the soft little hand touching her cheek now and then, and
the hushed voice whispering a word in her ear. So for the first time
her attention was arrested by what was going on in the room, and some of
the folk got their first good look at her sad eyes that night.

And if Allison had but known it, it was well worth her while both to
look and to listen. The minister was the leader of the meeting, but it
was open to all who had anything to say.

It was something else besides a prayer-meeting on most nights. There
was usually a short exposition of some passage of Scripture by the
minister, and frequently a conversational turn was given to this part of
the exercise. The minister had "the knack" of putting questions
judiciously, to the great help and comfort of those who had something to
say, but who did not well know how to say it. And though it must be
acknowledged, as Mrs Hume had admitted to Allison, that there were now
and then things said which were not altogether for edification, on the
whole, this method, in the minister's hands, answered well. It kept up
the interest of the meeting to some who would hardly have cared to
listen to a sermon out of the kirk, or on a week night. A few who were
only occasional hearers on the Sabbath liked these informal discussions
of precept and doctrine, as they would have liked the discussion of any
other matter, for the mere intellectual pleasure to be enjoyed, and, as
may be supposed, opportunities for this kind of enjoyment did not often
occur in Nethermuir.

And there were a few men of another stamp among them--men to whom Mr
Hume and "his new doctrines," as they were called, had come, as sunlight
comes into a day of darkness. Even in that time which was already
passing away when these men were children, the time which its friends
have called "the dark days of the kirk of Scotland," the Bible had been
read and reverenced in all well-ordered households, and it was as true
then as in the day when our Lord himself had said it: "The words which I
speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." And so, through
much reading of the Word, had come a sense of sinfulness and ill-desert
which a vain striving to work out a righteousness for themselves could
not quiet or banish, a longing for pardon from Him whom they had
offended, and for a sense of acceptance and friendship with Him who had
promised to save.

With regard to all this, it was but "an uncertain sound" which was