Yet he followed obediently enough.

Within the shadowed "ben"-room of Craig Ronald all the morning
this oddly assorted pair of old people had been sitting--as indeed
every morning they sat, one busily reading and often looking up to
talk; while the other, the master of the house himself, sat
silent, a majestic and altogether pathetic figure, looking
solemnly out with wide-open, dreamy eyes, waking to the actual
world of speech and purposeful life only at rare intervals.

But Walter Skirving was keenly awake when Ralph Peden entered. It
was in fact he, and not his partner, who spoke first--for Walter
Skirving's wife had among other things learned when to be silent--
which was, when she must.

"You honour my hoose," he said; "though it grieves me indeed that
I canna rise to receive yin o' your family an' name! But what I
have is at your service, for it was your noble faither that led
the faithful into the wilderness on the day o' the Great
Apostasy!"

The young man shook him by the hand. He had no bashfulness here.
He was on his own ground. This was the very accent of the society
in which he moved in Edinburgh.

"I thank you," he said, quietly and courteously, stepping back at
once into the student of divinity; "I have often heard my father
speak of you. You were the elder from the south who stood by him
on that day. He has ever retained a great respect for you."