im that he had spoken foolishly when he came
down from the pulpit, and found the Rabbi a shrunken figure in his
chair before the Holy Table.

Discerning people, like Elspeth Macfadyen, saw the whole tragedy from
beginning to end, and felt the pity of it keenly. For a while the
Rabbi waited with fond confidence--for was not he to hear the
best-loved of his boys--and he caught eagerly at a gracious expression,
as if it had fallen from one of the fathers. Anything in the line of
faith would have pleased the Rabbi that day, who was as a little child
and full of charity, in spite of his fierce doctrines. By-and-by the
light died away from his eyes as when a cloud comes over the face of
the sun and the Glen grows cold and dreary. He opened his eyes and was
amazed--looking at the people and questioning them what had happened to
their minister. Suddenly he flushed as a person struck by a friend,
and then, as one blow followed another, he covered his face with both
hands, sinking lower and lower in his chair, till even that decorous
people were almost shaken in their attention.

When Carmichael gave him the cup in the Sacrament the Rabbi's hand
shook and he spilled some drops of the wine upon his beard, which all
that day showed like blood on the silvery whiteness. Afterwards he
spake in his turn to the communicants, and distinguished the true
people of God from the multitude--to whom he held out no hope--by so
many and stringent marks, that Donald Menzies refused the Sacrament
with a lamentable groan. And when the Sacrament was over and the time
came for Carmichael to shake hands with the assisting minister in the
vestry, the Rabbi had vanished, and he had no speech with him till they
went through the garden together--very bleak it seemed in the winter
dusk--unto the sermon that closed the services of the day.

"God's hand is heavy in anger on us both this day, John," and
Carmichael was arrested by the awe and sorrow in the Rabbi's voice,
"else . . . you had not spoken as you did this forenoon, nor would
necessity be laid on me to speak . . . as I must this night.

"His ways are all goodness and truth, but they are oftentimes
encompassed with darkness, and the burden He has laid on me is . . .
almost more than I can bear; it will be heavy for you also.

"You will drink the wine of astonishment this night, and it will be
strange if you do not . . . turn from the hand that pours it out, but
you will not refuse the tru