
+whist.
+
+"Only one thing.  I am going to follow Miss Carnegie's lead, and she is
+always to win," said the Free Kirk minister of Drumtochty.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+SMOULDERING FIRES.
+
+It is the right of every Scot--secured to him by the Treaty of Union
+and confirmed by the Disruption--to criticise his minister with much
+freedom, but this privilege is exercised with a delicate charity.  When
+it is not possible for a conscientious hearer to approve a sermon, he
+is not compelled to condemnation.  "There wes naething wrang wi' the
+text," affords an excellent way of escape, and it is open to suggest
+efficiency in another department than the pulpit.
+
+"Mister MacWheep michtna be a special preacher, but there 's nae doot
+he wes a graund veesitor."  Before Carmichael left the West Kirk,
+Edinburgh, where he served his apprenticeship as an assistant, a worthy
+elder called to bid him good-bye, and spoke faithfully, to the lad's
+great delight.
+
+"You have been very acceptable, wonderfully so for a young man, and we
+shall follow your career with much interest.  It is right, however, to
+add, and you will accept this in a right spirit, that it was not by
+preaching that you commended yourself to our people, but by your
+visiting.  Your sermons are what I might call . . . hazy--you will get
+a hold of the truth by-and-by, no doubt--but you have a gift for
+visitation."
+
+The exact quality and popularity of this gift was excellently stated by
+the wife of a working man, who referred with enthusiasm to the edifying
+character of the assistant's conversation.
+
+"Tammas misses Maister Carmichael juist terrible, for he wud come in on
+a forenicht an' sit, an' smoke, an' haver wi' the gude man by the 'oor.
+He wes the maist divertin' minister a' ever saw in the West Kirk."
+
+It will be evident that Carmichael's visitation belonged to a different
+department of art from that of Dr. Davidson.  He arrived without
+intimation by the nearest way that he could invent, clothed in a
+shooting jacket and a soft hat, and accompanied by at least two dogs.
+His coming created an instant stir, and Carmichael plunged at once into
+the life of the household.  It is kept on fond record, and still told
+by the surviving remnant of his flock, that on various occasions and in
+the course of pastoral visitation he had turned the hay in summer, had
+forked the sheaves in harvest-time, had sacked the corn for market, and
+had driven a gude wife's churn.  After which honourable toil he would
+eat and drink anything put before him except boiled tea, against which
+he once preached with power--and then would sit indefinitely with the
+family before the kitchen fire, telling tales of ancient history,
+recalling the old struggles of Scottish men, describing foreign sights,
+enlarging on new books, till he would remember that he had only dropped
+in for an hour, and that two meals must be waiting for him at the
+manse.  His visits were understood to be quite unfinished, and he left
+every house pledged to return and take up things at the point where he
+had been obliged to break off, and so he came at last in this matter of
+visitation into a condition of hopeless insolvency.  His adventures
+were innumerable and always enjoyable--falling off the two fir trees
+that made a bridge over our deeper burns, and being dried at the next
+farm-house--wandering over the moor all night and turning up at a
+gamekeeper's at daybreak, covered with peat and ravening with
+hunger--fighting his way through a snowstorm to a marriage, and digging
+the bridegroom out of a drift--dodging a herd of Highland cattle that
+thought he had come too near their calves, or driving off Drumsheugh's
+polled Angus bull with contumely when he was threatening Mrs.
+Macfadyen.  If he met the bairns coming from school, the Glen rang with
+the foolery.  When Willie Harley broke his leg, Carmichael brought his
+dog Jackie--I could tell things of that dog--and devised dramatic
+entertainments of such attraction that Jamie Soutar declared them no
+better than the theatre, and threatened Carmichael with a skep of honey
+as a mark of his indignation.  As for the old women of the Glen, he got
+round them to that extent that they would gossip with him by the hour
+over past days, and Betty Macfarlane was so carried by the minister's
+sympathy that she brought out from hidden places some finery of her
+youth, and Carmichael was found by Miss Carnegie arranging a faded
+Paisley shawl on Betty's shoulders.  And was it not this same gay Free
+Kirkman who trained an eleven to such perfection on a field of
+Drumsheugh's that they beat the second eleven of Muirtown gloriously?
+on which occasion Tammas Mitchell, by the keenness of his eye and the
+strength of his arm, made forty-four runs; and being congratulated by
+Drumtochty as he carried his bat, opened his mouth for the first time
+that day, saying, "Awa wi' ye."
+
+[Illustration: Would gossip with him by the hour.]
+
+So it came to pass that notwithstanding his unholy tendency to Biblical
+criticism and other theological pedantry, Drumtochty loved Carmichael
+because he was a man; and Dr. Davidson, lighting upon him in Hillocks'
+garden, with the family round him full of joy, would threaten him with
+a prosecution for poaching under the ecclesiastical Game Laws, and end
+by insisting upon him coming to dinner at the manse, when he might
+explain his conduct.  Drumtochty loved him for his very imperfections,
+and follows his career unto this day with undying interest, recalling
+his various escapades with huge delight, and declaring to strangers
+that even in his callow days they had discovered that Carmichael was a
+preacher.
+
+Carmichael had occasional fits of order, when he repented of his
+desultory ways, and began afresh with much diligence, writing out the
+names of the congregation with full details--he once got as far as
+Menzies before he lost the book--mapping the parish into districts, and
+planning an elaborate visitation.  It may have been an accident that
+the district he chose for experiment embraced Tochty Lodge--where the
+Carnegies had just settled--but it was natural that his first effort
+should be thorough.  There were exactly ten Free Kirk families from
+Tochty Lodge eastwards, and some of these still speak with feeling of
+the attention they received, which exceeded all they had ever known
+before or since.
+
+"It wesna that he sat sae lang as a 've heard o' him daein' in the
+heich Glen, but it wes the times he cam'," Mrs. Stirton used to
+expatiate, "maybe twice a week for a month.  He hed a wy o' comin'
+through Tochty Wood--the shade helpit him tae study, he said--an'
+jumpin' the dyke.  Sall, gin he dinna mak a roadie for himsel' through
+the field that year.  A' wudna say," she used to add in a casual tone,
+"but that he micht hae gi'en a cry at the Lodge, but he cudna dae less,
+passin' the door."
+
+Carmichael was astonished himself at the number of times he was obliged
+to see General Carnegie on business, of one kind or another.  Sometimes
+it was about the Flower Show, of which the General had become a patron;
+sometimes it was the Highland Games, when the General's help would be
+of so much use; sometimes it was the idea of repairing the old bridge;
+sometimes--and Carmichael blushed when it came to this--to get the
+General's opinion on a military question in the Bible.  The least he
+could do in laying such a tax on a good-natured man was to bring a book
+for his daughter's reading, or a curious flower he had picked up on the
+hill, or a story he had heard in his visiting.  Miss Carnegie was
+generally gracious, and would see him on his way if the day were fine,
+or show him some improvements in the "Pleasaunce," or accompany him to
+Janet's cottage to have a taste of that original woman's conversation
+together.  It came upon Carmichael at a time that he was,
+inadvertently, calling too frequently at the Lodge, and for a week he
+would keep to the main, road, or even pass the corner of the Lodge with
+an abstracted air--for he loathed the thought of being deflected from
+the path of duty by any personal attraction--and used to change the
+subject of conversation after Janet had spoken for half an hour on Kate.
+
+People were speculating in a guarded manner regarding the possibility
+of news, and Janet had quarrelled furiously with Donald for laughing
+such unworthy rumours to scorn, when the parish was almost convulsed by
+the historic scene in the Free Kirk, and all hope of a romantic
+alliance was blasted.  Archie Moncur, elder, and James Macfadyen,
+deacon, were counting the collection in the vestibule, and the
+congregation within were just singing the last verse of their first
+psalm, when General Carnegie and his daughter appeared at the door.
+
+"Has service begun?" whispered Kate, while her father reverently bared
+his head.  "I 'm so sorry we are late, but you will let us in, won't
+you, and we shall be as quiet as mice."
+
+"A 'll open the door," and Archie explained the geography of the
+situation, "an' ye 'll juist slip intae the manse pew; it's in the
+corner, wi' curtains roond it, an' naebody 'll see ye, naither minister
+nor people;" and so Carmichael went through the service, and had almost
+reached the end of his sermon before he knew that Kate was in the
+church.
+
+She was very conscious of him and keenly observant of every detail--his
+white silk hood thrown into relief by the black Geneva gown, his fair,
+flushed face touched with tenderness and reverence, a new accent of
+affection in his voice as one speaking to his charge, and especially
+she noted in this Free Kirkman a certain fervour and high hope, a
+flavour also of subtle spirituality, that were wanting in Dr. Davidson.
+His hair might have been better brushed, and his whiskers were
+distinctly ragged--but those things could be easily put right; then she
+tossed her head in contempt of herself.  It had come to a fine pass
+when a girl that had carried her heart untouched through Simla should
+be concerned about the appearance of a Highland minister.  The General
+was well acquainted with that proud motion, and began to regret that
+they had come.  It was Davidson's blame, who had sent them to hear a
+good sermon for once, as he said, and now Kate would only find material
+for raillery.  He tugged his moustache and wished that they were again
+in the open air.
+
+When the sermon came, the occupants of the manse pew composed
+themselves for fifteen minutes' patient endurance, after the well-bred
+fashion of their Church, each selecting a corner with a skill born of
+long experience.  They were not, however, to rest in peace and
+detachment of mind till the doxology (or its corresponding formula in
+the Scottish Kirk) summoned them back, for this was to be a quite
+memorable sermon for them and their fellow-hearers and all Drumtochty.
+
+Carmichael had been lecturing through Old Testament history, and having
+come to the drama of Elijah and Jezebel, had laid himself out for its
+full and picturesque treatment.  He was still at that age when right
+seems to be all on one side, and a particular cause can be traced down
+the centuries in all lands and under all conditions.  For the most part
+of two days he had wandered over the moor in the bright, cold November
+weather reconstructing the scene in Israel on Scottish lines, and he
+entered the pulpit that morning charged with the Epic of Puritanism.
+Acute critics, like Elspeth Macfadyen, could tell from Carmichael's
+walk down the church that he was in great spirits, and even ordinary
+people caught a note of triumph in his voice as he gave out the first
+Psalm.  For the first few sentences of his sermon he spoke quietly, as
+one reserving and restraining himself, and gave a historical
+introduction which allowed the General to revive some ancient memories
+of India without interruption.  But Kate caught the imperial tone of
+one who had a message to deliver and was already commanding people to
+listen.  She was conscious of a certain anxiety, and began to wish that
+she were in front and could see his face, instead of only the side of
+his head.  Then Carmichael threw back his hair with the air of one
+taking off his coat, and plunged the congregation into the midst of the
+battle, describing Elijah's forgetfulness of self, profound conviction
+of righteousness, high purpose for his nation and devotion to the cause
+of Jehovah, till Burnbrae and the Free Kirkmen straightened themselves
+visibly in their pews, and touching so skilfully on the Tyrian princess
+in her beauty, her culture, her bigotry, her wiles, her masterfulness,
+that several women--greatly delighting in the exposure of such a
+"trimmie"--nodded approval.  Kate had never given herself to the study
+of Old Testament history, and would have had some difficulty in
+identifying Elijah--there was a mare called Jezebel of vicious
+temper--but she caught the contagion of enthusiasm.  If the supreme
+success of a sermon be to stimulate the hearer's mind, then Carmichael
+ought to have closed at this point.  His people would have been all the
+week fighting battles for conscience sake, and resisting smooth,
+cunning temptation to the farthest limits of their lives and in
+unimaginable ways.  Kate herself, although a person quite unaffected by
+preaching, had also naturalised the sermon in her life with much
+practical and vivid detail.  Carmichael was Elijah, the prophet of the
+common people, with his simple ways and old-fashioned notions and love
+of hardness, only far more gentle and courteous and amusing than that
+uncompromising Jew; and she--why, she would be Jezebel just for the
+moment, who had come from . . . India into the Glen, and could bring
+Elijah to her feet if she chose, and make him do her will, and
+then . . .  The girls in the choir before the pulpit noticed the look
+on Kate's face, and wondered whether the Carnegies would join the Free
+Kirk.
+
+Carmichael had an instinct that he ought to fling over the remaining
+four pages of his sermon and close the service with a war Psalm, and he
+told me when I was staying with him last week that he sacrifices the
+last head of his sermon almost every Sunday in his city pulpit.  But he
+was only a lad in Drumtochty, and besides was full of a historical
+parallel, which after a scientific illustration is most irresistible to
+a young minister.  No one had ever seen it before, but of course Elijah
+was John Knox, and Jezebel was Queen Mary of Scots, and then Carmichael
+set to work afresh, with something less than conspicuous success.
+Scottish people are always ready for a eulogium on John Knox in church,
+or on Robert Burns out of church, but the Reformer is rather the object
+of patriotic respect and personal devotion.  Netherton snuffed in quite
+a leisurely way, and the women examined the bonnet of the manse
+housekeeper, while Knox stood in the breach for the liberties of
+Scotland, and when Carmichael began to meddle with Mary, he distinctly
+lost the sympathies of his audience and entered on dangerous ground.
+Scots allow themselves, at times, the rare luxury of being illogical,
+and one of the occasions is their fondness for Queen Mary.  An austere
+Puritan may prove that this young woman was French in her ways, an
+enemy to the Evangel, a born and practised flirt, and art and part in
+the murder of Darnley.  A Scot will not deny the evidence, and if he be
+thrust into the box he may bring in the prisoner guilty, but his heart
+is with the condemned, and he has a grudge against the prosecutor.  For
+he never forgets that Mary was of the royal blood and a thorough
+Stewart, that her face turned men's heads in every country she touched,
+that she had the courage of a man in her, that she was shamefully used,
+and if she did throw over that ill-conditioned lad, well . . .  "Puir
+lassie, she hed naebody tae guide her, but sall, she focht her battle
+weel," and out of this judgment none can drive an honest Scot.  "Yon
+wes a graund discoorse the day, gude wife," Jeems hazarded to Elspeth
+on the way home, "but a' thocht the minister wes a wee hard on Queen
+Mary; there 's nae doot she wes a papist, an' micht hae gien Knox a bit
+twist wi' the screws gin she cud hae gruppit him, but a' dinna like her
+misca'd."
+
+"A 've heard him wi' ma ain ears crackin' her up by the 'oor, an' a'
+canna mak' oot what set him against her the day; but he 's young,"
+remarked Elspeth, sagely, "an' wi' his age it's either saint or deevil,
+an' ae day the one an' the next day the ither; there 's nae medium.
+Noo, maist fouk are juist half an' between, an' Mary hed her faults.
+
+"Ma word, Jeems," continued Elspeth with much relish, "Mary wud sune
+hae settled the minister gin she hed been in the kirk the day."
+
+"Ay, ay," inquired Jeems, "noo what wud the hizzie hae dune?"
+
+"She wud juist hae sent for him an' lookit wi' her een, an' askit him
+what ill he hed at her, an' gin that wesna eneuch she wud hae pit her
+handkerchief tae her face."
+
+"Of coorse he cudna hae stude that; a' micht hae gien in masel',"
+admitted Jeems, "but Knox wes stiff."
+
+"Maister Carmichael is no a Knox, naither are ye, Jeems, an' it's a
+mercy for me ye arena.  Mary wud hae twistit Maister Carmichael roond
+her finger, but a 'm judgin' he 'll catch it as it is afore mony days,
+or ma name 's no Elspeth Macfadyen.  Did ye see Miss Carnegie rise an'
+gae oot afore he feenished?"
+
+"Div ye mean that, Elspeth?" and her husband was amazed at such
+penetration.  "Noo a' thocht it hed been the heat; a' never held wi'
+that stove; it draws up the air.  Hoo did ye jalouse yon?"
+
+"She wes fidgetin' in her seat when he yokit on Mary, an' the meenut he
+named her 'our Scottish Jezebel' the Miss rose an' opened the seat door
+that calm, a' knew she wes in a tantrum, and she gied him a look afore
+she closed the kirk door that wud hae brocht ony man tae his senses.
+
+"Jeems," went on Elspeth with solemnity, "a' coont this a doonricht
+calamity, for a' wes houpin' he wud hae pleased them the day, an' noo a
+'m sair afraid that the minister hes crackit his credit wi' the Lodge."
+
+"Div ye think, Elspeth, he saw her gang oot an' suspeckit the cause?"
+
+"It's maist michty tae hear ye ask sic a question, Jeems.  What gared
+him mak' a hash o' the baptism prayer, and return thanks that there wes
+a leevin' father, instead o' mither, and gie oot the 103rd Paraphrase?
+Tak' ma word for't, he 's wishin' by this time that he 'd lat puir Mary
+alane."
+
+It was just above Hillocks' farm that the General overtook Kate, who
+was still blazing.
+
+"Did you ever hear such vulgar abuse and . . . abominable language from
+a pulpit?  He 's simply a raging fanatic, and not one bit better than
+his Knox.  And I . . . we thought him quite different . . . and a
+gentleman.  I 'll never speak to him again.  Scottish Jezebel: I
+suppose he would call me Jezebel if it occurred to him."
+
+"Very likely he would," replied the General, dryly, "and I must say his
+talk about Queen Mary seemed rather bad taste.  But that's not the
+question, Kate, which is your conduct in leaving a place of worship in
+such an . . . unladylike fashion."
+
+"What?" for this was new talk from her father.
+
+"As no Carnegie ought to have done.  You have forgotten yourself and
+your house, and there is just one thing for you to do, and the sooner
+the better."
+
+"Father, I 'll never look at him again . . . and after that evening at
+Dr. Davidson's, and our talking . . . about Queen Mary, and . . . lots
+of things."
+
+"Whether you meet Mr. Carmichael again or not is your own affair, but
+this touches us both, and you . . . must write a letter of apology."
+
+"And if I don't?" said Kate, defiantly.
+
+"Then I shall write one myself for you.  A Carnegie must not insult any
+man, be he one faith or the other, and offer him no amends."
+
+So Donald handed in this letter at the Free Kirk Manse that evening,
+and left without an answer.
+
+
+TOCHTY LODGE.
+
+SIR,--Your violent and insolent attack on a martyred Queen caused me to
+lose self-control in your church to-day, and I was unable to sit longer
+under such language.
+
+It has been pointed out to me that I ought not to have left church as I
+did, and I hereby express regret.
+
+The books you were so good as to lend me I have sent back by the
+messenger.--Yours truly,
+
+CATHERINE CARNEGIE.
+
+
+When Carmichael called next day, Donald informed him with unconcealed
+satisfaction that Lord Hay was lunching with the family, and that the
+General and Miss Carnegie were going to Muirtown Castle to-morrow for a
+visit; but Janet had not lost hope.
+
+"Do not be taking this to heart, my dear, for I will be asking a
+question.  What will be making Miss Kate so very angry? it is not every
+man she would be minding, though he spoke against Queen Mary all the
+day.  When a woman does not care about a man she will not take the
+trouble to be angry.  That is what I am thinking; and it is not Lord
+Hay that has the way, oh no, though he be a proper man and good at
+shooting."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+LOVE SICKNESS.
+
+College friends settled in petty lowland towns, and meeting Carmichael
+on sacramental occasions, affected to pity him, inquiring curiously
+what were his means of conveyance after the railway ceased, what time a
+letter took to reach him, whether any foot ever crossed his door from
+October to May, whether the great event of the week was not the arrival
+of the bread cart.  Those were exasperating gibes from men who could
+not take a walk without coming on a coal pit, nor lift a book in their
+studies without soiling their hands, whose windows looked on a street
+and commanded the light of a grocer's shop instead of a sunset.  It ill
+became such miserables to be insolent, and Carmichael taught them
+humility when he began to sound the praises of Drumtochty; but he could
+not make townspeople understand the unutterable satisfaction of the
+country minister, who even from old age and great cities looks back
+with fond regret to his first parish on the slope of the Grampians.
