influences he has left behind are nourished and tended, with
thorough belief and devoted care, by her who shared his authority in
life, and now bears alone the family sceptre, there can be no bound
set to their possible potency in a mind of high spiritual order. The
primary impulse became with Alister a large portion of his religion:
he was the shepherd of the much ravaged and dwindled Macruadh-fold;
it was his church, in which the love of the neighbour was
intensified in the love of the relation and dependent. To aid and
guard this his flock, was Alister's divine service. It was
associated with a great dislike of dogma, originating in the recoil
of the truth within him from much that was commonly held and taught
for true.

Call the thing enthusiasm or what you will, so you believe it there,
and genuine.

It was only towards the poor of a decayed clan he had opportunity of
exercising the cherished relation; almost all who were not poor had
emigrated before the lands were sold; and indeed it was only the
poor who set store by their unity with the old head. Not a few of
the clan, removed elsewhither, would have smiled degenerate, and
with scorn in their amusement, at the idea of Alister's clinging to
any supposed reality in the position he could claim. Among such
nevertheless were several who, having made money by trade, would
each have been glad enough to keep up old traditions, and been ready
even to revive older, had the headship fallen to him. But in the
hands of a man whom, from the top of their wealth, they regarded as
but a poor farmer, they forgot all about it--along with a few other
more important and older-world matters; for where Mammon gets in his
foot, he will soon be lord of the house, and turn not merely Rank,