in this time of fermentation, very exasperating and pugnacious, and so
he drove the Rabbi to the only hard action of his life, wherein the old
man suffered most, and which may be said to have led to his death.
Carmichael, like the Rabbi, had intended to preach that morning on the
love of God, and thought he was doing so with some power. What he did
was to take the Fatherhood of God and use it as a stick to beat
Pharisees with, and under Pharisees it appeared as if he included every
person who still believed in the inflexible action of the moral laws
and the austere majesty of God. Many good things he no doubt said, but
each had an edge, and it cut deeply into people of the old school. Had
he seen the Rabbi, it would not have been possible for him to continue;
but he only was conscious of Lachlan Campbell, with whom he had then a
feud, and who, he imagined, had come to criticise him. So he went on
his rasping way that Sacrament morning, as when one harrows the spring
earth with iron teeth, exciting himself with every sentence to fresh
crudities of thought and extravagances of opposition. But it only
flashed on him 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 commu