+Some kindly host wrestles with him to stay a few days more in
+civilisation, and pledges him to run up whenever he wearies of his
+exile, and the ungrateful rustic can hardly conceal the joy of his
+escape.  He shudders on the way to the station at the drip of the dirty
+sleet and the rags of the shivering poor, and the restless faces of the
+men and the unceasing roar of the traffic.  Where he is going the white
+snow is falling gently on the road, a cart full of sweet-smelling roots
+is moving on velvet, the driver stops to exchange views with a farmer
+who has been feeding his sheep, within the humblest cottage the fire is
+burning clearly.  With every mile northwards the Glenman's heart lifts;
+and as he lands on his far-away little station, he draws a deep breath
+of the clean, wholesome air.  It is a long walk through the snow, but
+there is a kindly, couthy smell from the woods, and at sight of the
+squares of light in his home, weariness departs from a Drumtochty man.
+Carmichael used to say that a glimpse of Archie Moncur sitting with his
+sisters before the fire as he passed, and the wild turmoil of his dogs
+within the manse as the latch of the garden gate clicked, and the flood
+of light pouring out from the open door on the garden, where every
+branch was feathered with snow, and to come into his study, where the
+fire of pine logs was reflected from the familiar titles of his loved
+books, gave him a shock of joy such as he has never felt since, even in
+the days of his prosperity.
+
+[Illustration: The driver stops to exchange views.]
+
+"The city folk are generous with their wealth," he was saying to me
+only last week, when I was visiting him in his West End manse and we
+fell a-talking of the Glen, "and they have dealt kindly by me; they are
+also full of ideas, and they make an inspiring audience for a preacher.
+If any man has a message to deliver from the Eternal, then he had
+better leave the wilderness and come to the city, and if he has plans
+for the helping of his fellow men, let him come where he can get his
+work and his labourers.
+
+"No, I do not repent leaving the Glen, for the Divine Hand thrust me
+forth and has given me work to do, and I am not ungrateful to the
+friends I have made in the city; but God created me a countryman,
+and"--here Carmichael turned his back to me--"my heart goes back to
+Drumtochty, and the sight of you fills me with . . . longing.
+
+"Ah, how this desiderium, as the Rabbi would have said, comes over one
+with the seasons as they come and go.  In spring they send me the first
+snowdrops from the Glen, but it is a cruel kindness, for I want to be
+where they are growing in Clashiegar den.  When summer comes people
+praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have
+not seen Tochty woods in their glory.  Each autumn carries me to the
+harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel
+the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain.  And in winter I see the sun
+shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to
+paper in this dreary room.
+
+"What nonsense this is," pulling himself together; "yes, that is the
+very chair you sat in, and this is the table we stuck between us with
+our humble flask of Moselle of a winter's night . . . let's go to bed;
+we 'll have no more good talk to-night."
+
+When he had left me, I flung open my window in search of air, for it
+seemed as if the city were choking me.  A lamp was flaring across the
+street, two cabs rattled past with revellers singing a music-hall song,
+a heavy odour from many drains floated in, the multitude of houses
+oppressed one as with a weight.  How sweet and pure it was now at the
+pool above Tochty mill, where the trout were lying below the stones and
+the ash boughs dipping into the water.
+
+Carmichael once, however, lost all love of the Glen, and that was after
+Kate flung herself out of the Free Kirk and went on a visit to Muirtown
+Castle.  He was completely disenchanted and saw everything at its
+poorest.  Why did they build the manse so low that an able-bodied man
+could touch the ceiling of the lower rooms with an effort and the upper
+rooms easily?  What possessed his predecessor to put such an impossible
+paper on the study and to stuff the room with book-shelves?  A row of
+Puritan divines offended him--a wooden, obsolete theology--but he also
+pitched a defence of Queen Mary into a cupboard--she had done enough
+mischief already.  The garden looked squalid and mean, without flowers,
+with black patches peeping through the thin covering of snow, with a
+row of winter greens opposite the southern window.  He had never
+noticed the Glen so narrow and bare before, nor how grey and unlovely
+were the houses.  Why had not the people better manners and some
+brightness? they were not always attending funerals and making
+bargains.  What an occupation for an educated man to spend two hours in
+a cabin of a vestry with a dozen labouring men, considering how two
+pounds could be added to the Sustentation Fund, or preaching on Sunday
+to a handful of people who showed no more animation than stone gods
+except when the men took snuff audibly.  Carmichael was playing the
+spoiled child--not being at all a mature or perfect character, then or
+now--and was ready to hit out at anybody.  His bearing was for the
+first and only time in his life supercilious, and his sermons were a
+vicious attack on the doctrines most dear to the best of his people.
+His elders knew not what had come over him, although Elspeth Macfadyen
+was mysteriously apologetic, and in moments of sanity he despised
+himself.  One day he came to a good resolution suddenly, and went down
+to see Rabbi Saunderson--the very thought of whose gentle, patient,
+selfless life was a rebuke and a tonic.
+
+When two tramps held conference on the road, and one indicated to the
+other visibly that any gentleman in temporary distress would be treated
+after a Christian fashion at a neighbouring house, Carmichael, who had
+been walking in a dream since he passed the lodge, knew instantly that
+he must be near the Free Kirk manse of Kilbogie.  The means of
+communication between the members of the nomadic profession is almost
+perfect in its frequency and accuracy, and Saunderson's manse was a
+hedge-side word.  Not only did all the regular travellers by the north
+road call on their going up in spring and their coming down in autumn,
+but habitues of the east coast route were attracted and made a circuit
+to embrace so hospitable a home, and even country vagrants made their
+way from Dunleith and down through Glen Urtach to pay their respects to
+the Rabbi.  They had particular directions to avoid Barbara--expressed
+forcibly on five different posts in the vicinity and enforced in
+picturesque language, of an evening--and they were therefore careful to
+waylay the Rabbi on the road, or enter his study boldly from the front.
+The humbler members of the profession contented themselves with
+explaining that they had once been prosperous tradesmen, and were now
+walking to Muirtown in search of work--receiving their alms, in
+silence, with diffidence and shame; but those in a higher walk came to
+consult the Rabbi on Bible difficulties, which were threatening to
+shake their faith, and departed much relieved--with a new view of Lot's
+wife, as well as a suit of clothes the Rabbi had only worn three times.
+
+[Illustration: Two tramps held conference.]
+
+"You have done kindly by me in calling"--the vagabond had finished his
+story and was standing, a very abject figure, among the books--"and in
+giving me the message from your friend.  I am truly thankful that he is
+now labouring--in iron, did you say? and I hope he may be a cunning
+artificer.
+
+"You will not set it down to carelessness that I cannot quite recall
+the face of your friend, for, indeed, it is my privilege to see many
+travellers, and there are times when I may have been a minister to them
+on their journeys, as I would be to you also if there be anything in
+which I can serve you.  It grieves me to say that I have no clothing
+that I might offer you; it happens that a very worthy man passed here a
+few days ago most insufficiently clad and . . . but I should not have
+alluded to that; my other garments, save what I wear, are . . . kept in
+a place of . . . safety by my excellent housekeeper, and she makes
+their custody a point of conscience; you might put the matter before
+her. . . .  Assuredly it would be difficult, and I crave your pardon
+for putting you in an . . . embarrassing position; it is my misfortune
+to have to-day neither silver nor gold," catching sight of Carmichael
+in the passage, "this is a Providence.  May I borrow from you, John,
+some suitable sum for our brother here who is passing through
+adversity?"
+
+"Do not be angry with me, John"--after the tramp had departed, with
+five shillings in hand and much triumph over Carmichael on his
+face--"nor speak bitterly of our fellow men.  Verily theirs is a hard
+lot who have no place to lay their head, and who journey in weariness
+from city to city.  John, I was once a stranger and a wayfarer,
+wandering over the length and breadth of the land.  Nor had I a friend
+on earth till my feet were led to the Mains, where my heart was greatly
+refreshed, and now God has surrounded me with young men of whose
+kindness I am not worthy, wherefore it becometh me to show mercy unto
+others," and the Rabbi looked at Carmichael with such sweetness, that
+the lad's sullenness began to yield, although he made no sign.
+
+"Moreover," and the Rabbi's voice took a lower tone, "as often as I
+look on one of those men of the highways, there cometh to me a vision
+of Him who was an outcast of the people, and albeit some may be as
+Judas, peradventure one might beg alms of me, a poor sinful man, some
+day, and lo it might be . . . the Lord Himself in a saint," and the
+Rabbi bowed his head and stood awhile much moved.
+
+"Rabbi," after a pause, during which Carmichael's face had changed,
+"you are incorrigible.  For years we have been trying to make you a
+really good and wise man, both by example and precept, and you are
+distinctly worse than when we began--more lazy, miserly, and
+uncharitable.  It is very disheartening.
+
+"Can you receive another tramp and give him a bed, for I am in low
+spirits, and so, like every other person in trouble, I come to you, you
+dear old saint, and already I feel a better man."
+
+"Receive you, John?  It is doubtless selfish, but it is not given to
+you to know how I weary to see your faces, and we shall have much
+converse together--there are some points I would like your opinion
+on--but first of all, after a slight refreshment, we must go to Mains:
+behold the aid to memory I have designed"--and the Rabbi pointed to a
+large square of paper hung above Chrysostom, with "Farewell, George
+Pitillo, 3 o'clock."  "He is the son's son of my benefactor, and he
+leaves his father's house this day to go into a strange land across the
+sea: I had a service last night at Mains, and expounded the departure
+of Abraham, but only slightly, being somewhat affected through the
+weakness of the flesh.  There was a covenant made between the young man
+and myself, that I should meet him at the crossing of the roads to-day,
+and it is in my mind to leave a parable with him against the power of
+this present world."
+
+Then the Rabbi fell into a meditation till the dog-cart came up, Mains
+and his wife in the front and George alone in the back, making a brave
+show of indifference.
+
+"George," said the Rabbi, looking across the field and speaking as to
+himself, "we shall not meet again in this world, and in a short space
+they will bury me in Kilbogie kirkyard, but it will not be in me to lie
+still for thinking of the people I have loved.  So it will come to pass
+that I may rise--you have ears to understand, George---and I will
+inquire of him that taketh charge of the dead about many and how it
+fares with them."
+
+"And George Pitillo, what of him, Andrew?"
+
+"'Oh, it's a peety you didna live langer, Mr. Saunderson, for George
+hes risen in the warld and made a great fortune.'"
+
+"How does it go with his soul, Andrew?"
+
+"'Well, you see, Mister Saunderson, George hes hed many things to think
+about, and he maybe hasna hed time for releegion yet, but nae doot he
+'ll be turnin' his mind that wy soon.'"
+
+"Poor George, that I baptised and admitted to the sacrament and . . .
+loved: exchanged his soul for the world."
+
+The sun was setting fast, and the landscape--bare stubble fields,
+leafless trees, still water, long, empty road--was of a blood-red
+colour fearsome to behold, so that no one spake, and the horse chafing
+his bit made the only sound.
+
+Then the Rabbi began again.
+
+"And George Pitillo--tell me, Andrew?"
+
+"'Weel, ye see, Mister Saunderson, ye wud be sorry for him, for you and
+he were aye chief; he's keepit a gude name an' workit hard, but hesna
+made muckle o' this warld.'"
+
+"And his soul, Andrew?"
+
+"'Oo, that's a' richt; gin we a' hed as gude a chance for the next
+warld as George Pitillo we micht be satisfied.'"
+
+"That is enough for his old friend; hap me over again, Andrew, and I'll
+rest in peace till the trumpet sound."
+
+Carmichael turned aside, but he heard something desperately like a sob
+from the back of the dog-cart, and the Rabbi saying, "God be with you,
+George, and as your father's father received me in the day of my sore
+discouragement, so may the Lord God of Israel open a door for you in
+every land whithersoever you go, and bring you in at last through the
+gates into the city."  The Rabbi watched George till the dog-cart faded
+away into the dusk of the winter's day, and they settled for the night
+in their places among the books before the Rabbi spoke.
+
+It was with a wistful tenderness that he turned to Carmichael and
+touched him slightly with his hand, as was a fashion with the Rabbi.
+
+"You will not think me indifferent to your welfare because I have not
+inquired about your affairs, for indeed this could not be, but the
+going forth of this lad has tried my heart.  Is there aught, John, that
+it becometh you to tell me, and wherein my years can be of any avail?"
+
+"It is not about doctrine I wished to speak to you, Rabbi, although I
+am troubled thus also, but about . . . you remember our talk."
+
+"About the maid, surely; I cannot forget her, and indeed often think of
+her since the day you brought me to her house and made me known unto
+her, which was much courtesy to one who is fitter for a book-room than
+a woman's company.
+
+"She is fair of face and hath a pleasant manner, and surely beauty and
+a winsome way are from God; there seemed also a certain contempt of
+baseness and a strength of will which are excellent.  Perhaps my
+judgment is not even because Miss Carnegie was gracious to me, and you
+know, John, it is not in me to resist kindness, but this is how she
+seems to me.  Has there been trouble between you?"
+
+"Do not misunderstand me, Rabbi; I have not spoken one word of love to
+. . . Miss Carnegie, nor she to me; but I love her, and I thought that
+perhaps she saw that I loved her.  But now it looks as if . . . what I
+hoped is never to be," and Carmichael told the Queen Mary affair.
+
+"Is it not marvellous," mused the Rabbi, looking into the fire, "how
+one woman who was indeed at the time little more than a girl did carry
+men, many of them wise and clever, away as with a flood, and still
+divideth scholars and even . . . friends?
+
+"It was not fitting that Miss Carnegie should have left God's house in
+heat of temper, and it seemeth to us that she hath a wrong reading of
+history, but it is surely good that she hath her convictions, and
+holdeth them fast like a brave maid.
+
+"Is it not so, John, that friends and doubtless also . . . lovers have
+been divided by conscience and have been on opposite sides in the great
+conflict, and doth not this show how much of conscience there is among
+men?
+
+"It may be this dispute will not divide you--being now, as it were,
+more an argument of the schools than a matter of principle, but if it
+should appear that you are far apart on the greater matters of faith,
+then . . . you will have a heavy cross to carry.  But it is my mind
+that the heart of the maiden is right, and that I may some day see her
+. . . in your home, whereat my eyes would be glad."
+
+The Rabbi was so taken up with the matter that he barely showed
+Carmichael a fine copy of John of Damascus he had secured from London,
+and went out of his course at worship to read, as well as to expound
+with much feeling, the story of Ruth the Moabitess, showing
+conclusively that she had in her a high spirit, and that she was
+designed of God to be a strength to the house of David.  He was also
+very cheerful in the morning, and bade Carmichael good-bye at Tochty
+woods with encouraging words.  He also agreed to assist his boy at the
+Drumtochty sacrament.
+
+It was evident that the Rabbi's mind was much set on this visit, but
+Carmichael did not for one moment depend upon his remembering the day,
+and so Burnbrae started early on the Saturday with his dog-cart to
+bring Saunderson up and deposit him without fail in the Free Kirk manse
+of Drumtochty.  Six times that day did the minister leave his "action"
+sermon and take his way to the guest room, carrying such works as might
+not be quite unsuitable for the old scholar's perusal, and arranging a
+lamp of easy management, that the night hours might not be lost.  It
+was late in the afternoon before the Rabbi was delivered at the manse,
+and Burnbrae gave explanations next day at the sacramental dinner.
+
+"It wes just ten when a' got tae the manse o' Kilbogie, an' his
+hoosekeeper didna ken whar her maister wes; he micht be in Kildrummie
+by that time, she said, or half wy tae Muirtown.  So a' set oot an'
+ransackit the parish till a' got him, an' gin he wesna sittin' in a
+bothie takin' brose wi' the plowmen an' expoundin' Scripture a' the
+time.
+
+"He startit on the ancient martyrs afore we were half a mile on the
+road, and he gied ae testimony aifter anither, an' he wesna within
+sicht o' the Reformation when we cam tae the hooses; a 'll no deny that
+a' let the mare walk bits o' the road, for a' cud hae heard him a'
+nicht; ma bluid 's warmer yet, freends."
+
+The Rabbi arrived in great spirits, and refused to taste meat till he
+had stated the burden of his sermon for the morrow.
+
+"If the Lord hath opened our ears the servant must declare what has
+been given him, but I prayed that the message sent through me to your
+flock, John, might be love.  It hath pleased the Great Shepherd that I
+should lead the sheep by strange paths, but I desired that it be
+otherwise when I came for the first time to Drumtochty.
+
+"Two days did I spend in the woods, for the stillness of winter among
+the trees leaveth the mind disengaged for the Divine word, and the
+first day my soul was heavy as I returned, for this only was laid upon
+'vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction.'  And, John, albeit God would
+doubtless have given me strength according to His will, yet I was loath
+to bear this awful truth to the people of your charge.
+
+"Next day the sun was shining pleasantly in the wood and it came to me
+that clouds had gone from the face of God, and as I wandered among the
+trees a squirrel sat on a branch within reach of my hand and did not
+flee.  Then I heard a voice, 'I have loved thee with an everlasting
+love, therefore with loving kindness have I drawn thee.'
+
+"It was, in an instant, my hope that this might be God's word by me,
+but I knew not it was so till the Evangel opened up on all sides, and I
+was led into the outgoings of the eternal love after so moving a
+fashion that I dared to think that grace might be effectual even with
+me . . . with me.
+
+"God opened my mouth on Sabbath on this text unto my own flock, and the
+word was not void.  It is little that can be said on sovereign love in
+two hours and it may be a few minutes; yet even this may be more than
+your people are minded to bear.  So I shall pretermit certain notes on
+doctrine; for you will doubtless have given much instruction on the
+purposes of God, and very likely may be touching on that mystery in
+your action sermon."
+
+During the evening the Rabbi was very genial--tasting Sarah's viands
+with relish, and comparing her to Rebecca, who made savoury meat,
+urging Carmichael to smoke without scruple, and allowing himself to
+snuff three times, examining the bookshelves with keen appreciation,
+and finally departing with three volumes of modern divinity under his
+arm, to reinforce the selection in his room, "lest his eyes should be
+held waking in the night watches."  He was much overcome by the care
+that had been taken for his comfort, and at the door of his room blest
+his boy: "May the Lord give you the sleep of His beloved, and
+strengthen you to declare all His truth on the morrow."  Carmichael sat
+by his study fire for a while and went to bed much cheered, nor did he
+dream that there was to be a second catastrophe in the Free Kirk of
+Drumtochty which would be far sadder than the first, and leave in one
+heart life-long regret.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE FEAR OF GOD.
+
+It was the way of the Free Kirk that the assisting minister at the
+Sacrament should sit behind the Communion Table during the sermon, and
+the congregation, without giving the faintest sign of observation,
+could estimate its effect on his face.  When Doctor Dowbiggin composed
+himself to listen as became a Church leader of substantial build--his
+hands folded before him and his eyes fixed on the far window--and was
+so arrested by the opening passage of Cunningham's sermon on
+Justification by Faith that he visibly started, and afterward sat
+sideways with his ears cocked, Drumtochty, while doubtful whether any
+Muirtown man could appreciate the subtlety of their minister, had a
+higher idea of the Doctor; and when the Free Kirk minister of
+Kildrummie--a stout man and given to agricultural pursuits--went fast
+asleep under a masterly discussion of the priesthood of Melchisedek,
+Drumtochty's opinion of the intellectual condition of Kildrummie was
+confirmed beyond argument.
+
+During his ministry of more than twenty years the Rabbi had never
+preached at Drumtochty--being fearful that he might injure the minister
+who invited him, or might be so restricted in time as to lead astray by
+ill-balanced statements--and as the keenest curiosity would never have
+induced any man to go from the Glen to worship in another parish, the
+Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie was still unjudged in Drumtochty.  They
+were not sorry to have the opportunity at last, for they had suffered
+not a little at the hands of Kilbogie in past years, and the coming
+event disturbed the flow of business at Muirtown market.
+
+"Ye 're tae hae the Doctor at laist," Mains said to Netherton--letting
+the luck-penny on a transaction in seed-corn stand over--"an' a 'm
+jidgin' the time 's no been lost.  He's plainer an' easier tae follow
+then he wes at the affgo.  Ma word"--contemplating the exercise before
+the Glen--"but ye 'll aye get eneuch here and there tae cairry hame."
