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"They are the best and kindest in the world," said Ralph.

The professor glanced at him with a sharp, quizzical look under
his eyebrows. He seemed as if he were about to say something, and
then thought better of it and did not. Perhaps he also had had his
illusions.

As Ralph was going to his room that night Kezia met him at the
head of the stairs. She came like a flash from nowhere in
particular.

"Good-night, Ralph," she said; "give your Winsome a kiss from me--
the new kind--like this!"

Then Kezia vanished, and Ralph was left wondering, with his candle
in his hand.





CHAPTER XL.

A TRIANGULAR CONVERSATION.


It was the day of the fast before the Communion in the Dullarg.
The services of the day were over, and Allan Welsh, the minister
of the Marrow kirk, was resting in his study from his labours.
Manse Bell came up and knocked, inclining her ear as she did so to
catch the minister's low-toned reply.

"Mistress Winifred Charteris frae the Craig Ronald to see ye,
sir."

Allan Welsh commanded his emotion without difficulty--what of it
he felt--as indeed he had done for many years.

He rose, however, with his hand on the table as though for
support, as Winsome came in. He received her in silence, bending
over her hand with a certain grave reverence.

Winsome sat down. She was a little paler but even lovelier in the
minister's eyes than when he had seen her before. The faint violet
shadows under her lower lids were deeper, and gave a new depth to
her sapphire eyes whose irises were so large that the changeful
purple lights in them came and went like summer lightnings.

It was Winsome who first spoke, looking at him with a strange pity
and a stirring of her soul that she could not account for. She had
come unwillingly on her errand, disliking him as the cause of her
lover's absence--one of the last things a woman learns to forgive.
But, as she looked on Allan Welsh, so bowed and broken, his eyes
fallen in, looking wistfully out of the pain of his life, her
heart went out to him, even as she thought that of a truth he was
Ralph Peden's enemy.

"My grandfather," she said, and her voice was low, equable, and
serious, "sent me with a packet to you that he instructed me only
to give into your own hands."

Winsome went over to the minister and gave him a sealed parcel.
Allan Welsh took it in his hand and seemed to weigh it.

"I thank you," he said, commanding his voice with some difficulty.
"And I ask you to thank Walter Skirving for his remembrance of me.
It is many years since we were driven apart, but I have not
forgotten the kindness of the long ago!"

He opened the parcel. It was sealed with Walter Skirving's great
seal ring which he wore on his watch-chain, lying on the table
before him as he kept his never-ending vigil. There was a
miniature and a parcel of letters within.

It was the face of a fair girl, with the same dark-blue eyes of
the girl now before him, and the same golden hair--the face of an
earlier but not a fairer Winifred. Allan Welsh set his teeth, and
caught at the table to stay his dizzying head. The letters were
his own. It was Walter Skirving's stern message to him. From the
very tomb his own better self rose in judgment against him. He saw
what he might have been--the sorrow he had wrought, and the path
of ultimate atonement.

He had tried to part two young lovers who had chosen the straight
and honest way. It was true that his duty to the kirk which had
been his life, and which he himself was under condemnation
according to his own standard, had seemed to him to conflict with
the path he had marked out for Ralph.

But his own letters, breaking from their brittle confining band,
poured in a cataract of folded paper and close-knit writing which
looked like his own self of long ago, upon the table before him.
He was condemned out of his own mouth.

Winsome sat with her face turned to the window, from which she
could see the heathery back of a hill which heaved its bulk
between the manse and the lowlands at the mouth of the Dee. There
was a dreamy look in her eyes, land her heart was far away in that
Edinburgh town from which she had that day received a message to
shake her soul with love and pity.

The minister of the Dullarg looked up.

"Do you love him?" he asked, abruptly and harshly.

Winsome looked indignant and surprised. Her love, laid away in the
depths of her heart, was sacred, and not thus to be at the mercy
of every rude questioner. But as her eye rested on Allan Welsh,
the unmistakable accent of sincerity took hold on her--that accent
which may ask all things and not be blamed.

"I do love him," she said--"with all my heart."

That answer does not vary while God is in his heaven.

The eye of Allan Welsh fell on the miniature. The woman he had
loved so long ago took part in the conversation.

"That is what you said twenty years ago!" the unseen Winsome said
from the table.

"And he loves you?" he asked, without looking up.

"If I did not believe it, I could not live!"

