looking for some lingering friend.

The precentor, whose place was in a kind of songster's pulpit just below
me, was wreathed in the complacent air of a man who has discharged a
lofty duty and has done it well. He had borne himself throughout as the
real master of the entire service, and as one who had ruled from an
untitled throne. He cast me one or two swift glances, such as would
become an engineer who had brought his train or a pilot who had brought
his ship to the desired haven. I returned his overture with a look of
humble gratitude, and he thereupon relaxed as one well content with what
was his hard-earned due, but nothing more. I have well learned since
then that by so much as one values one's peace, by that much must one
reverence the precentor.

When I regained the vestry I found it peopled with six or seven elders
(a great and sweltering population), but no word of favour or approval
escaped a single Scottish lip. Their hour had not yet come; but I knew
it not, and was proportionately cast down by what seemed to me a silent
rhetoric of scorn. But it was the will of heaven to somewhat set aside
what I unknowingly estimated to be the verdict of indifference. The
beadle, as one with whom I had had a past, beckoned me without,
whispering that a "wumman body," a stranger, desired to speak with me in
an adjoining room.

Her story was short and sad; her request, the sobbing entreaty of a
broken heart that I would pray for her darling and her prodigal, her
first-born, wandering in that farthest of all countries which lies
beyond the confines of a mother's ken. I answered her with a glance
which owned the kinship of her tears, and pledged it with a hand which,
thank God, has ever found its warmest welcome in the hand of woe. Then I
went back to the vestry unafraid. "For what," thought I, "can these
elders do either for me or against me, if I am really a priest unto God
for one mother's son? This woman has evidently forgotten that I am a
candidate of St. Cuthbert's, and has remembered only that I am a
minister of God."

IV

_OUR MUTUAL VERDICT_

The evening service was like unto that of the morning, the only
difference being that I saw this sturdy folk, mountain-like, in the
light of the setting, instead of the rising sun. But still no word or
hint revealed to me the favour or disfavour with which my efforts had
been received by the people of St. Cuthbert's, save only that one man
ventured to remark tha