+Which shows what a man the Rabbi was, that on the strength of his
+possession a parish like Kilbogie could speak after this fashion to
+Drumtochty.
+
+"He 'll hae a fair trial, Mains"--Netherton's tone was distinctly
+severe--"an' mony a trial he's hed in his day, they say: wes't three
+an' twenty kirks he preached in, afore ye took him?  But mind ye,
+length 's nae standard in Drumtochty; na, na, it's no hoo muckle wind a
+man hes, but what like is the stuff that comes.  It's bushels doon bye,
+but it's wecht up bye."
+
+Any prejudice against the Rabbi, created by the boasting of a foolish
+parish not worthy of him, was reduced by his venerable appearance
+before the pulpit, and quite dispelled by his unfeigned delight in
+Carmichael's conduct of the "preliminaries."  Twice he nodded approval
+to the reading of the hundredth Psalm, and although he stood with
+covered face during the prayer, he emerged full of sympathy.  As his
+boy read the fifty-third of Isaiah the old man was moved well-nigh to
+tears, and on the giving out of the text from the parable of the
+Prodigal Son, the Rabbi closed his eyes with great expectation, as one
+about to be fed with the finest of the wheat.
+
+Carmichael has kept the sermon unto this day, and as often as he finds
+himself growing hard or supercilious, reads it from beginning to end.
+It is his hair shirt, to be worn from time to time next his soul for
+the wrongness in it and the mischief it did.  He cannot understand how
+he could have said such things on a Sacrament morning and in the
+presence of the Rabbi, but indeed they were inevitable.  When two tides
+meet there is ever a cruel commotion, and ships are apt to be dashed on
+the rocks, and Carmichael's mind was in a "jabble" that day.  The new
+culture, with its wider views of God and man, was fighting with the
+robust Calvinism in which every Scot is saturated, and the result was
+neither peace nor charity.  Personally the lad was kindly and
+good-natured, intellectually he had become arrogant, intolerant, acrid,
+flinging out at old-fashioned views, giving quite unnecessary
+challenges, arguing with imaginary antagonists.  It has ever seemed to
+me, although I suppose that history is against me, that if it be laid
+on any one to advocate a new view that will startle people, he ought of
+all men to be conciliatory and persuasive; but Carmichael was, at least
+in this time of fermentation, very exasperating and pugnacious, and so
+he drove the Rabbi to the only hard action of his life, wherein the old
+man suffered most, and which may be said to have led to his death.
+
+Carmichael, like the Rabbi, had intended to preach that morning on the
+love of God, and thought he was doing so with some power.  What he did
+was to take the Fatherhood of God and use it as a stick to beat
+Pharisees with, and under Pharisees he let it be seen that he included
+every person who still believed in the inflexible action of the moral
+laws and the austere majesty of God.  Many good things he no doubt
+said, but each had an edge, and it cut deeply into people of the old
+school.  Had he seen the Rabbi, it would not have been possible for him
+to continue, but he only was conscious of Lachlan Campbell, with whom
+he had then a feud, and who, he imagined, had come to criticise him.
+So he went on his rasping way that Sacrament morning, as when one
+harrows the spring earth with iron teeth, exciting himself with every
+sentence to fresh crudities of thought and extravagances of opposition.
+But it only flashed on him that he had spoken foolishly when he came
+down from the pulpit, and found the Rabbi a shrunken figure in his
+chair before the Holy Table.
+
+Discerning people, like Elspeth Macfadyen, saw the whole tragedy from
+beginning to end, and felt the pity of it keenly.  For a while the
+Rabbi waited with fond confidence--for was not he to hear the
+best-loved of his boys--and he caught eagerly at a gracious expression,
+as if it had fallen from one of the fathers.  Anything in the line of
+faith would have pleased the Rabbi that day, who was as a little child
+and full of charity, in spite of his fierce doctrines.  By-and-by the
+light died away from his eyes as when a cloud comes over the face of
+the sun and the Glen grows cold and dreary.  He opened his eyes and was
+amazed--looking at the people and questioning them what had happened to
+their minister.  Suddenly he flushed as a person struck by a friend,
+and then, as one blow followed another, he covered his face with both
+hands, sinking lower and lower in his chair, till even that decorous
+people were almost shaken in their attention.
+
+When Carmichael gave him the cup in the Sacrament the Rabbi's hand
+shook and he spilled some drops of the wine upon his beard, which all
+that day showed like blood on the silvery whiteness.  Afterwards he
+spake in his turn to the communicants, and distinguished the true
+people of God from the multitude--to whom he held out no hope--by so
+many and stringent marks, that Donald Menzies refused the Sacrament
+with a lamentable groan.  And when the Sacrament was over and the time
+came for Carmichael to shake hands with the assisting minister in the
+vestry, the Rabbi had vanished, and he had no speech with him till they
+went through the garden together--very bleak it seemed in the winter
+dusk--unto the sermon that closed the services of the day.
+
+"God's hand is heavy in anger on us both this day, John," and
+Carmichael was arrested by the awe and sorrow in the Rabbi's voice,
+"else . . . you had not spoken as you did this forenoon, nor would
+necessity be laid on me to speak . . . as I must this night.
+
+"His ways are all goodness and truth, but they are oftentimes
+encompassed with darkness, and the burden He has laid on me is . . .
+almost more than I can bear; it will be heavy for you also.
+
+"You will drink the wine of astonishment this night, and it will be
+strange if you do not . . . turn from the hand that pours it out, but
+you will not refuse the truth or . . . hate the preacher," and at the
+vestry door the Rabbi looked wistfully at Carmichael.
+
+During the interval the lad had been ill at ease, suspecting from the
+Rabbi's manner at the Table, and the solemnity of his address, that he
+disapproved of the action sermon, but he did not for a moment imagine
+that the situation was serious.  It is one of the disabilities of
+good-natured and emotional people, without much deepness of earth, to
+belittle the convictions and resolutions of strong natures, and to
+suppose that they can be talked away by a few pleasant, coaxing words.
+
+The Rabbi had often yielded to Carmichael and his other boys in the
+ordinary affairs of life--in meat and drink and clothing, even unto the
+continuance of his snuffing.  He had been most manageable and
+pliable--as a child in their hands--and so Carmichael was quite
+confident that he could make matters right with the old man about a
+question of doctrine as easily as about the duty of a midday meal.
+Certain bright and superficial people will only learn by some solitary
+experience that faith is reserved in friendship, and that the most
+heroic souls are those which count all things loss--even the smile of
+those they love--for the eternal.  For a moment Carmichael was shaken
+as if a new Rabbi were before him; then he remembered the study of
+Kilbogie and all things that had happened therein, and his spirits rose.
+
+"How dare you suggest such wickedness, Rabbi, that any of us should
+ever criticise or complain of anything you say?  Whatever you give us
+will be right, and do us good, and in the evening you will tell me all
+I said wrong."
+
+Saunderson looked at Carmichael for ten seconds as one who has not been
+understood, and sighed.  Then he went down the kirk after the beadle,
+and the people marked how he walked like a man who was afraid he might
+fall, and, turning a corner, he supported himself on the end of a pew.
+As he crept up the pulpit stairs Elspeth gave James a look, and,
+although well accustomed to the slowness of his understanding, was
+amazed that he did not catch the point.  Even a man might have seen
+that this was not the same minister that came in to the Sacrament with
+hope in his very step.
+
+"A 'm no here tae say 'that a' kent what wes comin''"--Elspeth, like
+all experts, was strictly truthful--"for the like o' that wes never
+heard in Drumtochty, and noo that Doctor Saunderson is awa, will never
+be heard again in Scotland.  A' jaloused that vials wud be opened an'
+a' wesna wrang, but ma certes"--and that remarkable woman left you to
+understand that no words in human speech could even hint at the
+contents of the vials.
+
+When the Rabbi gave out his text, "Vessels of wrath," in a low,
+awestruck voice, Carmichael began to be afraid, but after a little he
+chid himself for foolishness.  During half an hour the Rabbi traced the
+doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty through Holy Scripture with a
+characteristic wealth of allusion to Fathers ancient and reforming, and
+once or twice he paused as if he would have taken up certain matters at
+greater length, but restrained himself, simply asserting the Pauline
+character of St. Augustine's thinking, and exposing the looseness of
+Clement of Alexandria with a wave of the hand as one hurrying on to his
+destination.
+
+"Dear old Rabbi"--Carmichael congratulated himself in his pew--"what
+need he have made so many apologies for his subject?  He is going to
+enjoy himself, and he is sure to say something beautiful before he is
+done."  But he was distinctly conscious all the same of a wish that the
+Rabbi were done and all . . . well, uncertainty over.  For there was a
+note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi's voice, and he had not
+let the Fathers go so lightly unless under severe constraint.  What was
+it?  Surely he would not attack their minister in face of his
+people. . . .  The Rabbi do that, who was in all his ways a gentleman?
+Yet . . . and then the Rabbi abruptly quitted historical exposition and
+announced that he would speak on four heads.  Carmichael, from his
+corner behind the curtains, saw the old man twice open his mouth as if
+to speak, and when at last he began he was quivering visibly, and he
+had grasped the outer corners of the desk with such intensity that the
+tassels which hung therefrom--one of the minor glories of the Free
+Kirk--were held in the palm of his hand, the long red tags escaping
+from between his white wasted fingers.  A pulpit lamp came between
+Carmichael and the Rabbi's face, but he could see the straining hand,
+which did not relax till it was lifted in the last awful appeal, and
+the white and red had a gruesome fascination.  It seemed as if one had
+clutched a cluster of full, rich, tender grapes and was pressing them
+in an agony till their life ran out in streams of blood, and dripped
+upon the heads of the choir sitting beneath, in their fresh, hopeful
+youth.  And it also came to Carmichael with pathetic conviction even
+then that every one was about to suffer, but the Rabbi more than them
+all together.  While the preacher was strengthening his heart for the
+work before him, Carmichael's eye was attracted by the landscape that
+he could see through the opposite window.  The ground sloped upwards
+from the kirk to a pine-wood that fringed the great moor, and it was
+covered with snow on which the moon was beginning to shed her faint,
+weird light.  Within, the light from the upright lamps was falling on
+the ruddy, contented faces of men and women and little children, but
+without it was one cold, merciless whiteness, like unto the justice of
+God, with black shadows of judgment.
+
+"This is the message which I have to deliver unto you in the name of
+the Lord, and even as Jonah was sent to Nineveh after a strange
+discipline with a word of mercy, so am I constrained against my will to
+carry a word of searching and trembling.
+
+"First"--and between the heads the Rabbi paused as one whose breath had
+failed him--"every man belongs absolutely to God by his creation.
+
+"Second.  The purpose of God about each man precedes his creation.
+
+"Third.  Some are destined to Salvation, and some to Damnation.
+
+"Fourth"--here the hard breathing became a sob--"each man's lot is unto
+the glory of God."
+
+It was not only skilled theologians like Lachlan Campbell and Burnbrae,
+but even mere amateurs, who understood that they were that night to be
+conducted to the farthest limit of Calvinism, and that whoever fell
+behind through the hardness of the way, their guide would not flinch.
+
+As the Rabbi gave the people a brief space wherein to grasp his heads
+in their significance, Carmichael remembered a vivid incident in the
+Presbytery of Muirtown, when an English evangelist had addressed that
+reverend and austere court with exhilarating confidence--explaining the
+extreme simplicity of the Christian faith, and showing how a minister
+ought to preach.  Various good men were delighted, and asked many
+questions of the evangelist--who had kept a baby-linen shop for twenty
+years, and was unspoiled by the slightest trace of theology--but the
+Rabbi arose and demolished his "teaching," convicting him of heresy at
+every turn, till there was not left one stone upon another.
+
+"But surely fear belongs to the Old Testament dispensation," said the
+unabashed little man to the Rabbi afterwards.  "'Rejoice,' you know, my
+friend, 'and again I say rejoice.'"
+
+"If it be the will of God that such a man as I should ever stand on the
+sea of glass mingled with fire, then this tongue will be lifted with
+the best, but so long as my feet are still in the fearful pit it
+becometh me to bow my head."
+
+"Then you don't believe in assurance?" but already the evangelist was
+quailing before the Rabbi.
+
+"Verily there is no man that hath not heard of that precious gift, and
+none who does not covet it greatly, but there be two degrees of
+assurance"--here the Rabbi looked sternly at the happy, rotund little
+figure--"and it is with the first you must begin, and what you need to
+get is assurance of your damnation."
+
+One of the boys read an account of this incident--thinly veiled--in a
+reported address of the evangelist, in which the Rabbi--being, as it
+was inferred, beaten in scriptural argument--was very penitent and
+begged his teacher's pardon with streaming tears.  What really happened
+was different, and so absolutely conclusive that Doctor Dowbiggin gave
+it as his opinion "that a valuable lesson had been read to unauthorised
+teachers of religion."
+
+Carmichael recognised the same note in the sermon and saw another man
+than he knew, as the Rabbi, in a low voice, without heat or
+declamation, with frequent pauses and laboured breathing, as of one
+toiling up a hill, argued the absolute supremacy of God and the utter
+helplessness of man.  One hand ever pressed the grapes, but with the
+other the old man wiped the perspiration that rolled in beads down his
+face.  A painful stillness fell on the people as they felt themselves
+caught in the meshes of this inexorable net and dragged ever nearer to
+the abyss.  Carmichael, who had been leaning forward in his place, tore
+himself away from the preacher with an effort, and moved where he could
+see the congregation.  Campbell was drinking in every word as one for
+the first time in his life perfectly satisfied.  Menzies was huddled
+into a heap in the top of his pew as one justly blasted by the anger of
+the Eternal.  Men were white beneath the tan, and it was evident that
+some of the women would soon fall a-weeping.  Children had crept close
+to their mothers under a vague sense of danger, and a girl in the choir
+watched the preacher with dilated eyeballs, like an animal fascinated
+by terror.
+
+"It is as a sword piercing the heart to receive this truth, but it is a
+truth and must be believed.  There are hundreds of thousands in the
+past who were born and lived and died and were damned for the glory of
+God.  There are hundreds of thousands in this day who have been born
+and are living and shall die and be damned for the glory of God.  There
+are hundreds of thousands in the future who shall be born and shall
+live and shall die and shall be damned for the glory of God.  All
+according to the will of God, and none dare say nay nor change the
+purpose of the Eternal."  For some time the oil in the lamps had been
+failing--since the Rabbi had been speaking for nigh two hours--and as
+he came to an end of this passage the light began to flicker and die.
+First a lamp at the end of Burnbrae's pew went out and then another in
+the front.  The preacher made as though he would have spoken, but was
+silent, and the congregation watched four lamps sink into darkness at
+intervals of half a minute.  There only remained the two pulpit lamps,
+and in their light the people saw the Rabbi lift his right hand for the
+first time.
+
+"Shall . . . not . . . the . . . Judge . . . of all the earth . . .
+do . . . right?"  The two lamps went out together and a great sigh rose
+from the people.  At the back of the kirk a child wailed and somewhere
+in the front a woman's voice--it was never proved to be Elspeth
+Macfadyen--said audibly, "God have mercy upon us."  The Rabbi had sunk
+back into the seat and buried his face in his hands, and through the
+window over his head the moonlight was pouring into the church like
+unto the far-off radiance from the White Throne.
+
+When Carmichael led the Rabbi into the manse he could feel the old man
+trembling from head to foot, and he would touch neither meat nor drink,
+nor would he speak for a space.
+
+"Are you there, John?"--and he put out his hand to Carmichael, who had
+placed him in the big study chair, and was sitting beside him in
+silence.
+
+"I dare not withdraw nor change any word that I spake in the name of
+the Lord this day, but . . . it is my infirmity . . . I wish I had
+never been born."
+
+"It was awful," said Carmichael, and the Rabbi's head again fell on his
+breast.
+
+"John,"--and Saunderson looked up,--"I would give ten thousand worlds
+to stand in the shoes of that good man who conveyed me from Kilbogie
+yesterday, and with whom I had very pleasant fellowship concerning the
+patience of the saints.
+
+"It becometh not any human being to judge his neighbour, but it seemed
+to me from many signs that he was within the election of God, and even
+as we spoke of Polycarp and the martyrs who have overcome by the blood
+of the Lamb, it came unto me with much power, 'Lo, here is one beside
+you whose name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life, and who shall
+enter through the gates into the city;' and grace was given me to
+rejoice in his joy, but I . . ."--and Carmichael could have wept for
+the despair in the Rabbi's voice.
+
+"Dear Rabbi!"--for once the confidence of youth was smitten at the
+sight of a spiritual conflict beyond its depth--"you are surely . . .
+depreciating yourself . . .  Burnbrae is a good man, but compared with
+you . . . is not this like to the depression of Elijah?"  Carmichael
+knew, however, he was not fit for such work, and had better have held
+his peace.
+
+"It may be that I understand the letter of Holy Scripture better than
+some of God's children, although I be but a babe even in this poor
+knowledge, but such gifts are only as the small dust of the balance.
+He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy.
+
+"John," said the Rabbi suddenly, and with strong feeling, "was it your
+thought this night as I declared the sovereignty of God that I judged
+myself of the elect, and was speaking as one himself hidden for ever in
+the secret place of God?"
+
+"I . . . did not know," stammered Carmichael, whose utter horror at the
+unrelenting sermon had only been tempered by his love for the preacher.
+
+"You did me wrong, John, for then had I not dared to speak at all after
+that fashion; it is not for a vessel of mercy filled unto overflowing
+with the love of God to exalt himself above the vessels . . . for whom
+there is no mercy.  But he may plead with them who are in like case
+with himself to . . . acknowledge the Divine Justice."
+
+Then the pathos of the situation overcame Carmichael, and he went over
+to the bookcase and leant his head against certain volumes, because
+they were weighty and would not yield.  Next day he noticed that one of
+them was a Latin Calvin that had travelled over Europe in learned
+company, and the other a battered copy of Jonathan Edwards that had
+come from the house of an Ayrshire farmer.
+
+"Forgive me that I have troubled you with the concerns of my soul,
+John"--the Rabbi could only stand with an effort--"they ought to be
+between a man and his God.  There is another work laid to my hand for
+which there is no power in me now.  During the night I shall ask
+whether the cup may not pass from me, but if not, the will of God be
+done."
+
+Carmichael slept but little, and every time he woke the thought was
+heavy upon him that on the other side of a narrow wall the holiest man
+he knew was wrestling in darkness of soul, and that he had added to the
+bitterness of the agony.
+
+[Illustration: Wrestling in darkness of soul.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND.
+
+Winter has certain mornings which redeem weeks of misconduct, when the
+hoar frost during the night has re-silvered every branch and braced the
+snow upon the ground, and the sun rises in ruddy strength and drives
+out of sight every cloud and mist, and moves all day through an expanse
+of unbroken blue, and is reflected from the dazzling whiteness of the
+earth as from a mirror.  Such a sight calls a man from sleep with
+authority, and makes his blood tingle, and puts new heart in him, and
+banishes the troubles of the night.  Other mornings winter joins in the
+conspiracy of principalities and powers to daunt and crush the human
+soul.  No sun is to be seen, and the grey atmosphere casts down the
+heart, the wind moans and whistles in fitful gusts, the black clouds
+hang low in threatening masses, now and again a flake of snow drifts in
+the wind.  A storm is near at hand, not the thunder-shower of summer,
+with warm rain and the kindly sun in ambush, but dark and blinding
+snow, through which even a gamekeeper cannot see six yards, and in
+which weary travellers lie down to rest and die.
+
+The melancholy of this kind of day had fallen on Saunderson, whose face
+was ashen, and who held Carmichael's hand with such anxious affection
+that it was impossible to inquire how he had slept, and it would have
+been a banalite to remark upon the weather.  After the Rabbi had been
+compelled to swallow a cup of milk by way of breakfast, it was evident
+that he was ready for speech.
+
+"What is it, Rabbi?" as soon as they were again settled in the study.
