out
a word, and now he was saying to himself that the man who through
soft-heartedness, or through the influence of carnal affection, suffered
sin in another, thus being unfaithful to a sinful soul in danger, was
himself a sinner. He ought to have spoken, he told himself. He could
not be called upon to tell the story to another, but to Allison herself
he should have spoken. If her conscience needed to be wakened, he
sinned against her in keeping silence. It might have been to prepare
him for this very work that he had been sent to lay his Eppie down in
that faraway kirkyard.

Saunners stood still on the hillside when he got thus far. Ought he to
go back again? He could not be sure. The thought of the first glimpse
he had got that night of Allison sitting quiet and busy with her work,
with a look of growing content upon her face that had once been so
gloomy and sad, came back to him, and he moved on again.

"I'll sleep on it," said he, "and I'll seek counsel."

It was a wise resolution to which to come. Saunners was a good man,
though, perhaps, he did not always do full honour to his Master or to
himself in the sight of those who were looking on. He was "dour, and
sour, and ill to bide," it was said of him, even by some among his
friends.

But there was this also to be said of Saunners. It was only when a life
of struggle and disappointment and hard, wearing work was more than half
over, that he had come to see the "True Light," and to find the help of
the Burden-Bearer. A man may forsake the sins of his youth and learn to
hate the things which he loved before, and to love the things which he
hated, and in his heart long, and in his life strive, to follow the
Perfect Example in all things. But the temper which has been indulged
for half a lifetime cannot be easily and always overcome, and habits
which have grown through the years cannot be cast aside and put out of
sight in a moment, like an ill-fitting garment which will never trouble
more. Life was, in a way, a struggle to Saunners still.

But though he lost his temper sometimes and seemed to those who were too
ready to judge him to fail in the putting on of that Charity which
"thinketh no evil" and which is "the bond of perfectness," he was still
a good man, honest, conscientious, just, and he could never willingly
have sought to harm or to alarm any helpless or suffering creature. But
then neither would his conscience let him consent to suffer sin