th done."

"I hope you're right, Father," said Lorne, with a covert glance at his
watch. "Horace--Mrs Williams--I'll have to get you to excuse me. I have
an engagement at eight."

He left them with a happy spring in his step, left them looking after
him, talking of him, with pride and congratulation. Only Stella, with
a severe lip and a disapproving eye, noted the direction he took as he
left the house.

CHAPTER XVIII

Peter Macfarlane had carried the big Bible up the pulpit steps of Knox
Church, and arranged the glass of water and the notices to be given out
beside it, twice every Sunday for twenty years. He was a small spare
man, with thin grey hair that fell back from the narrow dome of his
forehead to his coat collar, decent and severe. He ascended the pulpit
exactly three minutes before the minister did; and the dignity with
which he put one foot before the other made his appearance a ceremonious
feature of the service and a thing quoted. "I was there before Peter"
was a triumphant evidence of punctuality. Dr Drummond would have liked
to make it a test. It seemed to him no great thing to expect the people
of Knox Church to be there before Peter.

Macfarlane was also in attendance in the vestry to help the minister off
with his gown and hang it up. Dr Drummond's gown needed neither helping
nor hanging; the Doctor was deftness and neatness and impatience itself,
and would have it on the hook with his own hands, and never a fold
crooked. After Mr Finlay, on the contrary, Peter would have to pick up
and smooth out--ten to one the garment would be flung on a chair. Still,
he was invariably standing by to see it flung, and to hand Mr Finlay his
hat and stick. He was surprised and put about to find himself one Sunday
evening too late for this attendance. The vestry was empty, the gown
was on the floor. Peter gathered it up with as perturbed an air as if Mr
Finlay had omitted a point of church observance. "I doubt they get into
slack ways in these missions," said Peter. He had been unable, with Dr
Drummond, to see the necessity for such extensions.

Meanwhile Hugh Finlay, in secular attire, had left the church by the
vestry door, and was rapidly overtaking groups of his hearers as they
walked homeward. He was unusually aware of his change of dress because
of a letter in the inside pocket of his coat. The letter, in that
intimate place, spread a region of consciousness round it which hastened
his blood and his