+"If you did not . . . like my sermon, tell me at once.  You know that I
+am one of your boys, and you ought to . . . help me."  Perhaps it was
+inseparable from his youth, with its buoyancy and self-satisfaction,
+and his training in a college whose members only knew by rumour of the
+existence of other places of theological learning, that Carmichael had
+at that moment a pleasing sense of humility and charity.  Had it been a
+matter of scholastic lore, of course neither he nor more than six men
+in Scotland could have met the Rabbi in the gate.  With regard to
+modern thought, Carmichael knew that the good Rabbi had not read _Ecce
+Homo_, and was hardly, well . . . up to date.  He would not for the
+world hint such a thing to the dear old man, nor even argue with him;
+but it was flattering to remember that the attack could be merely one
+of blunderbusses, in which the modern thinker would at last intervene
+and save the ancient scholar from humiliation.
+
+"Well, Rabbi?" and Carmichael tried to make it easy.
+
+"Before I say what is on my heart, John, you will grant an old man who
+loves you one favour.  So far as in you lies you will bear with me if
+that which I have to say, and still more that which my conscience will
+compel me to do, is hard to flesh and blood."
+
+"Did n't we settle that last night in the vestry?" and Carmichael was
+impatient; "is it that you do not agree with the doctrine of the Divine
+Fatherhood?  We younger men are resolved to base Christian doctrine on
+the actual Scriptures, and to ignore mere tradition."
+
+"An excellent rule, my dear friend," cried the Rabbi, wonderfully
+quickened by the challenge, "and with your permission and for our
+mutual edification we shall briefly review all passages bearing on the
+subject in hand--using the original, as will doubtless be your wish,
+and you correcting my poor recollection."
+
+About an hour afterwards, and when the Rabbi was only entering into the
+heart of the matter, Carmichael made the bitter discovery--without the
+Rabbi having even hinted at such a thing--that his pet sermon was a
+mass of boyish crudities, and this reverse of circumstances was some
+excuse for his pettishness.
+
+"It does not seem to me that it is worth our time to haggle about the
+usage of Greek words or to count texts: I ground my position on the
+general meaning of the Gospels and the sense of things," and Carmichael
+stood on the hearthrug in a very superior attitude.
+
+"Let that pass then, John, and forgive me if I appeared to battle about
+words, as certain scholars of the olden time were fain to do, for in
+truth it is rather about the hard duty before me than any imperfection
+in your teaching I would speak," and the Rabbi glanced nervously at the
+young minister.
+
+"We are both Presbyters of Christ's Church, ordained after the order of
+primitive times, and there are laid on us certain heavy charges and
+responsibilities from which we may not shrink, as we shall answer to
+the Lord at the great day."
+
+Carmichael's humiliation was lost in perplexity, and he sat down,
+wondering what the Rabbi intended.
+
+"If any Presbyter should see his brother fall into one of those faults
+of private life that do beset us all in our present weakness, then he
+doth well and kindly to point it out unto his brother; and if his
+brother should depart from the faith as they talk together by the way,
+then it is a Presbyter's part to convince him of his error and restore
+him."
+
+The Rabbi cast an imploring glance, but Carmichael had still no
+understanding.
+
+"But if one Presbyter should teach heresy to his flock in the hearing
+of another . . . even though it break the other's heart, is not the
+path of duty fenced up on either side, verily a straight, narrow way,
+and hard for the feet to tread?"
+
+"You have spoken to me, Rabbi, and . . . cleared yourself"--Carmichael
+was still somewhat sore--"and I 'll promise not to offend you again in
+an action sermon."
+
+"Albeit you intend it not so, yet are you making it harder for me to
+speak. . . .  See you not . . . that I . . . that necessity is laid on
+me to declare this matter to my brother Presbyters in court
+assembled . . . but not in hearing of the people?"  Then there was a
+stillness in the room, and the Rabbi, although he had closed his eyes,
+was conscious of the amazement on the young man's face.
+
+"Do you mean to say," speaking very slowly, as one taken utterly aback,
+"that our Rabbi would come to my . . . to the Sacrament and hear me
+preach, and . . . report me for heresy to the Presbytery?  Rabbi, I
+know we don't agree about some things, and perhaps I was a little . . .
+annoyed a few minutes ago because you . . . know far more than I do,
+but that is nothing.  For you to prosecute one of your boys and be the
+witness yourself. . . .  Rabbi, you can't mean it. . . .  Say it's a
+mistake."
+
+The old man only gave a deep sigh.
+
+"If it were Dowbiggin or . . . any man except you, I would n't care one
+straw, rather enjoy the debate, but you whom we have loved and looked
+up to and boasted about, why, it's like . . . a father turning against
+his sons."
+
+The Rabbi made no sign.
+
+"You live too much alone, Rabbi," and Carmichael began again as the
+sense of the tragedy grew on him, "and nurse your conscience till it
+gets over tender; no other man would dream of . . . prosecuting a . . .
+fellow minister in such circumstances.  You have spoken to me like a
+father, surely that is enough," and in his honest heat the young fellow
+knelt down by the Rabbi's chair and took his hand.
+
+A tear rolled down the Rabbi's cheek, and he looked fondly at the lad.
+
+"Your words pierce me as sharp swords, John; spare me, for I can do
+none otherwise; all night I wrestled for release, but in vain."
+
+Carmichael had a sudden revulsion of feeling, such as befalls emotional
+and ill-disciplined natures when they are disappointed and mortified.
+
+"Very good, Doctor Saunderson"--Carmichael rose awkwardly and stood on
+the hearthrug again, an elbow on the mantelpiece--"you must do as you
+please and as you think right.  I am sorry that I . . . pressed you so
+far, but it was on grounds of our . . . friendship.
+
+"Perhaps you will tell me as soon as you can what you propose to do,
+and when you will bring . . . this matter before the Presbytery.  My
+sermon was fully written and . . . is at your disposal."
+
+While this cold rain beat on the Rabbi's head he moved not, but at its
+close he looked at Carmichael with the appeal of a dumb animal in his
+eyes.
+
+"The first meeting of Presbytery is on Monday, but you would no doubt
+consider that too soon; is there anything about dates in the order of
+procedure for heresy?" and Carmichael made as though he would go over
+to the shelves for a law book.
+
+"John," cried the Rabbi--his voice full of tears--rising and following
+the foolish lad, "is this all you have in your heart to say unto me?
+Surely, as I stand before you, it is not my desire to do such a thing,
+for I would rather cut off my right hand.
+
+"God hath not been pleased to give me many friends, and He only knows
+how you and the others have comforted my heart.  I lie not, John, but
+speak the truth, that there is nothing unto life itself I would not
+give for your good, who have been as the apple of my eye unto me."
+
+Carmichael hardened himself, torn between a savage sense of
+satisfaction that the Rabbi was suffering for his foolishness and the
+inclination of his better self to respond to the old man's love.
+
+"If there be a breach between us, it will not be for you as it must be
+for me.  You have many friends, and may God add unto them good men and
+faithful, but I shall lose my one earthly joy and consolation, when
+your feet are no longer heard on my threshold and your face no longer
+brings light to my room.  And, John, even this thing which I am
+constrained to do is yet of love, as . . . you shall confess one day."
+
+Carmichael's pride alone resisted, and it was melting fast.  Had he
+even looked at the dear face, he must have given way, but he kept his
+shoulder to the Rabbi, and at that moment the sound of wheels passing
+the corner of the manse gave him an ungracious way of escape.
+
+"That is Burnbrae's dog-cart . . . Doctor Saunderson, and I think he
+will not wish to keep his horse standing in the snow, so unless you
+will stay all night, as it's going to drift. . . .  Then perhaps it
+would be better. . . .  Can I assist you in packing?"  How formal it
+all sounded, and he allowed the Rabbi to go upstairs alone, with the
+result that various things of the old man's are in Carmichael's house
+unto this day.
+
+Another chance was given the lad when the Rabbi would have bidden him
+good-bye at the door, beseeching that he should not come out into the
+drift, and still another when Burnbrae, being concerned about his
+passenger's appearance, who seemed ill-fitted to face a storm, wrapt
+him in a plaid; and he had one more when the old man leant out of the
+dog-cart and took Carmichael's hand in both of his, but only said, "God
+bless you for all you 've been to me, and forgive me for all wherein I
+have failed you."  And they did not meet again till that
+never-to-be-forgotten sederunt of the Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown,
+when the minister of Kilbogie accused the minister of Drumtochty of
+teaching the Linlathen heresy of the Fatherhood of God in a sermon
+before the Sacrament.
+
+Among all the institutions of the North a Presbytery is the most
+characteristic, and affords a standing illustration of the
+contradictions of a superbly logical people.  It is so anti-clerical a
+court that for every clergyman there must be a layman--country
+ministers promising to bring in their elder for great occasions, and
+instructing him audibly how to vote--and so fiercely clerical that if
+the most pious and intelligent elder dared to administer a sacrament he
+would be at once tried and censured for sacrilege.  So careful is a
+Presbytery to prevent the beginnings of Papacy that it insists upon
+each of its members occupying the chair in turn, and dismisses him
+again into private life as soon as he has mastered his duties, but so
+imbued is it with the idea of authority that whatever decision may be
+given by some lad of twenty-five in the chair--duly instructed,
+however, by the clerk below--will be rigidly obeyed.  When a Presbytery
+has nothing else to do, it dearly loves to pass a general condemnation
+on sacerdotalism, in which the tyranny of prelates, and the foolishness
+of vestments will be fully exposed, but a Presbytery wields a power at
+which a bishop's hair would stand on end, and Doctor Dowbiggin once
+made Carmichael leave the Communion Table and go into the vestry to put
+on his bands.
+
+When a Presbytery is in its lighter moods, it gives itself to points of
+order with a skill and relish beyond the Southern imagination.  It did
+not matter how harmless, even infantile, might be the proposal placed
+before the court by such a man as MacWheep of Pitscowrie, he has hardly
+got past an apology for his presumption in venturing to speak at all,
+before a member of Presbytery--who had reduced his congregation to an
+irreducible minimum by the woodenness of his preaching--inquires
+whether the speech of "our esteemed brother is not _ultra vires_" or
+something else as awful.  MacWheep at once sits down with the air of
+one taken red-handed in arson, and the court debates the point till
+every authority has taken his fill, when the clerk submits to the
+Moderator, with a fine blend of deference and infallibility, that Mr.
+MacWheep is perfectly within his rights; and then, as that estimable
+person has, by this time, lost any thread he ever possessed, the
+Presbytery passes to the next business--with the high spirit of men
+returning from a holiday.  Carmichael used, indeed, to relate how in a
+great stress of business someone moved that the Presbytery should
+adjourn for dinner, and the court argued for seventy minutes, with many
+precedents, whether such a motion--touching as it did the standing
+orders--could even be discussed, and with an unnecessary prodigality of
+testimony he used to give perorations which improved with every telling.
+
+The love of law diffused through the Presbytery became incarnate in the
+clerk, who was one of the most finished specimens of his class in the
+Scottish Kirk.  His sedate appearance, bald, polished head, fringed
+with pure white hair, shrewd face, with neatly cut side whiskers, his
+suggestion of unerring accuracy and inexhaustible memory, his attitude
+for exposition,--holding his glasses in his left hand and enforcing his
+decision with the little finger of the right hand--carried conviction
+even to the most disorderly.  Ecclesiastical radicals, boiling over
+with new schemes, and boasting to admiring circles of MacWheeps that
+they would not be brow-beaten by red tape officials, became
+ungrammatical before that firm gaze, and ended in abject surrender.
+Self-contained and self-sufficing, the clerk took no part in debate,
+save at critical moments to lay down the law, but wrote his minutes
+unmoved through torrents of speech on every subject, from the
+Sustentation Fund to the Union between England and Scotland, and even
+under the picturesque eloquence of foreign deputies, whose names he
+invariably requested should be handed to him, written legibly on a
+sheet of paper.  On two occasions only he ceased from writing: when Dr.
+Dowbiggin discussed a method of procedure--then he watched him over his
+spectacles in hope of a nice point; or when some enthusiastic brother
+would urge the Presbytery to issue an injunction on the sin of Sabbath
+walking--then the clerk would abandon his pen in visible despair, and
+sitting sideways on his chair and supporting his head by that same
+little finger, would face the Presbytery with an expression of reverent
+curiosity on his face why the Almighty was pleased to create such a
+man.  His preaching was distinguished for orderliness, and was much
+sought after for Fast days.  It turned largely on the use of
+prepositions and the scope of conjunctions, so that the clerk could
+prove the doctrine of Vicarious Sacrifice from "for," and Retribution
+from "as" in the Lord's prayer, emphasising and confirming everything
+by that wonderful finger, which seemed to be designed by Providence for
+delicate distinctions, just as another man's fist served for popular
+declamation.  His pulpit masterpiece was a lecture on the Council of
+Jerusalem, in which its whole deliberations were reviewed by the rules
+of the Free Kirk Book of Procedure, and a searching and edifying
+discourse concluded with two lessons.  First: That no ecclesiastical
+body can conduct its proceedings without officials.  Second: That such
+men ought to be accepted as a special gift of Providence.
+
+[Illustration: His attitude for exposition.]
+
+The general opinion among good people was that the clerk's preaching
+was rather for upbuilding than arousing, but it is still remembered by
+the survivors of the old Presbytery that when MacWheep organised a
+conference on "The state of religion in our congregations," and it was
+meandering in strange directions, the clerk, who utilised such seasons
+for the writing of letters, rose amid a keen revival of interest--it
+was supposed that he had detected an irregularity in the
+proceedings--and offered his contribution.  "It did not become him to
+boast," he said, "but he had seen marvellous things in his day: under
+his unworthy ministry three beadles had been converted to
+Christianity," and this experience was so final that the conference
+immediately closed.
+
+Times there were, however, when the Presbytery rose to its height, and
+was invested with an undeniable spiritual dignity.  Its members, taken
+one by one, consisted of farmers, shepherds, tradesmen, and one or two
+professional men, with some twenty ministers, only two or three of whom
+were known beyond their parishes.  Yet those men had no doubt that as
+soon as they were constituted in the name of Christ, they held their
+authority from the Son of God and Saviour of the world, and they bore
+themselves in spiritual matters as His servants.  No kindly feeling of
+neighbourliness or any fear of man could hinder them from inquiring
+into the religious condition of a parish or dealing faithfully with an
+erring minister.  They had power to ordain, and laid hands on the bent
+head of some young probationer with much solemnity; they had also power
+to take away the orders they had given, and he had been hardened indeed
+beyond hope who could be present and not tremble when the Moderator,
+standing in his place, with the Presbytery around, and speaking in the
+name of the Head of the Church, deposed an unworthy brother from the
+holy ministry.  MacWheep was a "cratur," and much given to twaddle, but
+when it was his duty once to rebuke a fellow-minister for quarrelling
+with his people, he was delivered from himself, and spake with such
+grave wisdom as he has never shown before or since.
+
+When the Presbytery assembled to receive a statement from Doctor
+Saunderson "_re_ error in doctrine by a brother Presbyter," even a
+stranger might have noticed that its members were weighted with a sense
+of responsibility, and although a discussion arose on the attempt of a
+desultory member to introduce a deputy charged with the subject of the
+lost ten tribes, yet it was promptly squelched by the clerk, who
+intimated, with much gravity, that the court had met _in hunc
+effectum_, viz. to hear Doctor Saunderson, and that the court could
+not, in consistence with law, take up any other business, not
+even--here Carmichael professed to detect a flicker of the clerkly
+eyelids--the disappearance of the ten tribes.
+
+It was the last time that the Rabbi ever spoke in public, and it is now
+agreed that the deliverance was a fit memorial of the most learned
+scholar that has been ever known in those parts.  He began by showing
+that Christian doctrine has taken various shapes, some more and some
+less in accordance with the deposit of truth given by Christ and the
+holy Apostles, and especially that the doctrine of Grace had been
+differently conceived by two eminent theologians, Calvin and Arminius,
+and his exposition was so lucid that the clerk gave it as his opinion
+afterwards, that the two systems were understood by certain members of
+the court for the first time that day.  Afterwards the Rabbi vindicated
+and glorified Calvinism from the Scriptures of the Old and New
+Testament, from the Fathers, from the Reformation Divines, from the
+later creeds, till the brain of the Presbytery reeled through the
+wealth of allusion and quotation, all in the tongues of the learned.
+Then he dealt with the theology of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, and showed
+how it was undermining the very foundations of Calvinism; yet the Rabbi
+spake so tenderly of our Scottish Maurice that the Presbytery knew not
+whether it ought to condemn Erskine as a heretic or love him as a
+saint.  Having thus brought the court face to face with the issues
+involved, the Rabbi gave a sketch of a certain sermon he had heard
+while assisting "a learned and much-beloved brother at the Sacrament,"
+and Carmichael was amazed at the transfiguration of this very youthful
+performance, which now figured as a profound and edifying discourse,
+for whose excellent qualities the speaker had not adequate words.  This
+fine discourse was, however, to a certain degree marred, the Rabbi
+suggested, by an unfortunate, although no doubt temporary, leaning to
+the teaching of Mr. Erskine, whose beautiful piety, which was even to
+himself in his worldliness and unprofitableness a salutary rebuke, had
+exercised its just fascination upon his much more spiritual brother.
+Finally the Rabbi left the matter in the hands of the Presbytery,
+declaring that he had cleared his conscience, and that the minister was
+one--here he was painfully overcome--dear to him as a son, and to whose
+many labours and singular graces he could bear full testimony, the Rev.
+John Carmichael, of Drumtochty.  The Presbytery was slow and pedantic,
+but was not insensible to a spiritual situation, and there was a murmur
+of sympathy when the Rabbi sat down--much exhausted, and never having
+allowed himself to look once at Carmichael.
+
+Then arose a self-made man, who considered orthodoxy and capital to be
+bound up together, and especially identified any departure from
+sovereignty with that pestilent form of Socialism which demanded equal
+chances for every man.  He was only a plain layman, he said, and
+perhaps he ought not to speak in the presence of so many reverend
+gentlemen, but he was very grateful to Doctor Saunderson for his
+honourable and straightforward conduct.  It would be better for the
+Church if there were more like him, and he would just like to ask Mr.
+Carmichael one or two questions.  Did he sign the Confession?--that was
+one; and had he kept it?--that was two; and the last was, When did he
+propose to go?  He knew something about building contracts, and he had
+heard of a penalty when a contract was broken.  There was just one
+thing more he would like to say--if there was less loose theology in
+the pulpit there would be more money in the plate.  The shame of the
+Rabbi during this harangue was pitiable to behold.
+
+Then a stalwart arose on the other side, and a young gentleman who had
+just escaped from a college debating society wished to know what
+century we were living in, warned the last speaker that the progress of
+theological science would not be hindered by mercenary threats, advised
+Doctor Saunderson to read a certain German, called Ritschl,--as if he
+had been speaking to a babe in arms,--and was refreshing himself with a
+Latin quotation, when the Rabbi, in utter absence of mind, corrected a
+false quantity aloud.
+
+"Moderator," the old man apologised in much confusion, "I wot not what
+I did, and I pray my reverend brother, whose interesting and
+instructive address I have interrupted by this unmannerliness, to grant
+me his pardon, for my tongue simply obeyed my ear."  Which untoward
+incident brought the modern to an end, as by a stroke of ironical fate.
+It seemed to the clerk that little good to any one concerned was to
+come out of this debate, and he signalled to Doctor Dowbiggin, with
+whom he had dined the night before, when they concocted a motion over
+their wine.  Whereupon that astute man explained to the court that he
+did not desire to curtail the valuable discussion, from which he
+personally had derived much profit, but he had ventured to draw up a
+motion, simply for the guidance of the House--it was said by the
+Rabbi's boys that the Doctor's success as an ecclesiastic was largely
+due to the skilful use of such phrases--and then he read: "Whereas the
+Church is set in all her courts for the defence of the truth, whereas
+it is reported that various erroneous doctrines are being promulgated
+in books and other public prints, whereas it has been stated that one
+of the ministers of this Presbytery has used words that might be
+supposed to give sanction to a certain view which appears to conflict
+with statements contained in the standards of the Church, the
+Presbytery of Muirtown declares first of all, its unshaken adherence to
+the said standards; secondly, deplores the existence in any quarter of
+notions contradictory or subversive of said standards; thirdly, thanks
+Doctor Saunderson for the vigilance he has shown in the cause of sound
+doctrine; fourthly, calls upon all ministers within the bounds to have
+a care that they create no offence or misunderstanding by their
+teaching, and finally enjoins all parties concerned to cultivate peace
+and charity."
