in the second, he didna mean it
leeterally himsel', for we a' kenned it was his intention to be doon the
Doctor's throat in five meenits; an', thirdly, it wad be a bonny queer
thing gin thirty-three Kers an' Grahams a' earnestly prayin' the
contrar', hadna as muckle influence at a throne o' grace, as ae man that
didna mean what he said, even though the name o' him was William Henry
Calvin."

Saunders expressed the general feeling of the meeting outside, which was
frankly belligerent. They had indeed been beaten at the polls as they
had expected, but in an honest tulzie with dickies the parish would hear
a different tale.

But there was one element in the meeting that the Kers had taken no
notice of. There was but one woman there, and she a girl. In the corner
of the schoolroom, on the chairman's right hand, sat Grace Hutchison,
daughter of the manse. The minister was a widower, and this was his only
daughter. She was nineteen. She kept his house, and turned him out like
a new pin. But the parish knew little of her. It called her "the
minister's shilpit bit lassie."

Her face was indeed pale, and her dark eyes of a still and serene
dignity, like one who walks oft at e'en in the Fairy Glen, and sees
deeper into the gloaming than other folk.

Grace Hutchison accompanied her father, and sat in the corner knitting.
A slim, girlish figure hardly filled to the full curves of maidenhood,
she was yet an element that made for peace. The younger men saw that her
lips were red and her eyes had the depth of a mountain tarn. But they
had as soon thought of trysting with a ghaist from the kirkyaird, or
with the Lady of the Big House, as with Grace Hutchison, the minister's
daughter.

So it happened that Grace Hutchison had reached the age of nineteen
years, without knowing more of love than she gathered from the
seventeenth and eighteenth century books in her father's library. And
one may get some curious notions out of Laurence Sterne crossed with
Rutherfurd's _Letters_ and _The Man of Feeling_.

"It is moved and seconded that the meetings be opened with prayer."

Objected to by Doctor Hutchison, ostensibly on the ground that they are
engaged in a purely practical and parochial business, really because it
is proposed by Mr. Calvin and seconded by Saunders Ker. Loyalty to the
National Zion forbade agreement. Yet even Dr. Hutchison did not see the
drift of the motion, but only had a general impression that some
advantage for