and watchful, without a sign of flinching, but even from the Manse
pew I could detect the suffering of his heart. When the minister
blazed into polemic against the bigotry of the old school, the iron
face quivered as if a father had been struck by his son. Carmichael
looked thin and nervous in the pulpit, and it came to me that if new
views are to be preached to old-fashioned people it ought not to be
by lads who are always heady and intolerant, but by a stout man of
middle age, with a rich voice and a good-natured manner. Had
Carmichael rasped and girded much longer, one would have believed in
the inspiration of the vowel points, and I left the church with a
low heart, for this was a woeful change from his first sermon.

Lachlan would not be pacified, not even by the plea of the
minister's health.

"Oh yes, I am seeing that he is ill, and I will be as sorry as any
man in Drumtochty. But it iss not too much work, as they are saying;
it iss the judgment of God. It iss not goot to meddle with Moses,
and John Carmichael will be knowing that. His own sister wass not
respectful to Moses, and she will not be feeling fery well next
day."

But Burnbrae added that the "auld man cudna be mair cast doon if he
hed lost his dochter."

The peace of the Free Kirk had been broken, and the minister was
eating out his heart, when he remembered the invitation of Marget
Howe, and went one sweet spring day to Whinnie Knowe.

Marget met him with her quiet welcome at the garden gate.