+
+This motion was seconded by the clerk and carried
+unanimously,--Carmichael being compelled to silence by the two wise men
+for his own sake and theirs,--and was declared to be a conspicuous
+victory both by the self-made man and the modern, which was another
+tribute to the ecclesiastical gifts of Doctor Dowbiggin and the clerk
+of the Presbytery of Muirtown.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+LIGHT AT EVENTIDE.
+
+The Rabbi had been careful to send an abstract of his speech to
+Carmichael, with a letter enough to melt the heart even of a
+self-sufficient young clerical; and Carmichael had considered how he
+should bear himself at the Presbytery.  His intention had been to meet
+the Rabbi with public cordiality and escort him to a seat, so that all
+men should see that he was too magnanimous to be offended by this
+latest eccentricity of their friend.  This calculated plan was upset by
+the Rabbi coming in late and taking the first seat that offered, and
+when he would have gone afterwards to thank him for his generosity the
+Rabbi had disappeared.  It was evident that the old man's love was as
+deep as ever, but that he was much hurt, and would not risk another
+repulse.  Very likely he had walked in from Kilbogie, perhaps without
+breakfast, and had now started to return to his cheerless manse.  It
+was a wetting spring rain, and he remembered that the Rabbi had no
+coat.  A fit of remorse overtook Carmichael, and he scoured the streets
+of Muirtown to find the Rabbi, imagining deeds of attention--how he
+would capture him unawares mooning along some side street hopelessly
+astray; how he would accuse him of characteristic cunning and deep
+plotting, how he would carry him by force to the Kilspindie Arms and
+insist upon their dining in state; how the Rabbi would wish to
+discharge the account and find twopence in his pockets--having given
+all his silver to an ex-Presbyterian minister stranded in Muirtown
+through peculiar circumstances; how he would speak gravely to the Rabbi
+on the lack of common honesty, and threaten a real prosecution, when
+the charge would be "obtaining a dinner on false pretences," how they
+would journey to Kildrummie in high content, and--the engine having
+whistled for a dog-cart--they would drive to Drumtochty manse, the sun
+shining through the rain as they entered the garden; how he would
+compass the Rabbi with observances, and the old man would sit again in
+the big chair full of joy and peace.  Ah, the kindly jests that have
+not come off in life, the gracious deeds that never were done, the
+reparations that were too late!  When Carmichael reached the station
+the Rabbi was already half way to Kilbogie, trudging along wet and
+weary and very sad, because, although he had obeyed his conscience at a
+cost, it seemed to him as if he had simply alienated the boy whom God
+had given him as a son in his old age, for even the guileless Rabbi
+suspected that the ecclesiastics considered his action foolishness and
+of no service to the Church of God.  Barbara's language on his arrival
+was vituperative to a degree, she gave him food grudgingly, and when,
+in the early morning, he fell asleep over an open Father, he was
+repeating Carmichael's name, and the thick old paper was soaked with
+tears.
+
+His nemesis seized Carmichael so soon as he reached the Dunleith train
+in the shape of the Free Kirk minister of Kildrummie, who had purchased
+six pounds of prize seed potatoes, and was carrying the treasure home
+in a paper bag.  This bag had done after its kind, and as the
+distinguished agriculturist had not seen his feet for years, and could
+only have stooped at the risk of apoplexy, he watched the dispersion of
+his potatoes with dismay, and hailed the arrival of Carmichael with
+exclamations of thankfulness.  It is wonderful over what an area six
+pounds of (prize) potatoes can deploy on a railway platform, and how
+the feet of passengers will carry them unto far distances.  Some might
+never have been restored to the bag had it not been for Kildrummie's
+comprehensive eye and the physical skill with which he guided
+Carmichael, till even prodigals that had strayed over to the
+neighbourhood of the Aberdeen express were restored to the extemporised
+fold in the minister's top-coat pockets.  Carmichael had knelt on that
+very platform six months or so before, but then he stooped in the
+service of two most agreeable dogs and under the approving eyes of Miss
+Carnegie; that was a different experience from hunting after single
+potatoes on all fours among the feet of unsympathetic passengers, and
+being prodded to duty by the umbrella of an obese Free Kirk minister.
+As a reward for this service of the aged, he was obliged to travel to
+Kildrummie with his neighbour--in whom for the native humour that was
+in him he had often rejoiced, but whose company was not congenial that
+day--and Kildrummie laid himself out for a pleasant talk.  After the
+roots had been secured and their pedigree stated, Kildrummie fell back
+on the proceedings of Presbytery, expressing much admiration for the
+guidance of Doctor Dowbiggin and denouncing Saunderson as "fair
+dottle," in proof of which judgment Kildrummie adduced the fact that
+the Rabbi had allowed a very happily situated pigsty to sink into ruin.
+Kildrummie, still in search of agreeable themes to pass the time,
+mentioned a pleasant tale he had gathered at the seed shop.
+
+"Yir neebur upbye, the General's dochter, is cairryin' on an awfu' rig
+the noo at the Castle"--Kildrummie fell into dialect in private life,
+often with much richness--"an' the sough o' her ongaeins hes come the
+length o' Muirtown.  The place is foo' o' men--tae say naethin' o'
+weemin; but it's little she hes tae dae wi' them or them wi'
+her--officers frae Edinburgh an' writin' men frae London, as weel as
+half a dozen coonty birkies."
+
+"Well?" said Carmichael, despising himself for his curiosity.
+
+"She hes a wy, there 's nae doot o' that, an' gin the trimmie hesna
+turned the heads o' half the men in the Castle, till they say she hes
+the pick of twa lords, five honourables, and a poet.  But the lassie
+kens what's what; it's Lord Hay she 's settin' her cap for, an' as sure
+as ye 're sittin' there, Drum, she 'll hae him.
+
+"Ma word"--and Kildrummie pursued his way--"it 'll be a match, the
+dochter o' a puir Hielant laird, wi' naethin' but his half pay and a
+few pounds frae a fairm or twa.  She 's a clever ane; French songs,
+dancin', shootin', ridin', actin', there's nae deevilry that's beyond
+her.  They say upbye that she's been a bonnie handfu' tae her
+father--General though he be--an' a' peety her man."
+
+"They say a lot of . . . lies, and I don't see what call a minister has
+to slander . . . ," and then Carmichael saw the folly of quarrelling
+with a veteran gossip over a young woman that would have nothing to say
+to him.  What two Free Kirk ministers or their people thought of her
+would never affect Miss Carnegie.
+
+"Truth's nae slander," and Kildrummie watched Carmichael with relish;
+"a' thocht ye wud hae got a taste o' her in the Glen.  Didna a' heer
+frae Piggie Walker that ye ca'd her Jezebel frae yir ain pulpit, an'
+that ma lady whuppit oot o' the kirk in the middle o' the sermon?"
+
+"I did nothing of the kind, and Walker is a . . ."
+
+"Piggie 's no very particular at a time," admitted Kildrummie; "maybe
+it's a makup the story aboot Miss Carnegie an' yirsel'.
+
+"Accordin' to the wratch," for Carmichael would deign no reply, "she
+wes threatenin' tae mak a fule o' the Free Kirk minister o' Drumtochty
+juist for practice, but a' said, 'Na, na, Piggie, Maister Carmichael is
+ower quiet and sensible a lad.  He kens as weel as onybody that a
+Carnegie wud never dae for a minister's wife.  Gin ye said a Bailie's
+dochter frae Muirtown 'at hes some money comin' tae her and kens the
+principles o' the Free Kirk.'
+
+"Noo a' can speak frae experience, having been terrible fortunate wi'
+a' ma wives. . . .  Ye 'll come up tae tea; we killed a pig yesterday,
+and . . .  Weel, weel, a wilfu' man maun hae his wy," and Carmichael,
+as he made his way up the hill, felt that the hand of Providence was
+heavy upon him, and that any highmindedness was being severely
+chastened.
+
+Two days Carmichael tramped the moors, returning each evening wet,
+weary, hungry, to sleep ten hours without turning, and on the morning
+of the third day he came down in such heart that Sarah wondered whether
+he could have received a letter by special messenger; and he
+congratulated himself, as he walked round his garden, that he had
+overcome by sheer will-power the first real infatuation of his life.
+He was so lifted above all sentiment as to review his temporary folly
+from the bare, serene heights of common-sense.  Miss Carnegie was
+certainly not an heiress, and she was a young woman of very decided
+character, but her blood was better than the Hays', and she was . . .
+attractive--yes, attractive.  Most likely she was engaged to Lord Hay,
+or if he did not please her--she was . . . whimsical and . . .
+self-willed--there was Lord Invermay's son.  Fancy Kate . . . Miss
+Carnegie in a Free Kirk manse--Kildrummie was a very . . . homely old
+man, but he touched the point there--receiving Doctor Dowbiggin with
+becoming ceremony and hearing him on the payment of probationers, or
+taking tea at Kildrummie Manse--where he had, however, feasted royally
+many a time after the Presbytery, but. . . .  This daughter of a
+Jacobite house, and brought up amid the romance of war, settling down
+in the narrowest circle of Scottish life--as soon imagine an eagle
+domesticated among barn-door poultry.  This image amused Carmichael so
+much that he could have laughed aloud, but . . . the village might have
+heard him.  He only stretched himself like one awaking, and felt so
+strong that he resolved to drop in on Janet to see how it fared with
+the old woman and . . . to have Miss Carnegie's engagement confirmed.
+The Carnegies might return any day from the South, and it would be well
+that he should know how to meet them.
+
+"You will be hearing that they hef come back to the Lodge yesterday
+morning, and it iss myself that will be glad to see Miss Kate again;
+and very pretty iss she looking, with peautiful dresses and bonnets,
+for I hef seen them all, maybe twelve or ten.
+
+"Oh yes, my dear, Donald will be talking about her marriage to Lord
+Kilspindie's son, who iss a very handsome young man and good at the
+shooting; and he will be blowing that they will live at the Lodge in
+great state, with many gillies and a piper.
+
+"No, it iss not Janet Macpherson, my dear, that will be believing
+Donald Cameron, or any Cameron--although I am not saying that the
+Camerons are not men of their hands--for Donald will be always making
+great stories and telling me wonderful things.  He wass a brave man in
+the battle, and iss very clever at the doctrine too, and will be strong
+against human himes (hymns), but he iss a most awful liar iss Donald
+Cameron, and you must not be believing a word that comes out of his
+mouth.
+
+"She will be asking many questions in her room as soon as Donald had
+brought up her boxes and the door was shut.  Some will be about the
+Glen, and some about the garden, and some will be about people--whether
+you ever will be visiting me, and whether you asked for her after the
+day she left the kirk.  But I will say, 'No; Mr. Carmichael does not
+speak about anything but the religion when he comes to my cottage.'
+
+"That iss nothing.  I will be saying more, that I am hearing that the
+minister iss to be married to a fery rich young lady in Muirtown who
+hass been courting him for two years, and that her father will be
+giving the minister twenty thousand pounds the day they are married.
+And I will say she iss very beautiful, with blue eyes and gold hair,
+and that her temper iss so sweet they are calling her the Angel of
+Muirtown.
+
+"Toot, toot, my dear, you are not to be speaking about lies, for that
+iss not a pretty word among friends, and you will not be meddling with
+me, for you will be better at the preaching and the singing than
+dealing with women.  It iss not good to be making yourself too common,
+and Miss Kate will be thinking the more of you if you be holding your
+head high and letting her see that you are not a poor lowland body, but
+a Farquharson by your mother's side, and maybe of the chief's blood,
+though twenty or fifteen times removed.
+
+"She will be very pleased to hear such good news of you, and be saying
+that it iss a mercy you are getting somebody to dress you properly.
+But her temper will not be at all good, and I did not ask her about
+Lord Hay, and she said nothing to me, nor about any other lord.  It iss
+not often I hef seen as great a liar as Donald Cameron.
+
+"Last evening Miss Kate will come down before dinner and talk about
+many things, and then she will say at the door, 'Donald tells me that
+Mister Carmichael does not believe in the Bible, and that his minister,
+Doctor Saunderson, has cast him off, and that he has been punished by
+his Bishop or somebody at Muirtown.'
+
+"'Donald will be knowing more doctrine and telling more lies every
+month,' I said to her.  'Doctor Saunderson--who is a very fine preacher
+and can put the fear of God upon the people most wonderful--and our
+minister had a little feud, and they will fight it out before some
+chiefs at Muirtown like gentlemen, and now they are good friends again.'
+
+"Miss Kate had gone off for a long walk, and I am not saying that she
+will be calling at Kilbogie Manse before she comes back.  She is very
+fond of Doctor Saunderson, and maybe he will be telling her of the
+feud.  It iss more than an hour through the woods to Kilbogie,"
+concluded Janet, "but you will be having a glass of milk first."
+
+Kate reviewed her reasons for the expedition to Kilbogie, and settled
+they were the pleasures of a walk through Tochty woods when the spring
+flowers were in their glory, and a visit to one of the dearest
+curiosities she had ever seen.  It was within the bounds of possibility
+that Doctor Saunderson might refer to his friend, but on her part she
+would certainly not refer to the Free Church minister of Drumtochty.
+Her reception by that conscientious professor Barbara could not be
+called encouraging.
+
+"Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him, for he's in his bed, and gin he
+disna mend faster than he wes daein' the last time a' gied him a cry,
+he 's no like to be in the pulpit on Sabbath.  A' wes juist thinkin' he
+wudna be the waur o' a doctor."
+
+[Illustration: "Ay, he 's in, but ye canna see him.]
+
+"Do you mean to say that Doctor Saunderson is lying ill and no one
+nursing him?" and Kate eyed the housekeeper in a very unappreciative
+fashion.
+
+"Gin he wants a nurse she 'll hae tae be brocht frae Muirtown
+Infirmary, for a 've eneuch withoot ony fyke (delicate work) o' that
+kind.  For twal year hev a' been hoosekeeper in this manse, an' gin it
+hedna been for peety a' wad hae flung up the place.
+
+"Ye never cud tell when he wud come in, or when he wud gae oot, or what
+he wud be wantin' next.  A' the waufies in the countryside come here,
+and the best in the hoose is no gude eneuch for them.  He's been an
+awfu' handfu' tae me, an' noo a'coont him clean dottle.  But we maun
+juist bear oor burdens," concluded Barbara piously, and proposed to
+close the door.
+
+"Your master will not want a nurse a minute longer; show me his room at
+once," and Kate was so commanding that Barbara's courage began to fail.
+
+"Who may ye be," raising her voice to rally her heart, "'at wud take
+chairge o' a strainger in his ain hoose an' no sae muckle as ask leave?"
+
+"I am Miss Carnegie, of Tochty Lodge; will you stand out of my way?"
+and Kate swept past Barbara and went upstairs.
+
+"Weel, a' declare," as soon as she had recovered, "of a' the impudent
+hizzies," but Barbara did not follow the intruder upstairs.
+
+Kate had seen various curious hospitals in her day, and had nursed many
+sick men,--like the brave girl she was,--but the Rabbi's room was
+something quite new.  His favourite books had been gathering there for
+years, and now lined two walls and overhung the bed after a very
+perilous fashion, and had dispossessed the looking-glass,--which had
+become a nomad and was at present resting insecurely on John Owen,--and
+stood in banks round the bed.  During his few days of illness the Rabbi
+had accumulated so many volumes round him that he lay in a kind of
+tunnel, arched over, as it were, with literature.  He had been reading
+Calvin's _Commentary on the Psalms_, in Latin, and it still lay open at
+the 88th, the saddest of all songs in the Psalter; but as he grew
+weaker the heavy folio had slid forward, and he seemed to be feeling
+for it.  Although Kate spoke to him by name, he did not know any one
+was in the room.  "Lord, why castest Thou off my soul? . . .  I suffer
+Thy terror, I am distracted . . . fierce wrath goeth over me . . .
+lover and friend hast Thou put far from me . . . friend far from me."
+
+His head fell on his breast, his breath was short and rapid, and he
+coughed every few seconds.
+
+"My friend far from me . . ."
+
+At the sorrow in his voice, and the thing which he said, the tears came
+to Kate's eyes, and she went forward and spoke to him very gently.  "Do
+you know me, Dr. Saunderson, Miss Carnegie?"
+
+"Not Saunderson . . . Magor Missabib."
+
+"Rabbi, Rabbi"--so much she knew; and now Kate stroked the bent white
+head.  "Your friend, Mister Carmichael . . ."
+
+"Yes, yes"--he now looked up, and spoke eagerly--"John Carmichael, of
+Drumtochty . . . my friend in my old age . . . and others . . . my
+boys . . . but John has left me . . . he would not speak to me . . .  I
+am alone now . . . he did not understand . . . mine acquaintance into
+darkness . . . here we see in a glass darkly . . ." (he turned aside to
+expound the Greek word for darkly), "but some day . . . face to face."
+And twice he said it, with an indescribable sweetness, "face to face."
+
+Kate hurriedly removed the books from the bed, and wrapt round his
+shoulders the old grey plaid that had eked out his covering at night,
+and then she went downstairs.
+
+"Bring," she said to Barbara, "hot water, soap, towels, and a sponge to
+Doctor Saunderson's bedroom, immediately."
+
+"And gin a' dinna?" inquired Barbara aggressively.
+
+"I 'll shoot you where you stand."
+
+Barbara shows to her cronies how Miss Carnegie drew a pistol from her
+pocket at this point and held it to her head, and how at every turn the
+pistol was again in evidence; sometimes a dagger is thrown in, but that
+is only late in the evening when Barbara is under the influence of
+tonics.  Kate herself admits that if she had had her little revolver
+with her she might have been tempted to outline the housekeeper's face
+on the wall, and she still thinks her threat an inspiration.
+
+"Now," said Kate, when Barbara had brought her commands in with
+incredible celerity, "bring up some fresh milk and three glasses of
+whisky."
+
+"Whisky!"  Barbara could hardly compass the unfamiliar word.  "The
+Doctor never hed sic a thing in the hoose, although mony a time, puir
+man . . ."  Discipline was softening even that austere spirit.
+
+"No, but you have, for you are blowing a full gale just now; bring up
+your private bottle, or I 'll go down for it."
+
+"There's enough," holding the bottle to the light, "to do till evening;
+go to the next farm and send a man on horseback to tell Mr. Carmichael
+of Drumtochty, that Doctor Saunderson is dying, and another for Dr.
+Manley of Muirtown."
+
+Very tenderly did Kate sponge the Rabbi's face and hands, and then she
+dressed his hair, till at length he came to himself.
+
+"This ministry is . . . grateful to me, Barbara . . . my strength has
+gone from me . . . but my eyes fail me. . . .  Of a verity you are
+not . . ."
+
+"I am Kate Carnegie, whom you were so kind to at Tochty.  Will you let
+me be your nurse?  I learned in India, and know what to do."  It was
+only wounded soldiers who knew how--soft her voice could be, and hands.
+
+"It is I that . . . should be serving you . . . the first time you have
+come to the manse . . . no woman has ever done me . . . such kindness
+before. . . ."  He followed her as she tried to bring some order out of
+chads, and knew not that he spoke aloud.  "A gracious maid . . . above
+rubies."
+
+His breathing was growing worse, in spite of many wise things she did
+for him--Doctor Manley, who paid no compliments, but was a strength
+unto every country doctor in Perthshire, praises Kate unto this
+day--and the Rabbi did not care to speak.  So she sat down by his side
+and read to him from the _Pilgrim's Progress_--holding his hand all the
+time--and the passage he desired was the story of Mr. Fearing.
