s-examinations concerning my past, my scholarship, my evangelical
positions, my household, and much else that nestled among them all.
Throughout, I felt the charm and the power of his gentleness, and under
its secret influence I yielded up what many another would have sought in
vain. Some natures there are which search you as the sun lays bare the
flowers, making for itself a pathway to their inmost heart, every petal
opening before its siege of love.

But reciprocity there was none. His lips seemed to stand like inexorable
sentinels before his heart, in league with its great secret, the
guardians of a past which no man had heard revealed. One or two
tentative attempts to discover his antecedents were foiled by his
charming taciturnity.

"I came from the old country many years ago," was the only information
he vouchsafed me.

The evening was spent in conversation which never flamed but never
flagged. My increasing opportunity for observation served but to confirm
my conviction that I was confronted with a man who had one great and
separate secret hidden within the impenetrable recesses of a contrite
heart. He said little about St. Cuthbert's or the morrow, his most
significant observation being to the effect that the serious-minded of
the kirk were looking forward to my appearance with hopeful interest.

After he had bidden me good-night, he again sought me in my chamber,
interrupting the devotions which I was striving to conduct in oblivion
of to-morrow and in the sombre light of the Judgment Day.

"Will you do me a kindness in the kirk to-morrow?" he said, with almost
pathetic eagerness.

I responded fervently that nothing could be a greater kindness to myself
than the sense of one bestowed on him.

"Very well, then, will you give us the Fifty-first Psalm to sing at the
morning service--it always seems to me that it is the soul's staple
food; and let us begin with the fifth verse--

"'Behold, Thou in the inward parts
With truth delighted art.'

It falls like water on the thirsty heart. And perhaps, if your previous
selection will permit, you would give us in the evening the paraphrase--

"'Come let us to the Lord our God
With contrite hearts return.'

My mother first taught me that," he added, with the first quiver of the
lip I yet had seen, "and I have learned it anew from God."

He then swiftly departed, little knowing that he had given me that night
a pillow for both head and