Allan Welsh glanced with a keen and sudden scrutiny at Winsome
Charteris; but the clearness of her eye and the gladness and faith
at the bottom of it satisfied him as to his thought.

This Ralph Peden was a better man than he. A sad yearning face
looked up at him from the table, and a voice thrilled in his ears
across the years--

"So did not you!"

"You know," said Allan Welsh, again untrue to himself, "that it is
not for Ralph Peden's good that he should love you." The formal
part of him was dictating the words.

"I know you think so, and I am here to ask you why," said Winsome
fearlessly.

"And if I persuade you, will you forbid him?" said Allan Welsh,
convinced of his own futility.

Winsome's heart caught the accent of insincerity. It had gone far
beyond forbidding love or allowing it with Ralph Peden and
herself.

"I shall try!" she said, with her own sweet serenity. But across
the years a voice was pleading their case. As the black and faded
ink of the letters flashed his own sentences across the minister's
eye, the soul God had put within him rose in revolt against his
own petty and useless preaching.

"So did not you" persisted the voice in his ear. "Me you
counselled to risk all, and you took me out into the darkness,
lighting my way with love. Did ever I complain--father lost,
mother lost, home lost, God well nigh lost--all for you; yet did I
even regret when you saw me die?"

"Think of the Marrow kirk," said the minister. "Her hard service
does not permit a probationer, before whom lies the task of
doctrine and reproof, to have father or mother, wife or
sweetheart."

"And what did you," said the voice, "in that past day, care for
the Marrow kirk, when the light shone upon me, and you thought the
world, and the Marrow kirk with it, well lost for love's sake and
mine?"

Allan Welsh bowed his head yet lower.

Winsome Charteris went over to him. His tears were falling fast on
the dulled and yellowing paper.

Winsome put her hands on his shoulder.

"Is that my mother's picture?" she said, hardly knowing what she
said.

Allan Welsh put his hand greedily about it, he could not let it
go.

"Will you kiss me for your mother's sake?" he said.

And then, for the first time since her babyhood, Winsome
Charteris, whose name was Welsh, kissed her father.

There were tears on her mother's miniature, but through them the
face of the dead Winifred seemed to smile well pleased.

"For my mother's sake!" said Winsome again, and kissed him of her
own accord on the brow.

Thus Walter Skirving's message was delivered.





CHAPTER XLI.

THE MEETING OF THE SYNOD.


With the vestry of the Marrow kirk in Bell's Wynd the synod met,
and was constituted with prayer. Sederunt, the Reverend Gilbert
Peden, moderator, minister of the true kirk of God in Scotland,
commonly called the Marrow Kirk, in which place the synod for the
time being was assembled; the Reverend Allan Welsh, minister of
the Marrow kirk in Dullarg, clerk of the synod; John Bairdieson,
synod's officer. The minutes of the last meeting having been read
and approved of, the court proceeded to take up business. Inter
alia the trials of Master Ralph Peden, some time student of arts
and humanity in the College of Edinburgh, were a remit for this
day and date. Accordingly, the synod called upon the Reverend
Allan Welsh, its clerk, to make report upon the diligence,
humility, and obedience, as well as upon the walk and conversation
of the said Ralph Peden, student in divinity, now on trials for
license to preach, the gospel.

Allan Welsh read all this gravely and calmly, as if the art of
expressing ecclesiastical meaning lay in clothing it in as many
overcoats as a city watchman wears in winter.

The moderator sat still, with a grim earnestness in his face. He
was the very embodiment of the kirk of the Marrow, and though
there were but two ministers with no elders there that day to
share the responsibility, what did that matter?

He, Gilbert Peden, successor of all the (faithful) Reformers, was
there to do inflexible and impartial justice.

John Bairdieson came in and sat down. The moderator observed his
presence, and in his official capacity took notice of it.

"This sederunt of the synod is private," he said. "Officer, remove
the strangers."

In his official capacity the officer of the court promptly removed
John Bairdieson, who went most unwillingly.

The matter of the examination of probationers comes up immediately
after the reading of the minutes in well-regulated church courts,
being most important and vital.

"The clerk will now call for the report upon the life and conduct
of the student under trials," said the moderator.

The clerk called upon the Reverend Allan Welsh to present his
report. Then he sat down gravely, but immediately rose again to
give his report. All the while the moderator sat impassive as a
statue.

