n. He turned upon me,
dealt with my pleas, scattered my contentions--growing, I fancied, very
old and with the rumbling voice of age,--thrust at me with the lances of
sarcasm, sore belaboured me into silence and mute fury. And all the time
Kate sat by, and I seemed to see her soul, with fluttering outstretched
wings, sinking down to hell, as a hawk drops out of sight into a dark
cleft of the mountains. And then, in the last resort, Fraser struck his
hand down on mine to clinch his defeat of me. And I, looking upon that
poor Kate, cried out:--

"God forgive you, Fraser, for what you're doing--murderer! murderer!"

Scarcely had my cry died away than I knew I had borrowed the very words
of Wedderburn to me. A cold, like ice, came upon me. This reversal of
the past in the present was too ironic. I heard the doctor chuckling
drearily in Hades. I suddenly sprang up like one pursued, and got away
into the night, leaving Kate and Fraser together by the fire. But the
spectre of the Manse surely pursued me. I heard its soft but heavy
footsteps coming in my wake. I heard its old laughter in the dark behind
me; and I sickened and faltered, and was in fear beyond all human fear
of an enemy. The next day I told Fraser he must leave the Manse; I would
build him a shooting-lodge on any part of my estate that he preferred.

"No," he said, "no; I have grown to love the old place; I never feel
alone there."

I looked in his eyes, searching after his meaning.

"I would rather pull down the Manse," I said.

In reply, he touched with his forefinger the lease I had signed with
him, which lay on his writing-table.

"You cannot, my friend," he said.

I cannot do anything that I would. I am driven on a dark road by the
creature with the whip that is surely after every man who once yields to
his worst desires.

Just after this I received a visit from Mr. Mackenzie, the new minister,
a young and fervent, but not very knowledgeable man, whose zeal was
red-hot, but incompetent, and who would have died for the faith he could
never properly expound, like many young ministers of our church. The
little man was in a twisting turmoil of distress, and was moved, so he
said, to deal very plainly with me. I bade him deal on. It seemed that
his flock was becoming infected with atheism, which spread like the
plague, from the old Manse. The young children lisped it to each other
in the lanes; lovers talked it between their kisses; youths chattered
pe