It was very dark and the weather was dumb and agitating. No
leaf danced, no grass quivered. Breathless, dead, seemed the woods and
fields, the ocean of moorland, the assemblage of the mountains. I heard
no step upon the lonely road but my own, and life seemed to have left
the world until I came upon the Manse. Then I saw the light in the
doctor's window, and, drawing near, observed that the blind was up and
the lattice thrust open among the climbing dog-roses. Craftily I stole
up the narrow garden path, and, keeping to the side of the window,
looked into the room.

Doctor Wedderburn lounged within at the table facing me. A pen was in
his shaking hand. A shuffle of manuscript paper was before him, and a
Bible, in which he thrust his fingers as if to keep texts already looked
out. Beyond the Bible was a bottle, three-quarters full of whiskey, and
a glass. His muttering lips and dull yet shining eyes betokened his
condition. I saw before me a drunkard writing a sermon. The vision was
sufficiently bizarre. A tragedy of infinite pathos mingled with a comedy
of hideous yet undeniable humour in the live picture. I neither wept nor
did I laugh. I only watched, shrouded by the inarticulate night. The
doctor took a pull at the bottle, then swept the leaves of the Bible....

"Let me die the death of the righteous," he murmured thickly. "That's
it--that's--that's--" He wrote on the paper before him with a wandering
pen, then pushed the sheet from him. It fell on the floor by the window.

"And let my last end be like his--Ah--ah!"

He drank again, and again wrote with fury. How old and how wicked he
looked, yet how sad! He crouched down over the table and the pen broke
in his hand. A dull exclamation burst from him. Taking up the bottle, he
poured by accident some of the whiskey over the open Bible.

"A baptism! A baptism!" he ejaculated, bursting into laughter.
"Now--now--let's see--let's see."

Again he violently turned the sodden leaves and shook his head. He could
not read the words, and that angered him. He drank again and again till
the bottle was empty, then staggered out of the room. I heard his
frantic footsteps echoing in the uncarpeted passage. Quickly I leaned in
at the window and caught up the sheet of paper that had fallen to the
floor. I held it up to the light. Only one sentence writhed up and down
over it, repeated a dozen times; "There is no God!" While I read I heard
the doctor returning, and I shrank back in