The minister of Dullarg began in a low and constrained voice. He
had observed, he said, with great pleasure the diligence and
ability of Master Ralph Peden, and considered the same in terms of
the remit to him from the synod. He was much pleased with the
clearness of the candidate upon the great questions of theology
and church government. He had examined him daily in his work, and
had confidence in bearing testimony to the able and spiritual tone
of all his exercises, both oral and written.

Soon after he began, a surprised look stole over the face of the
moderator. As Allan Welsh went on from sentence to sentence, the
thin nostrils of the representative of the Reformers dilated. A
strange and intense scorn took possession of him. He sat back and
looked fixedly at the slight figure of the minister of Dullarg
bending under the weight of his message and the frailty of his
body. His time was coming.

Allan Welsh sat down, and laid his written report on the table of
the synod.

"And is that all that you have to say?" queried the moderator,
rising.

"That is all," said Allan Welsh.

"Then," said the moderator, "I charge it against you that you have
either said too much or too little: too much for me to listen to
as the father of this young man, if it be true that you extruded
him, being my son and a student of the Marrow kirk committed to
your care, at midnight from your house, for no stated cause; and
too little, far too little to satisfy me as moderator of this
synod, when a report not only upon diligence and scholarship, but
also upon a walk and conversation becoming the gospel, is
demanded."

"I have duly given my report according to the terms of the remit,"
said Allan Welsh, simply and quietly.

"Then," said the moderator, "I solemnly call you to account as the
moderator of this synod of the only true and protesting Kirk of
Scotland, for the gravest dereliction of your duty. I summon you
to declare the cause why Ralph Peden, student in divinity, left
your house at midnight, and, returning to mine, was for that cause
denied bed and board at his father's house."

"I deny your right, moderator, to ask that question as an officer
of this synod. If, at the close, you meet me as man to man, and,
as a father, ask me the reasons of my conduct, some particulars of
which I do not now seek to defend, I shall be prepared to satisfy
you."

"We are not here convened," said the moderator, "to bandy
compliments, but to do justice--"

"And to love mercy," interjected John Bairdieson through the
keyhole.

"Officer," said the moderator, "remove that rude interrupter."

"Aye, aye, sir," responded the synod officer promptly, and removed
the offender as much as six inches.

"You have no more to say?" queried the moderator, bending his
brows in threatening fashion.

"I have no more to say," returned the clerk as firmly. They were
both combative men; and the old spirit of that momentous conflict,
in which they had fought so gallantly together, moved them to as
great obstinacy now that they were divided.

"Then," said the moderator, "there's nothing for't but another
split, and the Lord do so, and more also, to him whose sin brings
it about!"

"Amen!" said Allan Welsh.

"You will remember," said the moderator, addressing the minister
of Dullarg directly, "that you hold your office under my pleasure.
There is that against you in the past which would justify me, as
moderator of the kirk of the Marrow, in deposing you summarily
from the office of the ministry. This I have in writing under your
own hand and confession."

"And I," said the clerk, rising with the gleaming light of war in
his eye, "have to set it against these things that you are guilty
of art and part in the concealment of that which, had you spoken
twenty years ago, would have removed from the kirk of the Marrow
an unfaithful minister, and given some one worthier than I to
report on the fitness of your son for the ministry. It was you,
Gilbert Peden, who made this remit to me, knowing what you know. I
shall accept the deposition which you threaten at your hands, but
remember that co-ordinately the power of this assembly lies with
me--you as moderator, having only a casting, not a deliberative
vote; and know you, Gilbert Peden, minister and moderator, that I,
Allan Welsh, will depose you also from the office of the ministry,
and my deposition will stand as good as yours."

"The Lord preserve us! In five meenetes there'll be nae Marrow
Kirk" said John Bairdieson, and flung himself against the door;
but the moderator had taken the precaution of locking it and
placing the key on his desk.

The two ministers rose simultaneously. Gilbert Peden stood at the
head and Allan Welsh at the foot of the little table. They were so
near that they could have shaken hands across it. But they had
other work to do.

"Allan Welsh," said the moderator, stretching out his hand,
"minister of the gospel in the parish of Dullarg to the faithful
contending remnant, I call upon you to show cause why you should
not be deposed for the sins of contumacy and contempt, for sins of
person and life, confessed and communicate under your hand."

"Gilbert Peden," returned the minister of the Dullarg and clerk to
the Marrow Synod, looking like a cock-boat athwart the hawse of a
leviathan of the deep, "I call upon you to show cause why you
should not be deposed for unfaithfulness in the discharge of your
duty, in so far as you have concealed known sin, and by complicity
and compliance have been sharer in the wrong."