+
+"This I took very great notice of, that the valley of the shadow of
+Death was as quiet while he went through it as ever I knew it before or
+since.  I suppose these enemies here had now a special check from our
+Lord and a command not to meddle until Mr. Fearing was passed over
+it. . . .  Here also I took notice of what was very remarkable: the
+water of that river was lower at this time than ever I saw it in all my
+life.  So he went over at last, not much above wet-shod.  When he was
+going up to the gate. . . ."
+
+The Rabbi listened for an instant.
+
+"It is John's step . . . he hath a sound of his own . . . my only
+earthly desire is fulfilled."
+
+"Rabbi," cried Carmichael, and half kneeling, he threw one arm round
+the old man, "say that you forgive me.  I looked for you everywhere on
+Monday, but you could not be found."
+
+"Did you think, John, that I . . . my will was to do you an injury
+or . . . vex your soul?  Many trials in my life . . . all God's
+will . . . but this hardest . . . when I lost you . . . nothing left
+here . . . but you . . .--my breath is bad, a little chill--. . .
+understand. . . ."
+
+"I always did, and I never respected you more; it was my foolish pride
+that made me call you Doctor Saunderson in the study; but my love was
+the same, and now you will let me stay and wait on you."
+
+The old man smiled sadly, and laid his hand on his boy's head.
+
+"I cannot let you. . . .  Go, John, my son."
+
+"Go and leave you, Rabbi!"  Carmichael tried to laugh.  "Not till you
+are ready to appear at the Presbytery again.  We 'll send Barbara away
+for a holiday, and Sarah will take her place,--you remember that
+cream,--and we shall have a royal time, a meal every four hours, Rabbi,
+and the Fathers in between," and Carmichael, springing to his feet and
+turning round to hide his tears, came face to face with Miss Carnegie,
+who had been unable to escape from the room.
+
+"I happened to call"--Kate was quite calm--"and found Doctor Saunderson
+in bed; so I stayed till some friend should come; you must have met the
+messenger I sent for you."
+
+"Yes, a mile from the manse; I was on my way . . .  Janet said . . .
+but I . . . did not remember anything when I saw the Rabbi."
+
+"Will you take a little milk again . . . Rabbi?" and at her bidding and
+the name he made a brave effort to swallow, but he was plainly sinking.
+
+"No more," he whispered; "thank you . . . for service . . . to a lonely
+man; may God bless you . . . both. . . ."  He signed for her hand,
+which he kept to the end.
+
+"Satisfied . . . read, John . . . the woman from coasts of--of--"
+
+"I know, Rabbi," and kneeling on the other side of the bed, he read the
+story slowly of a Tyrian woman's faith.
+
+"It is not meet to take the children's meat and cast it to dogs."
+
+"Dogs"--they heard the Rabbi appropriate his name--"outside . . . the
+covenant."
+
+"And she said, Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall
+from their master's table."
+
+"Lord, I believe . . . help Thou mine . . . unbelief."
+
+He then fell into an agony of soul, during which Carmichael could hear:
+"Though . . . He slay . . . me . . . yet will I trust . . . trust . . .
+in Him."  He drew two or three long breaths and was still.  After a
+little he was heard again with a new note--"He that believeth . . . in
+Him . . . shall not be confounded," and again "A bruised reed . . .
+shall He not . . ."  Then he opened his eyes and raised his head--but
+he saw neither Kate nor Carmichael, for the Rabbi had done with earthly
+friends and earthly trials--and he, who had walked in darkness and seen
+no light, said in a clear voice full of joy, "My Lord, and my God."
+
+It was Kate that closed his eyes and laid the old scholar's head on the
+pillow, and then she left the room, casting one swift glance of pity at
+Carmichael, who was weeping bitterly and crying between the sobs,
+"Rabbi, Rabbi."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH.
+
+Doctor Davidson allowed himself, in later years, the pleasant luxury of
+an after luncheon nap, and then it was his habit--weather
+permitting--to go out and meet Posty, who adhered so closely to his
+time-table--notwithstanding certain wayside rests--that the Doctor's
+dog knew his hour of arrival, and saw that his master was on the road
+in time.  It was a fine April morning when the news of the great
+disaster came, and the Doctor felt the stirring of spring in his blood.
+On the first hint from Skye he sprang from his chair, declaring it was
+a sin to be in the house on such a day, and went out in such haste that
+he had to return for his hat.  As he went up the walk, the Doctor
+plucked some early lilies and placed them in his coat; he threw so many
+stones that Skye forgot his habit of body and ecclesiastical position;
+and he was altogether so youthful and frolicsome that John was
+seriously alarmed, and afterwards remarked to Rebecca that he was not
+unprepared for calamity.
+
+"The best o's tempts Providence at a time, and when a man like the
+Doctor tries tae rin aifter his dog jidgment canna be far off.  A 'm no
+sayin'," John concluded, with characteristic modesty, "that onybody cud
+tell what was coming, but a' jaloused there wud be tribble."
+
+The Doctor met Posty in the avenue, the finest bit on our main road,
+where the road has wide margins of grass on either side, and the two
+rows of tall ancient trees arch their branches overhead.  Some day in
+the past it had been part of the approach to the house of Tochty, and
+under this long green arch the Jacobite cavaliers rode away after black
+John Carnegie's burial.  No one could stand beneath those stately trees
+without thinking of the former days, when men fought not for money and
+an easy life, but for loyalty and love, and in this place the minister
+of Drumtochty received his evil tidings like a brave gentleman who does
+not lose heart while honour is left.  During his years in the Glen he
+had carried himself well, with dignity and charity, in peace and
+kindliness, so that now when he is dead and gone--the last of his
+family--he still remains to many of us a type of the country clergyman
+that is no longer found in Scotland, but is greatly missed.  It seemed,
+however, to many of us--I have heard both Drumsheugh and Burnbrae say
+this, each in his own way--that it needed adversity to bring out the
+greatness of the Doctor, just as frost gives the last touch of ripeness
+to certain fruits.
+
+"Fower letters the day, Doctor, ane frae Dunleith, ane frae Glasgie,
+another frae Edinburgh, and the fourth no clean stampit, so a' can say
+naethin' aboot it.  Twa circulars an' the _Caledonian_ maks up the hale
+hypothic."
+
+Posty buckled and adjusted his bag, and made as though he was going,
+but he loitered to give opportunity fur any questions the Doctor might
+wish to ask on foreign affairs.  For Posty was not merely the carrier
+of letters to the Glen, but a scout who was sent down to collect
+information regarding the affairs of the outer world.  He was an
+introduction to and running commentary on the weekly paper.  By-and-by,
+when the labour of the day was done, and the Glen was full of sweet,
+soft light from the sides of Ben Urtach, a farmer would make for his
+favourite seat beside the white rose-tree in the garden, and take his
+first dip into the _Muirtown Advertiser_.  It was a full and satisfying
+paper, with its agricultural advertisements, its roups, reported with
+an accuracy of detail that condescended on a solitary stirk, its local
+intelligence, its facetious anecdotes.  Through this familiar country
+the good man found his own way at a rate which allowed him to complete
+the survey in six days.  Foreign telegrams, however, and political
+intelligence, as well as the turmoil of the great cities, were strange
+to him, and here he greatly valued Posty's laconic hints, who, visiting
+the frontier, was supposed to be in communication with those centres.
+"Posty says that the Afghans are no makin' muckle o' the war," and
+Hillocks would sally forth to enjoy Sir Frederick Roberts' great march,
+line by line, afterwards enlarging thereon with much unction, and
+laying up a store of allusion that would last for many days.
+
+Persons raised to the height of a daily newspaper like the minister
+might be supposed independent of Posty's precis, but even Doctor
+Davidson, with that day's _Caledonian_ in his hand, still availed
+himself of the spoken word.
+
+"Well, Posty, any news this morning?"
+
+"Naethin', Doctor, worth mentionin', except the failure o' a company
+Glasgie wy; it's been rotten, a' wes hearin', for a while, an' noo it's
+fair stramash.  They say it 'll no be lichtsome for weedows an' mony
+decent fouk in Scotland."
+
+"That's bad news, Posty.  There 's too many of those swindling concerns
+in the country.  People ought to take care where they place their
+savings, and keep to old-established institutions.  We 're pretty
+hard-headed up here, and I 'll wager that nobody in the Glen has lost a
+penny in any of those new-fangled companies."
+
+"The auld fouk in Drumtochty pit their siller in a pock and hode it
+ablow their beds, an', ma certes, that bank didna break;" and Posty
+went along the avenue, his very back suggestive of a past, cautious,
+unenterprising, safe and honest.
+
+The Doctor glanced at the envelopes and thrust the letters into his
+pocket.  His good nature was touched at the thought of another
+financial disaster, by which many hard-working people would lose their
+little savings, and all the more that he had some of his private means
+invested in a Glasgow bank--one of those tried and powerful
+institutions which was indifferent to every crisis in trade.  Already
+he anticipated an appeal, and considered what he would give, for it did
+not matter whether it was a coalpit explosion in Lanarkshire or a loss
+of fishing-boats in the Moray Firth, if widows needed help the Doctor's
+guinea was on its way within four-and-twenty hours.  Some forms of
+religious philanthropy had very little hold on the Doctor's
+sympathy--one of the religious prints mentioned him freely as a
+Unitarian, because he had spoken unkindly of the Jewish mission--but in
+the matter of widows and orphans he was a specialist.
+
+"Widows, Posty said; poor things! and very likely bairns.  Well, well,
+we 'll see what can be done out of Daisy's fund."
+
+Very unlikely people have their whims, and it was his humour to assign
+one fourth of his income to his little sister, who was to have kept
+house for him, and "never to leave you, Sandie," and out of this fund
+the Doctor did his public charities.  "In memory of a little maid,"
+appeared in various subscription lists; but the reference thereof was
+only known after the Doctor's death.
+
+"The Western Counties Bank did not open its doors yesterday, and it was
+officially announced at the head-office, Glasgow, that the bank had
+stopped.  It is impossible as yet to forecast the debts, but they are
+known to be enormous, and as the bank is not limited, it is feared that
+the consequences to the shareholders will be very serious.  This
+failure was quite unexpected, the Western Counties Bank having been
+looked on as a prosperous and stable concern."
+
+He read the paragraph twice word by word--it did not take long--he
+folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket, and he stood in
+the spot for five minutes to take in the meaning in its length and
+breadth.  A pleasant spring sun was shining upon him through a break in
+the leafy arch, a handful of primroses were blooming at his feet, a
+lark was singing in the neighbouring field.  Sometimes the Doctor used
+to speculate how he would have liked being a poor man, and he concluded
+that he would have disliked it very much.  He had never been rich, and
+he was not given to extravagance, but he was accustomed to easy
+circumstances, and he pitied some of his old friends who had seen it
+their duty to secede at the Disruption, and had to practise many little
+economies, who travelled third class and had to walk from the station,
+and could not offer their friends a glass of wine.  This was the way he
+must live now, and Daisy's fund would have to be closed, which seemed
+to him the sweetest pleasure of his life.
+
+"And Jack!  Would to God I had never mentioned this wretched bank to
+him.  Poor Jack, with the few hundreds he had saved for Kit!"
+
+For some five minutes more the Doctor stood in the place; then he
+straightened himself as one who, come what may, would play the man, and
+when he passed Janet's cottage, on his way to the Lodge, that honest
+admirer of able-bodied, good-looking men came out and followed him with
+her eyes for the sight of his firm unbroken carriage.
+
+"Miss Kate will be grieving very much about Doctor Saunderson's death,"
+Donald explained at the Lodge, "and she went down this forenoon with
+the General to put flowers on his grave; but they will be coming back
+every minute," and the Doctor met them at the Beeches.
+
+[Illustration: "To put flowers on his grave."]
+
+"May I have as fair hands to decorate my grave, Miss Catherine
+Carnegie," and the Doctor bowed gallantly; "but of one thing I am sure,
+I have done nothing to deserve it.  Saunderson was a scholar of the
+ancient kind, and a very fine spirit."
+
+"Don't you think," said Kate, "that he was . . . like A Kempis, I mean,
+and George Herbert, a kind of . . . saint?"
+
+"Altogether one, I should say.  I don't think he would have known port
+wine from sherry, or an _entree_ from a mutton chop; beside a man like
+that what worldly fellows you and I are, Jack, and mine is the greater
+shame."
+
+"I'll have no comparisons, Padre"--Kate was a little puzzled by the
+tone in the Doctor's voice; "he was so good that I loved him; but there
+are some points in the General and you, quite nice points, and for the
+sake of them you shall have afternoon tea in my room," where the Doctor
+and the General fell on former days and were wonderful company.
+
+"It's not really about the road I wish to talk to you," and the Doctor
+closed the door of the General's den, "but about . . . a terrible
+calamity that has befallen you and me, Jack, and I am to blame."
+
+"What is it?" and Carnegie sat erect; "does it touch our name or . . .
+Kate?"
+
+"Neither, thank God," said Davidson.
+
+"Then it cannot be so very bad.  Let us have it at once," and the
+General lighted a cheroot.
+
+"Our bank has failed, and we shall have to give up everything to pay
+the debt, and . . . Jack, it was I advised you to buy the shares."  The
+Doctor rose and went to the window.
+
+"For God's sake don't do that, Sandie.  Why, man, you gave me the best
+advice you knew, and there 's an end of it.  It's the fortune of war,
+and we must take it without whining.  I know whom you are thinking
+about, and I am . . . a bit sorry for Kate, for she ought to have lots
+of things--more dresses and trinkets, you know.  But Davidson, she 'll
+be the bravest of the three."
+
+"You are right there, Jack.  Kate is of the true grit, but . . . Tochty
+Lodge."
+
+"Yes, it will hit us pretty hard to see the old place sold, if it comes
+to that, when I hoped to end my days here . . . but, man, it's our
+fate.  Bit by bit we 've lost Drumtochty, till there were just the
+woods and the two farms left, and soon we 'll be out of the
+place--nothing left but our graves.
+
+"Sandie, this is bad form, and . . . you 'll not hear this talk again;
+we 'll get a billet somewhere, and wherever it be, there 'll be a bed
+and a crust for you, old man;" and at the door the two held one
+another's hands for a second; that was all.
+
+"So this was what you two conspirators were talking about downstairs,
+as if I could not be trusted.  Did you think that I would faint, or
+perhaps weep?  The padre deserves a good scolding, and as for you--"
+Then Kate went over and cast an arm round her father's neck, whose face
+was quivering.
+
+"It is rather a disappointment to leave the Lodge when we were getting
+it to our mind; but we 'll have a jolly little home somewhere, and I
+'ll get a chance of earning something.  Dancing now--I think that I
+might be able to teach some girls how to waltz.  Then my French is
+really intelligible, and most colloquial; besides revolver shooting.
+Dad, we are on our way to a fortune, and at the worst you 'll have your
+curry and cheroots, and I 'll have a well-fitting dress.  Voila, mon
+pere."
+
+When the two Drumtochty men arrived next forenoon at the hall in
+Glasgow, where the shareholders had been summoned to receive
+particulars of their ruin, the dreary place was filled with a crowd
+representative of every class in the community except the highest,
+whose wealth is in land, and the lowest, whose possessions are on their
+backs.  There were city merchants, who could not conceal their chagrin
+that they had been befooled; countrymen, who seemed utterly dazed, as
+if the course of the seasons had been reversed; prosperous tradesmen,
+who were aggressive in appearance and wanted to take it out of
+somebody; widows, who could hardly restrain their tears, seeing before
+them nothing but starvation; clergymen, who were thinking of their boys
+taken from school and college.  For a while the victims were silent,
+and watched with hungry eyes the platform door, and there was an eager
+rustle when some clerk came out and laid a bundle of papers on the
+table.  This incident seemed to excite the meeting and set tongues
+loose.  People began to talk to their neighbours explaining how they
+came to be connected with the bank, as if this were now a crime.  One
+had inherited the shares and had never had resolution to sell them;
+another had been deceived by a friend and bought them; a third had
+taken over two shares for a bad debt.  A minister thought that he must
+have been summoned by mistake, for he was simply a trustee on an estate
+which had shares, but he was plainly nervous about his position.  An
+Ayrshire Bailie had only had his shares for six months, and he put it,
+to his circle, with municipal eloquence, whether he could be held
+responsible for frauds of years' standing.  No one argued with him, and
+indeed you might say anything you pleased, for each was so much taken
+up with his own case that he only listened to you that he might
+establish a claim in turn on your attention.  Here and there a noisy
+and confident personage got a larger audience by professing to have
+private information.  A second-rate stockbroker assured quite a
+congregation that the assets of the bank included an estate in
+Australia, which would more than pay the whole debt, and advised them
+to see that it was not flung away; and a Government pensioner mentioned
+casually in his neighbourhood, on the authority of one of the managers,
+that there was not that day a solvent bank in Scotland.  The different
+conversations rise to a babel, various speakers enforce their views on
+the floor with umbrellas, one enthusiast exhorts his brother
+unfortunates from a chair, when suddenly there is a hush, and then in a
+painful silence the shareholders hang on the lips of the accountant,
+from whom they learn that things could not be worse, that the richest
+shareholder may be ruined, and that ordinary people will lose their
+last penny.
+
+Speech again breaks forth, but now it is despairing, fierce,
+vindictive.  One speaker storms against Government which allows public
+institutions to defraud the public, and refers to himself as the widow
+and orphan, and another assails the directorate with bitter invective
+as liars and thieves, and insists on knowing whether they are to be
+punished.  The game having now been unearthed, the pack follow in full
+cry.  The tradesman tells with much gusto how one director asked the
+detectives for leave to have family prayers before he was removed, and
+then declares his conviction that when a man takes to praying you had
+better look after your watch.  Ayrshire wished to inform the accountant
+and the authorities that the directors had conveyed to their wives and
+friends enormous sums which ought to be seized without delay.  The air
+grew thick with upbraidings, complaints, cries for vengeance, till the
+place reeked with sordid passions.  Through all this ignoble storm the
+Drumtochty men sat silent, amazed, disgusted, till at last the Doctor
+rose, and such authority was in his very appearance that with his first
+words he obtained a hearing.
+
+"Mr. Accountant," he said, "and gentlemen, it appears to me as if under
+a natural provocation and suffering we are in danger of forgetting our
+due dignity and self-respect.  We have been, as is supposed, the
+subjects of fraud on the part of those whom we trusted; that is a
+matter which the law will decide, and, if necessary, punish.  If we
+have been betrayed, then the directors are in worse case than the
+shareholders, for we are not disgraced.  The duty before us is plain,
+and must be discharged to our utmost ability.  It is to go home and
+gather together our last penny for the payment of our debts, in order
+that at any rate those who have trusted us may not be disappointed.
+Gentlemen, it is evident that we have lost our means; let us show to
+Scotland that there is something which cannot be taken from us by any
+fraud, and that we have retained our courage and our honour."
+
+It was the General who led the applause so that the roof of the hall
+rang, but it is just to Ayrshire and the rest to say that they came to
+themselves--all men of the old Scottish breed--and followed close after
+with a mighty shout.
+
+The sound of that speech went through Scotland and awoke the spirit of
+honest men in many places, so that the Doctor, travelling next day to
+Muirtown, third class, with the General, and wedged in among a set of
+cattle dealers, was so abashed by their remarks as they read the
+_Caledonian_ that the General let out the secret.
+
+"Yir hand, sir," said the chief among them, a mighty man at the Falkirk
+Tryst; "gin it bena a leeberty, ilka ane o's hes a sair fecht tae keep
+straicht in oor wy o' business, but ye 've gien 's a lift the day," and
+so they must needs all have a grip of the Doctor's hand, who took snuff
+with prodigality, while the General complained of the smoke from the
+engine.
+
+Nor were their trials over, for on Muirtown platform--it being
+Friday--all kinds of Perthshire men were gathered, and were so proud of
+our Doctor that before he got shelter in the Dunleith train his hand
+was sore, and the men that grasped it were of all kinds, from Lord
+Kilspindie--who, having missed him at the Manse, had come to catch him
+at the station--"Best sermon you ever preached, Davidson,"--to an
+Athole farmer--"I am an elder in the Free Kirk, but it iss this man
+that will be honouring you."
