died! Carmichael dwelt on the likeness
and unlikeness of the two men, who had each loved the highest he knew
and served his generation according to the will of God, till he found
himself again with the Drumtochty doctor on his heroic journeys, with
the Rabbi in his long vigils. It was a singular means of grace to have
known two such men in the flesh, when he was still young and
impressionable. A spiritual emotion possessed Carmichael. He lifted
his heart to the Eternal, and prayed that if on account of any hardship
he shrank from duty he might remember MacLure, and if in any
intellectual strait he was tempted to palter with truth he might see
the Rabbi pursuing his solitary way. The district was full of the
Rabbi, who could not have gone for ever, who might appear any
moment--buried in a book and proceeding steadily in the wrong
direction. The Rabbi surely was not dead, and Carmichael drifted into
that dear world of romance where what we desire comes to pass, and
facts count for nothing. This was how the Idyll went. From the moment
of the reconciliation the Rabbi's disease began to abate in a quite
unheard of fashion--love wrought a miracle--and with Kate's nursing and
his he speedily recovered. Things came right between Kate and himself
as they shared their task of love, and so . . . of course--it took
place last month--and now he was going to carry off the Rabbi, who
somehow had not come to the Presbytery, to Drumtochty, where his bride
would meet them both beneath the laburnum arch at the gate. He would
be cunning as he approached the door of Kilbogie Manse, and walk on the
grass border lest the Rabbi, poring over some Father, should hear the
crunch of the gravel--he did know his footstep--and so he would take
the old man by surprise. Alas! he need not take such care, for the
walk was now as the border with grass, and the gate was lying open, and
the dead house stared at him with open, unconscious eyes, and knew him
not. The key was in the door, and he crossed the threshold once
more--no need to beware of parcels on the floor now--and turned to the
familiar room. The shelves had been taken down, but he could trace
their lines on the ancient discoloured paper that was now revealed for
the first time; there, where a new shutter was resting against the
wall, used to stand the "seat of the fathers," and exactly in the midst
of that heap of straw the Rabbi had his chair. . . .

"Ye 've come tae see hoo we 'r