There was a moment's silence. Gilbert Peden knew well that what
his opponent said was good Marrow doctrine, for Allan Welsh had
confessed to him his willingness to accept deposition twenty years
ago.

Then, as with one voice, the two men pronounced against each other
the solemn sentence of deposition and deprivation:

"In the name of God, and by virtue of the law of the Marrow Kirk,
I solemnly depose you from the office of the ministry."

John Bairdieson burst in the door, leaving the lock hanging awry
with the despairing force of his charge.

"Be merciful, oh, be merciful!" he cried; "let not the Philistines
rejoice, nor the daughter of the uncircumcised triumph. Let be!
let be! Say that ye dinna mean it! Oh, say ye dinna mean it! Tak'
it back--tak' it a' back!"

There was the silence of death between the two men, who stood
lowering at each other.

John Bairdieson turned and ran down the stairs. He met Ralph and
Professor Thriepneuk coming up.

"Gang awa'! gang awa'!" he cried. "There's nae leecense for ye
noo. There's nae mair ony Marrow Kirk! There's nae mair heaven and
earth! The Kirk o' the Marrow, precious and witnessing, is nae
mair!"

And the tears burst from the old sailor as he ran down the street,
not knowing whither he went.

Half-way down the street a seller of sea-coal, great and grimy,
barred his way. He challenged the runner to fight. The spirit of
the Lord came upon John Bairdieson, and, rejoicing that a foe
withstood him, he dealt a buffet so sore and mighty that the
seller of coal, whose voice could rise like the grunting of a sea
beast to the highest windows of the New Exchange Buildings,
dropped as an ox drops when it is felled. And John Bairdieson ran
on, crying out: "There's nae kirk o' God in puir Scotland ony
mair!"





CHAPTER XLII.

PURGING AND RESTORATION.


It was the Lord's day in Edinburgh town. The silence in the early
morning was something which could be felt--not a footstep, not a
rolling wheel. Window-blinds were mostly down--on the windows
provided with them. Even in Bell's Wynd there was not the noise of
the week. Only a tinker family squabbled over the remains of the
deep drinking of the night before. But then, what could Bell's
Wynd expect--to harbour such?

It was yet early dawn when John Bairdieson, kirk officer to the
little company of the faithful to assemble there later in the day,
went up the steps and opened the great door with his key. He went
all round the church with his hat on. It was a Popish idea to take
off the head covering within stone walls, yet John Bairdieson was
that morning possessed with the fullest reverence for the house of
God and the highest sense of his responsibility as the keeper of
it.

He was wont to sing:

"Rather in
My God's house would I keep a door
Than dwell in tents of sin."

That was the retort which he flung across at Taminas Laidlay, the
beadle of the Established Kirk opposite, with all that scorn in
the application which was due from one in John Bairdieson's
position to one in that of Tammas Laidlay.

But this morning John had no spirit for the encounter. He hurried
in and sat down by himself in the minister's vestry. Here he sat
for a long season in deep and solemn thought.

"I'll do it!" he said at last.

It was near the time when the minister usually came to enter into
his vestry, there to prepare himself by meditation and prayer for
the services of the sanctuary. John Bairdieson posted himself on
the top step of the stairs which led from the street, to wait for
him. At last, after a good many passers-by, all single and all in
black, walking very fast, had hurried by, John's neck craning
after every one, the minister appeared, walking solemnly down the
street with his head in the air. His neckcloth was crumpled and
soiled--a fact which was not lost on John.

The minister came up the steps and made as though he would pass
John by without speaking to him; but that guardian of the
sanctuary held out his arms as though he were wearing sheep.

"Na, na, minister, ye come na into this Kirk this day as minister
till ye be lawfully restored. There are nae ministers o' the kirk
o' the Marrow the noo; we're a body without a heid. I thocht that
the Kirk was at an end, but the Lord has revealed to me that the
Marrow Kirk canna end while the world lasts. In the nicht season
he telled me what to do."

The minister stood transfixed. If his faithful serving-man of so
many years had turned against him, surely the world was at an end.
But it was not so.

John Bairdieson went on, standing with his hat in his hand, and
the hairs of his head erect with the excitement of unflinching
justice.

"I see it clear. Ye are no minister o' this kirk. Mr. Welsh is no
minister o' the Dullarg. I, John Bairdieson, am the only officer
of the seenod left; therefore I stand atween the people and you
this day, till ye hae gane intil the seenod hall, that we ca' on
ordinary days the vestry, and there, takkin' till ye the elders
that remain, ye be solemnly ordainit ower again and set apairt for
the office o' the meenistry."

