ken
as if a new Rabbi were before him; then he remembered the study of
Kilbogie, and all things that had happened therein, and his spirits
rose.

"How dare you suggest such wickedness, Rabbi, that any of us should
ever criticise or complain of anything you say? Whatever you give us
will be right, and do us good, and in the evening you will tell me all
I said wrong."

Saunderson looked at Carmichael for ten seconds as one who has not been
understood, and sighed. Then he went down the kirk after the beadle,
and the people marked how he walked like a man who was afraid he might
fall, and, turning a corner, he supported himself on the end of a pew.
As he crept up the pulpit stairs Elspeth gave her husband a look, and,
although well accustomed to the slowness of his understanding, was
amazed that he did not catch the point. Even a man might have seen
that this was not the same minister that came in to the Sacrament with
hope in his very step.

"A'm no here tae say 'that a' kent what wes comin''"--Elspeth, like all
experts, was strictly truthful--"for the like o' that wes never heard
in Drumtochty, and noo that Doctor Saunderson is awa', will never be
heard again in Scotland. A' jaloused that vials wud be opened an' a'
wesna wrang, but ma certes"--and that remarkable woman left you to
understand that no words in human speech could even hint at the
contents of the vials.

When the Rabbi gave out his text, "Vessels of wrath," in a low,
awestruck voice, Carmichael began to be afraid, but after a little he
chid himself for foolishness. During half an hour the Rabbi traced the
doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty through Holy Scripture with a
characteristic wealth of allusion to Fathers ancient and reforming, and
once or twice he paused, as if he would have taken up certain matters
at greater length, but restrained himself, simply asserting the Pauline
character of St. Augustine's thinking, and exposing the looseness of
Clement of Alexandria with a wave of the hand, as one hurrying on to
his destination.

"Dear old Rabbi"--Carmichael congratulated himself in his pew--"what
need he have made so many apologies for his subject? He is going to
enjoy himself, and he is sure to say something beautiful before he is
done." But he was distinctly conscious all the same of a wish that the
Rabbi were done and all . . . well, uncertainty over. For there was a
note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi's voice, and he had not