nd it must have woke
some dim chord in his memory, I made haste to strike while the iron was
hot.

"There was a woman at Cramond..." I began.

He got to his feet and looked me in the face. "Ay, there was," he said,
with an odd note in his voice. "What about her?" I could see that his
hand was shaking.

"I think her name was Alison Steel."

"What ken ye of Alison Steel?" he asked fiercely. "Quick, man, what
word have ye frae Alison?"

"You sent me with a letter to her. D'you not mind your last days in
Edinburgh, before they shipped you to the Plantations?"

"It comes back to me," he cried. "Ay, it comes back. To think I should
live to hear of Alison! What did she say?"

"Just this. That John Gib was a decent man if he would resist the devil
of pride. She charged me to tell you that you would never be out of her
prayers, and that she would live to be proud of you. 'John will never
shame his kin,' quoth she."

"Said she so?" he said musingly. "She was aye a kind body. We were to
be married at Martinmas, I mind, if the Lord hadna called me."

"You've need of her prayers," I said, "and of the prayers of every
Christian soul on earth. I came here yestereen to find you mouthing
blasphemies, and howling like a mad tyke amid a parcel of heathen. And
they tell me you're to lead your savages on Virginia, and give that
smiling land to fire and sword. Think you Alison Steel would not be
black ashamed if she heard the horrid tale?"

"'Twas the Lord's commands," he said gloomily, but there was no
conviction in his words.

I changed my tone. "Do you dare to speak such blasphemy?" I cried. "The
Lord's commands! The devil's commands! The devil of your own sinful
pride! You are like the false prophets that made Israel to sin. What
brings you, a white man, at the head of murderous savages?"

"Israel would not hearken, so I turned to the Gentiles," said he.

"And what are you going to make of your Gentiles? Do you think you've
put much Christianity into the heart of the gentry that were watching
your antics last night?"

"They have glimmerings of grace," he said.

"Glimmerings of moonshine! They are bent on murder, and so are you, and
you call that the Lord's commands. You would sacrifice your own folk to
the heathen hordes. God forgive you, John Gib, for you are no
Christian, and no Scot, and no man."

"Virginia is an idolatrous land," said he; but he could not look up at
me.

"And are your Indians not idolaters? Are