"But I am your minister, and need nothing of the sort!" said
Gilbert Peden. "I command you to let me pass!"

"Command me nae commands! John Bairdieson kens better nor that. Ye
are naither minister nor ruler; ye are but an elder, like mysel'--
equal among your equals; an' ye maun sit amang us this day and
help to vote for a teachin' elder, first among his equals, to be
set solemnly apairt."

The minister, logical to the verge of hardness, could not gainsay
the admirable and even-handed justice of John Bairdieson's
position. More than that, he knew that every man in the
congregation of the Marrow Kirk of Bell's Wynd would inevitably
take the same view.

Without another word he went into the session-house, where in due
time he sat down and opened the Bible.

He had not to wait long, when there joined him Gavin MacFadzean,
the cobbler, from the foot of Leith Walk, and Alexander Taylour,
carriage-builder, elders in the kirk of the Marrow; these,
forewarned by John Bairdieson, took their places in silence. To
them entered Allan Welsh. Then, last of all, John Bairdieson came
in and took his own place. The five elders of the Marrow kirk were
met for the first time on an equal platform. John Bairdieson
opened with prayer. Then he stated the case. The two ex-ministers
sat calm and silent, as though listening to a chapter in the Acts
of the Apostles. It was a strange scene of equality, only possible
and actual in Scotland.

"But mind ye," said John Bairdieson, "this was dune hastily, and
not of set purpose--for ministers are but men--even ministers of
the Marrow kirk. Therefore shall we, as elders of the kirk, in
full standing, set apairt two of our number as teaching elders,
for the fulfilling of ordinances and the edification of them that
believe. Have you anything to say? If not, then let us proceed to
set apairt and ordain Gilbert Peden and Allan Welsh."

But before any progress could be made, Allan Welsh rose. John
Bairdieson had been afraid of this.

"The less that's said, the better," he said hastily, "an' it's
gottin' near kirk-time. We maun get it a' by or then."

"This only I have to say," said Allan Welsh, "I recognize the
justice of my deposition. I have been a sinful and erring man, and
I am not worthy to teach in the pulpit any more. Also, my life is
done. I shall soon lay it down and depart to the Father whose word
I, hopeless and castaway, have yet tried faithfully to preach."

Then uprose Gilbert Peden. His voice was husky with emotion.
"Hasty and ill-advised, and of such a character as to bring
dishonour on the only true Kirk in Scotland, has such an action
been. I confess myself a hasty man, a man of wrath, and that wrath
unto sin. I have sinned the sin of anger and presumption against a
brother. Long ere now I would have taken it back, but it is the
law of God that deeds once done cannot be undone; though we seek
repentance carefully with tears, we cannot put the past away."

Thus, with the consecration and the humility of confession Gilbert
Peden purged himself from the sin of hasty anger.

"Like Uzzah at the threshing-floor of Nachon," he went on, "I have
sinned the sin of the Israelite who set his hand to the ox-cart to
stay the ark of God. It is of the Lord's mercy that I am not
consumed, like the men of Beth-shemesh."

So Gilbert Peden was restored, but Allan Welsh would not accept
any restoration.

"I am not a man accepted of God," he said. And even Gilbert Peden
said no word.

"Noo," said John Bairdieson, "afore this meetin' scales [is
dismissed], there is juist yae word that I hae to say. There's
nane o' us haes wives, but an' except Alexander Taylour, carriage-
maker. Noo, the proceedings this mornin' are never to be jince
named in the congregation. If, then, there be ony soond of this in
the time to come, mind you Alexander Taylour, that it's you
that'll hae to bear the weight o't!"

This was felt to be fair, even by Alexander Taylour, carriage-
maker.

The meeting now broke up, and John Bairdieson went to reprove
Margate Truepenny for knocking with her crutch on the door of the
house of God on the Sabbath morning.

"D'ye think," he said, "that the fowk knockit wi' their staves on
the door o' the temple in Jerusalem?"

"Aiblins," retorted Margate, "they had feller [quicker]
doorkeepers in thae days nor you, John Bairdieson."

The morning service was past. Gilbert Peden had preached from the
text, 'Greater is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a
city."

"Oor minister is yin that looks deep intil the workings o' his ain
heart," said Margate, as she hirpled homeward.