+
+It was a fine instance of the unfailing tact of Peter Bruce that,
+seeing the carriage out of which the two came, and taking in the
+situation, he made no offer of the first class, but straightway dusted
+out a third with his handkerchief, and escorted them to it cap in hand.
+Drumtochty restrained itself with an effort in foreign parts--for
+Kildrummie was exceptionally strong at the Junction--but it waited at
+the terminus till the outer world had gone up the road.  Then their own
+folk took the two in hand, and these were the guard of honour who
+escorted the Minister and the General to where our Kate was waiting
+with the dog-cart, each carrying some morsel of luggage--Drumsheugh,
+Burnbrae, Hillocks, Netherton, Jamie Soutar, and Archie Moncur.  Kate
+drove gloriously through Kildrummie as if they had come from a triumph,
+and let it be said to the credit of that despised town, that, the news
+having come, every hat was lifted, but that which lasted till they got
+home, and till long afterwards, was the handshake of the Drumtochty men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL.
+
+When the General and Kate were loitering over breakfast the morning
+after the ovation, they heard the sound of a horse's feet on the
+gravel, and Donald came in with more his usual importance.
+
+"It iss a messenger from Muirtown Castle, and he iss waiting to know
+whether there will be any answer."  And Donald put one letter before
+the father and another before the daughter, both showing the Hay crest.
+Kate's face whitened as she recognised the handwriting on her envelope,
+and she went over to the window seat of a turret in the corner of the
+room, while the General opened his letter, standing on a tiger-skin,
+with his back to the fireplace in the great hall.  This is what he read:
+
+
+MY DEAR CARNEGIE,--When men have fought together in the trenches before
+Sebastopol, as their ancestors have ridden side by side with Prince
+Charlie, I hope you will agree with me they need not stand on ceremony.
+If I seem guilty of any indiscretion in what I am going to say, then
+you will pardon me for "Auld Lang Syne."
+
+You have one daughter and I have one son, and so I do not need to tell
+you that he is very dear to me, and that I have often thought of his
+marriage, on which not only his own happiness so much depends, but also
+the future of our house and name.  Very likely you have had some such
+thoughts about Kate, with this difference, that you would rather keep
+so winsome a girl with you, while I want even so good a son as Hay to
+be married whenever he can meet with one whom he loves, and who is
+worthy of him.
+
+Hay never gave me an hour's anxiety, and has no entanglements of any
+kind, but on the subject of marriage I could make no impression.  "Time
+enough," he would say, or "The other person has not turned up," and I
+was getting uneasy, for you and I are not so young as once we were.
+You may fancy my satisfaction, therefore, when George came down from
+Drumtochty last August and told me he had found the "other person," and
+that she was my old friend Jack Carnegie's daughter.  Of course I urged
+him to make sure of himself, but now he has had ample opportunities
+during your two visits, and he is quite determined that his wife is to
+be Kate or nobody.
+
+It goes without saying that the Countess and I heartily approve Hay's
+choice and are charmed with Kate, who is as bonnie as she is
+high-spirited.  She sustains the old traditions of her family, who were
+ever strong and true, and she has a clever tongue, which neither you
+nor I have, Jack, nor Hay either, good fellow though he be, and that is
+not a bad thing for a woman nowadays.  They would make a handsome pair,
+as they ought, with such good-looking fathers, eh?
+
+Well, I am coming to my point, for in those circumstances I want your
+help.  What Miss Carnegie thinks of Hay we don't know, and unless I 'm
+much mistaken she will decide for herself, but is it too much to ask
+you--if you can--to say a word for him?  You are quite right to think
+that no man is worthy of Kate, but she is bound to marry some day--I
+can't conceive how you have kept her so long--and I am certain Hay will
+make a good husband, and he is simply devoted to her.  If she refuses
+him, I am afraid he will not marry, and then--well, grant I'm selfish,
+but it would be a calamity to us.
+
+Don't you think that it looks like an arrangement of Providence to
+unite two families that have shared common dangers and common faith in
+the past, and to establish a Carnegie once more as lady of Drumtochty?
+Now that is all, and it's a long screed, but the matter lies near my
+heart, and we shall wait the answers from you both with anxiety.
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+KILSPINDIE.
+
+
+Kate's letter was much shorter, and was written in big schoolboy hand
+with great care.
+
+
+DEAR MISS CARNEGIE,--They say that a woman always knows when a man
+loves her, and if so you will not be astonished at this letter.  From
+that day I saw you in Drumtochty Kirk I have loved you, and every week
+I love you more.  My mother is the only other woman I have ever cared
+for, and that is different.  Will you be my wife?  I often wanted to
+ask you when you were with us in November and last month, but my heart
+failed me.  Can you love me a little, enough to say yes?  I am not
+clever, and I am afraid I shall never do anything to make you proud of
+me, but you will have all my heart, and I 'll do my best to make you
+happy.
+
+I am, yours very sincerely,
+
+HAY.
+
+
+Carnegie could see Kate's face from his place, who was looking out of
+the window with a kindly expression, and her father, who was of a
+simple mind, and knew little of women, was encouraged by such visible
+friendliness.  He was about to go over, when her face changed.  She
+dropped the letter on the seat, and became very thoughtful, knitting
+her brows and resting her chin on her hand.  In a little, something
+stung her--like a person recalling an injury--and she flushed with
+anger, drumming with her fingers on the sill of the window.  Then anger
+gave place to sadness, as if she had resolved to do something that was
+inevitable, but less than the best.  Kate glanced in her father's
+direction, and read Lord Hay's letter again; then she seemed to have
+made up her mind.
+
+"Father," as she joined him on the skin beneath those loyal Carnegies
+on the wall, "there is Lord Hay's letter, and he is a . . . worthy
+gentleman.  Perhaps I did not give him so much encouragement as he
+took, but that does not matter.  This is a . . . serious decision, and
+ought not to be made on the spur of the moment.  Will you let the
+messenger go with a note to say that an answer will be sent on Monday?
+You might write to Lord Kilspindie."
+
+She was still standing in the place when he returned, and had been
+studying the proud, determined face of Black John's mother, who had not
+spared her only son for the good cause.
+
+"Did you ever hear of any Carnegie, dad, who married beneath her,
+or . . . loved one on the other side?"
+
+"Never," said her father.  "Our women all married into loyal families
+of their own rank, which is best for comfort; but why do you ask?  Hay
+is a . . ."
+
+"Yes, I know; it was only . . . curiosity made me ask, and I suppose
+some of our women must have made sacrifices for their . . . cause?"
+
+"Far more than the men ever did, for, see you, a man is just shot, and
+all is over, and before he falls he 's had some good fighting, but his
+wife suffers all her days, when he is living and when he is dead.  Yet
+our women were the first to send their men to the field.  Heavens! what
+women do suffer--they ought to have their reward."
+
+"They have," said Kate, with emphasis, "if they help those whom they
+love. . . .  Father, would you be quite satisfied with Lord Hay for a
+son-in-law, and . . . would you let us live with you here as much as we
+could?"
+
+"Kate, if you are to marry--and I knew it must come some day--I have
+not seen a more honest man; but you are forgetting that Tochty Lodge
+will soon be out of our hands; I 'll have to get a bungalow somewhere,
+not too far away from Muirtown, I hope."
+
+"If I marry Lord Hay, Tochty Lodge will not be sold, and you will never
+be disturbed, dad.  We shall not be separated more than we can help,"
+and Kate caressed the General.
+
+"Do you mean, lassie," said the General, with a sudden suspicion,
+lilting her face till he saw her eyes, "that you are going to accept
+Hay in order to keep the old home?  You must not do this, for it would
+not . . . don't you see that I . . . could not accept this at your
+hands?"
+
+"You cannot prevent your daughter marrying Lord Hay if your daughter so
+decides, but as yet she is in doubt, very great doubt, and so I am
+going for a long walk on the big moor, and you . . . well, why not take
+lunch with the Padre at the manse?"
+
+"Hay is a straight young fellow, and Kate would supply what he wants--a
+dash of go, you know"--so the General was summing up the situation to
+his old friend; "but my girl is not to marry Hay or any other man for
+my sake, and that is what she thinks of doing."
+
+"Did it ever occur to you, Carnegie, that Kate had a . . . well, kindly
+feeling for any other man?"
+
+"Plenty of fellows tried their luck: first subalterns, then
+aides-de-camp, and at last commissioners; it was no easy affair to be
+her father," and Carnegie gave Davidson a comic look.  "I used to scold
+her, but upon my word I don't know she was to blame, and I am certain
+she did not care for one of them; in fact, she laughed at them all
+till--well, in fact, I had to interfere."
+
+"And since you came to the Lodge"--the Doctor spoke with
+meaning--"besides Lord Hay?"
+
+"Why, there is just yourself"--the Doctor nodded with much
+appreciation--"and that Free Kirkman. . . .  Davidson, do you mean
+that--oh, nonsense, man; she was quite angry one day when I suggested a
+parson.  Kate has always said that was the last man she would marry."
+
+"That is an evidence she will."
+
+The General stared at the oracle, and went on:
+
+"She has made his life miserable at the Lodge with her tongue; she
+delighted in teasing him.  Your idea is quite absurd."
+
+"Carnegie, did you ever hear the classical couplet--
+
+  "Scarting and biting
+  Mak Scots fouk's 'ooing;"
+
+and although I admit the description applies in the first instance to
+milkmaids, yet there is a fair share of national character in the
+Carnegies."
+
+"Do you really think that Kate is in . . . has, well, a, eh, tenderness
+to Carmichael? it would never have occurred to me."
+
+"How would you look on Carmichael as a suitor?"
+
+"Well, if Kate is to marry--and mind you I always prepared myself for
+that--I would of course prefer Hay, not because he is a lord, or rich,
+or any snobbery of that kind--you know me better than that, Sandie--but
+because he 's . . . you know . . . belongs to our own set.
+
+"Don't you think there is something in that?" and the General tried to
+explain his honest mind, in which lived no unworthy or uncharitable
+thought.  "I have not one word to say against Carmichael; he 's
+good-looking, and monstrous clever, and he has always made himself very
+agreeable, very, and the people swear by him in the Glen; but . . . you
+must understand what I mean, Davidson," and the General was in despair.
+
+"You mean that though he 's a first-rate young fellow for a clergyman,
+he does not belong to your world--has a different set of friends, has
+different habits of living, has a different way of thinking and
+speaking--is, in fact, an outsider."
+
+"That's it--just what I was 'ettling' after--lucky fellows we Scots
+with such words," and the General was immensely delighted to be
+delivered of his idea in an inoffensive form.
+
+"It is my own belief, Carnegie--and you can laugh at me afterwards if I
+be wrong--that this will be the end of it, however.  Yes, putting it
+plainly, that Kate is in love with Carmichael, as he is certainly with
+her; and you will have to make the best of the situation."
+
+"You don't like the idea any more than I do, Davidson?"
+
+"Speaking in perfect confidence and frankness, I do not.  I look at the
+matter this way"--the Doctor stood on the hearth-rug in a judicial
+attitude, pulling down his waistcoat with his two hands, his legs
+apart, and his eye-glass on his nose--"Carmichael has been brought up
+among . . . plain, respectable people, and theological books, and
+church courts, and Free Kirk society, all of which is excellent,
+but . . . secluded"--the Doctor liked the word, which gave his mind
+without offence--"secluded.  Kate is a Carnegie, was educated in
+France, has travelled in India, and has lived in the most exciting
+circumstances.  She loves soldiers, war, gaiety, sport, besides many
+other . . . eh, good things, and is a . . . lovely girl.  Love laughs
+at rules, but if you ask me my candid opinion, the marriage would not
+be . . . in fact, congruous.  If it is to be, it must be, and God bless
+them both, say I, and so will everybody say; but it will be an
+experiment, a distinct and . . . interesting experiment."
+
+"Kate is not to marry any one for my sake, to save Tochty, but I do
+wish she had fancied Lord Hay," said the General, ruefully.
+
+"The Free Kirk folk in the depths of their hearts consider me a worldly
+old clergyman, and perhaps I am, for, Jack, I would dearly like to see
+our Kate Viscountess Hay, and to think that one day, when we three old
+fellows are gone, she would be Countess of Kilspindie."  That was the
+first conference of the day on Kate's love affairs, and this is how it
+ended.
+
+Meanwhile the young woman herself had gone up the road to the high Glen
+and made her way over dykes and through fields to Whinny Knowe, which
+she had often visited since the August Sacrament.  Whinny came out from
+the kitchen door in corduroy trousers, much stained with soil, and grey
+shirt--wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after a hearty
+dinner--and went to the barn for his midday sleep before he went again
+to the sowing.  Marget met her at the garden gate, dressed in her
+week-day clothes and fresh from a morning's churning, but ever refined
+and spiritual, as one whose soul is shining through the veil of common
+circumstances.
+
+"It's a benison tae see ye on this bricht day, Miss Carnegie, an' ye
+'ll come tae the garden-seat, for the spring flooers are bloomin'
+bonnie and sweet the noo, an' fillin' 's a' wi' hope.
+
+"Gin there be ony sun shinin'," as she spread a plaid, "the heat fa's
+here, an' save when the snow is heavy on the Glen, there 's aye some
+blossoms here tae mind us o' oor Father's love an' the world that isna
+seen."
+
+"Marget," began Kate, not with a blush, but rather a richening of
+colour, "you have been awfully good to me, and have helped me in lots
+of ways, far more than you could dream of.  Do you know you 've made me
+almost good at times, with just enough badness to keep me still myself,
+as when I flounced out from the Free Kirk."
+
+[Illustration: "You have been awfully good to me."]
+
+Marget only smiled deprecation and affection, for her heart went out to
+this motherless, undisciplined girl, whom she respected, like a true
+Scot, because, although Kate had made her a friend, she was still a
+Carnegie; whom she loved, because, although Kate might be very
+provoking, she was honest to the core.
+
+"To-day," Kate resumed, after a pause, and speaking with an unusual
+nervousness, "I want your advice on a serious matter, which I must
+decide, and which . . . concerns other people as well as myself.  In
+fact, I would like to ask a question," and she paused to frame her case.
+
+It was a just testimony to Marget Howe that Kate never thought of
+pledging her to secrecy, for there are people whom to suspect of
+dishonour is a sin.
+
+"Suppose that a man . . . loved a woman, and that he was honourable,
+brave, gentle, true, in fact . . . a gentleman, and made her a proposal
+of marriage."
+
+Marget was looking before her with calm, attentive face, never once
+glancing at Kate to supplement what was told.
+
+"If . . . the girl accepted him, she would have a high position, and be
+rich, so that she could . . . save her . . . family from ruin, and
+keep . . . them in the house they loved."
+
+Marget listened with earnest intelligence.
+
+"She respects this man, and is grateful to him.  She is certain that he
+would be . . . kind to her, and give her everything she wanted.  And
+she thinks that he . . . would be happy."
+
+Marget waited for the end.
+
+"But she does not love him--that is all."
+
+As the tale was being told in, brief, clear, slow sentences, Marget's
+eyes became luminous, and her lips opened as one ready to speak from an
+inner knowledge.
+
+"Ye hev let me see a piece o' life, an' it is sacred, for naethin' on
+earth is sae near God as luve, an' a 'll no deny that ma woman's heart
+is wi' that honest gentleman, an' a' the mair gin he dinna win his
+prize.
+
+"But a man often comes tae his heicht through disappointment, and a
+woman, she hes tae learn that there is that which she hes the richt tae
+give for gratitude or friendship's sake, and that which can only be
+bestowed by the hand o' luve.
+
+"It will maybe help ye gin a' tell ye anither tale, an' though it be o'
+humble life, yet oor hearts are the same in the castle and the cottar's
+hoose, wi' the same cup o' sorrow tae drink an' the same croon o' joy
+tae wear, an' the same dividin' o' roads for oor trial.
+
+"There wes a man showed a wumman muckle kindness, and to her fouk also,
+an' he wes simple an' honest, an' for what he hed done an' because
+there wes nae evil in him she married him."
+
+"And what has happened?"  Kate, being half Highland, had less patience
+than Marget.
+
+"He hes been a gude man tae her through the dark an' through the licht,
+an' she hes tried tae repay him as a puir imperfect wumman can, an' her
+hert is warm to him, but there hes aye been ae thing wantin'--an' it
+hes been that wife's cross a' her life--there wes nae ither man, but
+her husband wesna, isna, canna be her ain a'thegither an' for ever--for
+the want o' luve--that luve o' luve that maks marriage."
+
+Her voice was laden with feeling, and it was plain that she had given
+of her own and deepest for the guiding of another.
+
+"Marget, I can never be grateful enough to you for what you have shown
+me this day."  As she passed Whinny with his bag of seed, he apologised
+for his wife.
+
+"A 'm dootin', Miss Carnegie, the gude-wife hes keepit ye ower lang in
+the gairden haiverin' awa' aboot the flooers an' her ither trokes.  But
+she 's michty prood for a' that aboot yir comin' up tae veesit us."
+
+Such was the second conference on Kate's affairs on that day.
+
+No place could be more thoroughly cleansed from vulgar curiosity than
+our Glen, or have a finer contempt for "clatters," but the atmosphere
+was electrical in the diffusion of information.  What happened at
+Burnbrae was known at the foot of Glen Urtach by evening, and the visit
+of spiritual consolation which Milton, in the days of his Pharisaism,
+paid to Jamie Soutar on his deathbed was the joy of every fireside in
+Drumtochty within twenty-four hours.  Perhaps it was not, therefore,
+remarkable that the arrival of Lord Kilspindie's groom at Tochty Lodge
+post haste with two letters on Saturday morning--one for the General
+from his Lordship, and one from his son for Miss Kate--should have been
+rightly interpreted, and the news spread with such rapidity that
+Hillocks--a man not distinguished above his fellows for tact--was able
+to inform Carmichael in the early afternoon that the marriage between
+the young lord and the "Miss" at Tochty was now practically arranged.
+
+"It's been aff and on a' winter, an' the second veesit tae the Castle
+settled it, but a 'm hearin' it wes the loss o' the Lodge brocht the
+fast offer this mornin'.  She 's an able wumman, an' cairried her gear
+tae the best market.  Ma certes," and Hillocks contemplated Kate's
+achievement with sympathetic admiration, "but she 'll set her place
+weel, an' haud her ain wi' the Duchess o' Athole."
+
+Carmichael ought perhaps to have taken his beating like a man, and said
+nothing to any one, but instead thereof he betook himself for
+consolation to Marget, a better counsellor in a crisis than Janet, with
+all her Celtic wiles, and Marget set him in the very seat where Kate
+had put her case.
+
+"It has, I suppose, been all a dream, and now I have awaked, but it
+was . . . a pleasant dream, and one finds the morning light a little
+chill.  One must just learn to forget, and be as if one had never . . .
+dreamed," but Carmichael looked at Marget wistfully.
+
+"Ye canna be the same again, for a' coont, gin ony man loves a wumman
+wi' a leal hert, whether she answer or no, or whether she even kens, he
+'s been the gainer, an' the harvest will be his for ever.
+
+"It hes seemed to me that nae luve is proved an' crooned for eternity
+onless the man hes forgotten himsel' an' is willin' tae live alane gin
+the wumman he luves sees prosperity.  He only is the perfect lover, and
+for him God hes the best gifts.
+
+"Yes, a 've seen it wi' ma ain eyes,"--for indeed this seemed to
+Carmichael an impossible height of self-abnegation,--"a man who loved
+an' served a wumman wi' his best an' at a great cost, an' yet for whom
+there cud be no reward but his ain luve."  Marget's face grew so
+beautiful as she told of the constancy of this unknown, unrewarded
+lover that Carmichael left without further speech, but with a purer
+vision of love than had ever before visited his soul.  Marget watched
+him go down the same path by which Kate went, and she said to herself,
+"Whether or no he win is in the will of God, but already luve hes given
+his blessin' tae man and maid."
