rdition at the idle corner by the church wall. Even the old began to
look askance at the Bible that had been their only book of age, and to
shiver wantonly at the inevitable approach of death. The young minister
cried denunciation upon Fraser, like a vague-minded, but angry Jonah
before a provincial Nineveh.

"Turn him out, Mr. Ralston, drive him forth," he ejaculated. "What is
his rent to you? What is his money in comparison with the immortal souls
of men? Away with him, away with him."

I mentioned the small matter of the lease. The young minister, with a
quivering scarlet face, replied stammering:--

"A lease! But--but--your own wife--she is--is--"

"I do not discuss her," I said sternly.

"Well; they are deserting the services. You see that yourself. They will
not come to hear me preach. They will not listen to me."

The man was tasting bitterness. He was almost crying. I was terribly
sorry for him. Yet, all I could do was to think of the spectre at the
Manse and answer:--

"I can do nothing."

His words were true. Carlounie's soul was being devoured as by a plague.
A colony of unbelievers was springing up in the midst of the beautiful
woods and the mountains. Soon the evil fame of the place began to spread
abroad, and men, in distant parts of Scotland, to speak of mad
Carlounie. The matter weighed intolerably upon me, and at last became a
fixed idea. I could think of nothing else but this devil's home in the
hills, this haunted and harassed centre of doom and darkness which was
my possession and in which I lived. I fell into silence. I ceased to
stir abroad beyond my own land. It seemed to me that Carlounie should
keep strict quarantine, should be isolated, and that each person who
went over its borders carried a strange infection and was guilty of
murder. I forbade Kate to drive beyond my estates.

"I never wish to," she said.

And I knew that where Fraser was she was happy. He had her soul fast by
this; or, it would be truer to say, the spectre of the Manse had both
him and her. And he aged apace and bore on his countenance the stamp of
evil. And I brooded and brooded upon the whole matter. But, from
whatever point I started, I came back to the Manse and to the spectre
dwelling in it with Hugh Fraser. I had given death to Doctor Wedderburn,
in return for the life so miraculously given to me, and now his spirit,
retained in its ancient abiding-place, spread death about it in its
turn. This was, and is,