inquiries as to how it sped in the great city with the precarious
handful of pious folk, who gathered to listen to the precious and
savoury truths of the pure Marrow teaching. Ralph Peden was
charged with many messages from his father, the metropolitan
Marrow minister, to Allan Welsh--dear to his soul as the only
minister who had upheld the essentials on that great day, when
among the assembled Presbyters so many had gone backward and
walked no more with him.

"Be faithful with the young man, my son," Allan Welsh read in the
quaintly sealed and delicately written letter which his brother
minister in Edinburgh had sent to him, and which Ralph had duly
delivered in the square, grim manse of Dullarg, with a sedate and
old-fashioned reverence which sat strangely on one of his years.
"Be faithful with the young man," continued the letter; "he is
well grounded on the fundamentals; his head is filled with godly
lear, and he has sound views on the Headship; but he has always
been a little cold and distant even to me, his father according to
the flesh. With his companions he is apt to be distant and
reserved. I am to blame for the solitude of our life here in
James's Court, but to you I do not need to tell the reason of
that. The Lord give you his guidance in leading the young man in
the right way."

So far Gilbert Peden's letter had run staidly and in character
like the spoken words of the writer. But here it broke off. The
writing, hitherto fine as a hair, thickened; and from this point
became crowded and difficult, as though the floods of feeling had
broken some dam. "O man Allan, for my sake, if at all you have
loved me, or owe me anything, dig deep and see if the lad has a