+
+Kate did not go to kirk on Sunday, but lived all day in the woods, and
+in the evening she kissed her father and laid this answer in his
+hands:--
+
+
+DEAR LORD HAY,--You have done me the greatest honour any woman can
+receive at your hands, and for two days I have thought of nothing else.
+If it were enough that your wife should like and respect you, then I
+would at once accept you as my betrothed, but as it is plain to me that
+no woman ought to marry any one unless she also loves him, I am obliged
+to refuse one of the truest men I have ever met, for whom I have a very
+kindly place in my heart, and whose happiness I shall always
+desire.--Believe me, yours sincerely,
+
+KATE CARNEGIE.
+
+
+"You could do nothing else, Kit, and you have done right to close the
+matter . . . but I 'm sorry for Hay."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+LOVE IS LORD.
+
+It could not be said with a steady face that the proceedings of the
+Free Kirk Presbytery of Muirtown increased the gaiety of nations, and
+there might be persons--far left to themselves, of course--who would
+describe its members as wearisome ecclesiastics.  Carmichael himself,
+in a mood of gay irresponsibility, had once sketched a meeting of this
+reverend court, in which the names were skilfully adapted, after the
+ancient fashion, to represent character, and the incidents, if not
+_vero_, were certainly ben trovato, and had the article ready for
+transmission to _Ferrier's Journal_.  'A Sederunt' did not, however,
+add to the miseries of a most courteous editor, for Jenkins, having
+come up for an all-night conference, and having heard the article with
+unfeigned delight, pointed out that, if it were accepted, which
+Carmichael's experience did not certify, the writer would be run down
+within fourteen days, and that, so unreasonable a thing is human
+nature, some of the Presbytery might be less than pleased with their
+own likenesses.  "It 's in the waste-paper basket," Carmichael said
+next morning, which, as the author was twenty-five years of age, and
+not conspicuously modest, is a conclusive testimonial to the goodness
+of one Presbytery, and its hold on the affection of its members.
+
+Scots take their pleasures sadly, and no one can imagine from what arid
+soil they may not draw their nutriment, but it was not for motions of
+ponderous ambiguity and pragmatical points of order, that the minister
+of Kincairney rose before daybreak on a winter's morning, and worked
+his way to the nearest station, with the stars still overhead, and the
+snow below his feet, so that when the clerk made a sign to the
+Moderator punctually at one minute past eleven to "constitute the
+Presbytery," he might not be missing from his place.  It was the
+longing of a lonely man, across whose front door no visitor had come
+for weeks, for friendly company; of a weary minister, discouraged by
+narrow circumstances, monotonous routine, unexpected disappointments
+among his people, for a word of good cheer.  A cynical stranger might
+discover various stupidities, peculiarities, provincialisms in the
+Presbytery--he knew himself who had a temper, and who was a trifle
+sensitive about his rights--but this middle-aged, hard-working,
+simple-living man saw twenty faithful brethren--the elders did not
+count in this connection, for they did not understand--who stood beside
+him on occasion at the Holy Table, and gave him advice in his
+perplexities, and would bury him with honest regret when he died, and
+fight like wild cats that his widow and children should have their due.
+His toilsome journey was forgotten when Doctor Dowbiggin, in an
+interstice of motions, came across the floor and sat down beside him,
+and whispered confidentially, "Well, how are things going on at
+Kincairney?"--Dowbiggin really deserved his leadership--or when the
+clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, would pass his snuff-box
+across to him without a word, for the clerk had a way of handing his
+box, which, being interpreted, ran as follows:--"You suppose that I am
+lifted above all ordinary affairs in my clerkly isolation, and that I
+do not know what a solid work you are doing for God and man in the
+obscure parish of Kincairney, but you are wrong.  You have a very warm
+corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box."  And the said
+minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn
+of the road by his wife--sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter
+of a century's toiling and preaching--would enlarge on Doctor
+Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when
+they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him--incredible to
+our cynic--and say, "You see, Tom, more people than I know what a good
+work you are doing," and Tom would start his twenty-first lecture on
+the Ephesians next morning with new spirit.  Such is the power of
+comradeship, such is the thirst for sympathy; and indeed there is no
+dog either so big or so little that it does not appreciate a pat, and
+go down the street afterwards with better heart.
+
+The Presbytery had always a tender regard for the Free Kirk of
+Drumtochty, and happened to treat Carmichael with much favour.  When
+the "call" to him was signed at once by every member of the
+congregation, the clerk--who had been obliged to summon Donald Menzies
+from Gaelic by the intimation that Drumtochty was by the law of the
+Church "uni-lingual, and that all proceedings must be conducted in the
+English language"--arose and declared that "such unanimous attention to
+their ecclesiastical duties was unexampled in his experience;" and when
+at Carmichael's ordination a certain certificate was wanting, the
+clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the
+court should anticipate its arrival, dealing with the matter
+"proleptically," and the court saw in the very word another proof of
+the clerk's masterly official genius.  It was he also--expressing the
+mind of the Presbytery--who proposed that the Court should send
+Carmichael as a commissioner to the General Assembly in the first year
+of his ministry, and took occasion to remark that Mr. Carmichael,
+according to "reliable information at his disposal," was rendering
+important service to the Free Church in his sphere at Drumtochty.
+Carmichael was very happy in those days, and was so petted by his
+ecclesiastical superiors that he never missed a meeting of court, where
+he either sat in a demure silence, which commended him greatly to the
+old men, or conversed with his friends on a back bench about general
+affairs.
+
+It gave him, therefore, a shock to sit with his brethren in the month
+of June--when the walk through the woods had been a joy, and Muirtown
+lay at her fairest, and the sunshine filled the court-room, and every
+man had a summer air, and Doctor Dowbiggin actually wore a rose in his
+coat--and to discover that he himself was sick of his old friends, of
+his work, of his people, of himself.  The reasons were obvious.  Was it
+not a sin that thirty Christian men should be cooped up in a room
+passing schedules when the summer was young and fresh upon the land?
+Could any one of the Rabbi's boys sit in that room and see his
+accustomed place--a corner next the wall on a back seat--empty, and not
+be cast down?  Besides, does not a minister's year begin in September
+and end in July, and before it closes is not the minister at his
+lowest, having given away himself for eleven months?  "One begins to
+weary for a rest," he whispered to Kincairney, and that worthy man
+explained that he and his wife had been planning their triennial
+holiday, and hoped to have a fortnight in Carnoustie.  Carmichael
+realised his hypocrisy in that instant, for he knew perfectly that he
+had lost touch with life because of a hopeless love, and a proud face
+he had not seen a year ago.  He flung himself out of the court with
+such impatience that the clerk stayed his hand in the midst of the
+sacred words _pro re nata_, and Kincairney mentioned to his wife in the
+evening that Carmichael had never got over Doctor Saunderson's death.
+
+Carmichael wandered up one of the meadows which are the glory of
+Muirtown, and sat down by the queen of Scottish rivers, which runs deep
+and swift, clean and bright, from Loch Tay to the sea, between wooded
+banks and overhanging trees, past cornfields and ancient castles; a
+river for him who swims, or rows, or fishes, or dreams, in which, if
+such were to be his fate, a man might ask to be drowned.  Opposite him
+began the woods of Muirtown Castle, and he tried to be glad that
+Kate . . . Miss Carnegie would one day be their mistress: the formal
+announcement of her engagement, he had heard, was to be made next week,
+on Lord Kilspindie's birthday.  A distant whistle came on the clear air
+from Muirtown station, where . . . and all this turmoil of hope and
+fear, love and despair, had been packed into a few months.  There is a
+bend in the river where he sits, and the salmon fishers have dropped
+their nets, and are now dragging them to the bank.  With a thrill of
+sympathy Carmichael watched the fish struggling in the meshes, and his
+heart leapt when, through some mishandling, one escaped with a flash of
+silver and plunged into the river.  He had also been caught quite
+suddenly in the joyous current of his life and held in bonds.  Why
+should he not make a bold plunge for freedom, which he could never have
+with the Lodge at his doors, with the Castle only twelve miles away?
+He had been asked in his student days to go to the north-west of Canada
+and take charge of a parish fifty miles square.  The idea had for a
+little fired his imagination, and then faded before other ambitions.
+It revived with power on the banks of that joyful, forceful river, and
+he saw himself beginning life again on the open prairie lands--riding,
+camping, shooting, preaching--a free man and an apostle to the Scottish
+Dispersion.
+
+With this bracing resolution, that seemed a call of God to deliver him
+from bondage, came a longing to visit Kilbogie Manse and the Rabbi's
+grave.  It was a journey of expiation, for Carmichael followed the road
+the Rabbi walked with the hand of death upon him after that lamentable
+Presbytery, and he marked the hills where the old man must have stood
+and fought for breath.  He could see Mains, where he had gone with
+Doctor Saunderson to the exposition, and he passed the spot where the
+Rabbi had taken farewell of George Pitillo in a figure.  What learning,
+and simplicity, and unselfishness, and honesty, and affection were
+mingled in the character of the Rabbi!  What skill, and courage, and
+tenderness, and self-sacrifice, and humility there had been also in
+William MacLure, who had just died!  Carmichael dwelt on the likeness
+and unlikeness of the two men, who had each loved the highest he knew
+and served his generation according to the will of God, till he found
+himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with
+the Rabbi in his long vigils.  It was a singular means of grace to have
+known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and
+impressionable.  A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael.  He lifted
+his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship
+he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any
+intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see
+the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way.  The district was full of the
+Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any
+moment--buried in a book and proceeding steadily in the wrong
+direction.  The Rabbi surely was not dead, and Carmichael drifted into
+that dear world of romance where what we desire comes to pass, and
+facts count for nothing.  This was how the Idyll went.  From the moment
+of the reconciliation the Rabbi's disease began to abate in a quite
+unheard of fashion--love wrought a miracle--and with Kate's nursing and
+his he speedily recovered.  Things came right between Kate and himself
+as they shared their task of love, and so . . . of course--it took
+place last month--and now he was going to carry off the Rabbi, who
+somehow had not come to the Presbytery, to Drumtochty, where his bride
+would meet them both beneath the laburnum arch at the gate.  He would
+be cunning as he approached the door of Kilbogie Manse, and walk on the
+grass border lest the Rabbi, poring over some Father, should hear the
+crunch of the gravel--he did know his footstep--and so he would take
+the old man by surprise.  Alas! he need not take such care, for the
+walk was now as the border with grass, and the gate was lying open, and
+the dead house stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and knew him
+not.  The key was in the door, and he crossed the threshold once
+more--no need to beware of parcels on the floor now--and turned to the
+familiar room.  The shelves had been taken down, but he could trace
+their lines on the ancient discoloured paper that was now revealed for
+the first time; there, where a new shutter was resting against the
+wall, used to stand the "seat of the fathers," and exactly in the midst
+of that heap of straw the Rabbi had his chair. . . .
+
+"Ye 've come tae see hoo we 're getting on wi' the repairs"--it was the
+joiner of Kilbogie; "it's no a licht job, for there 's nae doot the
+hoose hes been awfu' negleckit.  The Doctor wes a terrible scholar, but
+he wudna hae kent that the slates were aff the roof till the drap cam
+intae his bed.
+
+"Ou aye, the manse is tae be papered an' pented for the new minister;
+a' cud show ye the papers; juist as ye please; they're verra tasty an'
+showy.  He's tae be married at once, a 'm hearin', an' this is tae be
+the drawin'-room; he wes here ten days syne--the day after he wes
+eleckit: they 're aye in a hurry when they 're engaged--an' seleckit a
+sma' room upstairs for his study; he didna think he wud need as lairge
+a room for bukes, an' he thocht the auld study wud dae fine for
+pairties.
+
+"There 's juist ae room feenished, an' ye micht like tae see the paper
+on 't; it's a yellow rose on a licht blue grund; a 'm jidgin' it wes
+the Doctor's ain room.  Weel, it's a gude lang wy tae Drumtochty, an'
+ye 'll no be wantin' tae pit aff time, a' daresay."
+
+It was a terrible douche of prose, and Carmichael was still shivering
+when he reached the kindly shade of Tochty woods.  He had seen the
+successful candidate at the Presbytery arranging about his "trial
+discourses" with the clerk--who regarded him dubiously--and he had
+heard some story about his being a "popular hand," and bewitching the
+young people with a sermon on the "good fight," with four heads "the
+soldier," "the battle-field," "the battle," and "the crown"--each with
+an illustration, an anecdote, and a verse of poetry.  Carmichael
+recognised the type, and already saw the new minister of Kilbogie, smug
+and self-satisfied, handing round cream and sugar in the Rabbi's old
+study, while his wife, a stout young woman in gay clothing, pours tea
+from a pot of florid design, and bearing a blazing marriage
+inscription.  There would be a _soiree_ in the kirk, where the Rabbi
+had opened the mysteries of God, and his successor would explain how
+unworthy he felt to follow Doctor Saunderson, and how he was going to
+reorganise the congregation, and there would be many jocose allusions
+to his coming marriage; but Carmichael would by that time have left the
+district.
+
+No one can walk a mile in Tochty woods, where there are little glades
+of mossy turf, and banks of violets and geraniums, and gentle creatures
+on ground and branch, and cool shade from the summer sun, and the sound
+of running water by your side, without being sweetened and comforted.
+Bitter thoughts and cynical criticisms, as well as vain regrets and
+peevish complaints, fell away from Carmichael's soul, and gave place to
+a gentle melancholy.  He came to the heart of the wood, where was the
+lovers' grave, and the place seemed to invite his company.  A sense of
+the tears of things came over him, and he sat down by the river-side to
+meditate.  It was two hundred years and more since the lassies died,
+who were never wedded, and for him there was not even to be love.  The
+ages were linked together by a long tragedy of disappointment and
+vanity, but the Tochty ran now as in the former days.  What was any
+human life but a drop in the river that flowed without ceasing to the
+unknown sea?  What could any one do but yield himself to necessity, and
+summon his courage to endure?  Then at the singing of a bird his mood
+lightened and was changed, as if he had heard the Evangel.  God was
+over all, and life was immortal, and he could not be wrong who did the
+will of God.  After a day of conflict, peace came to his soul, and in
+the soft light of the setting sun he rose to go home.
+
+[Illustration: "He sat down by the river-side to meditate."]
+
+"Miss Carnegie . . . I did not know you were here . . .  I thought you
+were in London," and Carmichael stood before Kate in great confusion.
+
+"Nor did I see you behind that tree"--Kate herself was startled.  "Yes,
+the General and I have been visiting some old friends, and only came
+home an hour ago.
+
+"Do you know"--Kate was herself again--"the first thing I do on arrival
+is to make a pilgrimage to this place.  Half an hour here banishes the
+dust of a day's journey and of . . .
+
+"Besides, I don't know whether you have heard"--Kate spoke
+hurriedly--"that it is now settled that I . . . we will be leaving the
+Lodge soon, and one wants to have as much as possible of the old place
+in the time remaining."
+
+She gave him this opportunity in kindness, as it seemed, and he
+reproached himself because he did not offer his congratulations.
+
+"You will, I . . . the people hope, come often here, Miss Carnegie, and
+not cast off Drumtochty, although the Lodge be not your home.  You will
+always have a place in the hearts of the Glen.  Marjorie will never be
+grateful enough for your readings," which was bravely said.
+
+"Do you think that I can ever forget the Glen and my . . . friends
+here?  Not while I live; the Carnegies have their own faults, but
+ingratitude is not one.  Nor the dear Rabbi's grave."  Then there was
+silence, which Carmichael found very trying--they had been so near that
+day in Kilbogie Manse, with only the Rabbi, who loved them both,
+between; but now, although they stood face to face, there was a gulf
+dividing them.
+
+"It may not be easy for me to visit Drumtochty often, for you know
+there has been a change . . . in our circumstances, and one must suit
+oneself to it."
+
+Carmichael flushed uneasily, and Kate supposed that he was sympathising
+with their losses.
+
+"I hope to be a busy woman soon, with lots of work, and I shall use
+every one of my little scraps of knowledge.  How do you think I shall
+acquit myself in my new role?"
+
+It was a little hard on Carmichael, who was thinking of a countess,
+while Kate meant a governess.
+
+"You need not ask me how I think you will do as . . . in any position,
+and I . . . wish you every success, and . . . (with a visible effort)
+happiness."
+
+He spoke so stiffly that Kate sought about for reasons, and could only
+remember their quarrel and imagine he retained a grudge--which she
+thought was rather ungenerous.
+
+"It occurs to me that one man ought to be thankful when we depart, for
+then he will be able to call Queen Mary names every Sunday without a
+misguided Jacobite girl dropping in to create a disturbance."
+
+"Drumtochty will have to form its own opinion of poor Mary without my
+aid," and Carmichael smiled sadly in pardon of the past, "for it is
+likely, although no one knows this in the Glen, that I shall soon be
+far away."
+
+"Leaving Drumtochty?  What will Marjorie do without you, and Dr.
+Davidson, and . . . all the people?"  Then, remembering Janet's gossip,
+and her voice freezing, "I suppose you have got a better or more
+convenient living.  The Glen is certainly rather inaccessible."
+
+"Have I done anything, Miss Carnegie, to justify you in thinking that I
+would leave the Glen, which has been so good to me, for . . . worldly
+reasons?  There is enough to support an unmarried man, and I am not
+likely to . . . to marry," said Carmichael, bitterly; "but there are
+times when it is better for a man to change his whole surroundings and
+make a new life."
+
+It was clear that the Bailie's daughter was a romance of Janet's Celtic
+imagination, and Kate's manner softened.
+
+"The Rabbi's death and . . . your difference of opinion--something
+about doctrine, was n't it? we were from home--must have been a great
+trial, and, as there was no opportunity before, let me say how much we
+sympathised with you and . . . thought of you.
+
+"Do you think, however, Mr. Carmichael"--she spoke with hesitation, but
+much kindness--"that you ought to fling up your work here on that
+account?  Would not the Rabbi himself have wished you to stick to your
+post? . . . and all your friends would like to think you had been . . .
+brave."
+
+"You are cruel, Miss Carnegie; you try me beyond what I can endure,
+although I shall be ashamed to-night for what I am to say.  Do you not
+know or guess that it is your . . . on account of you, I mean, that I
+must leave Drumtochty?"
+
+"On account of me?"  Kate looked at him in unaffected amazement.
+
+"Are you blind, or is it that you could not suspect me of such
+presumption?  Had you no idea that night in Dr. Davidson's
+drawing-room?  Have you never seen that I . . .  Kate--I will say it
+once to your face as I say it every hour to myself--you won my heart in
+an instant on Muirtown Station, and will hold it till I die.
+
+"Do not speak till I be done, and then order me from your presence as I
+deserve, I know that it is unworthy of a gentleman, and . . . a
+minister of Christ to say such things to the betrothed of another man;
+only one minute more"--for Kate had started as if in anger--"I know
+also that if I were stronger I could go on living as before, and meet
+you from time to time when you came from the Castle with your husband,
+and never allow myself to think of Lady Hay as I felt to Miss Carnegie.
+But I am afraid of myself, and . . . this is the last time we shall
+meet, Miss Carnegie.  Forgive me for my love, and believe that one man
+will ever remember and . . . pray for you."
+
+Carmichael bowed low, the last sunshine of the evening playing on his
+fair hair, and turned to go.
+
+"One word, if you please," said Kate, and they looked into one
+another's eyes, the blue and brown, seeing many things that cannot be
+written.  "You may be forgiven for . . . loving me, because you could
+not help that"--this with a very roguish look, our Kate all over--"and
+I suppose you must be forgiven for listening to foolish gossip, since
+people will tell lies"--this with a stamp of the foot, our Kate
+again--"but I shall never forgive you if you leave me, never"--this was
+a new Kate, like to the opening of a flower.
+
+"Why?  Tell me plainly," and in the silence Carmichael heard a trout
+leap in the river.
+
+"Because I love you."
+
+The Tochty water sang a pleasant song, and the sun set gloriously
+behind Ben Urtach.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #20399 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20399)