step. There was purpose in his whole bearing; Advena
Murchison, looking back at some suggestion of Lorne's, caught it, and
lost for a moment the meaning of what she said. When he overtook them,
with plain intention, she walked beside the two men, withdrawn and
silent, like a child. It was unexpected and overwhelming, his joining
them after the service, accompanying them, as it were, in the flesh
after having led them so far in the spirit; he had never done it before.
She felt her heart confronted with a new, an immediate issue, and
suddenly afraid. It shrank from the charge for which it longed, and
would have fled; yet, paralysed with delight, it kept time with her
sauntering feet.

They talked of the sermon, which had been strongly tinged with the issue
of the day. Dreamer as he was by temperament, Finlay held to the wisdom
of informing great public questions with the religious idea, vigorously
disclaimed that it was anywhere inadmissible.

"You'll have to settle with the Doctor, Mr Finlay," Lorne warned him
gaily, "if you talk politics in Knox Church. He thinks he never does."

"Do you think," said Finlay, "that he would object to--to one's going as
far afield as I did tonight?"

"He oughtn't to," said Lorne. "You should have heard him when old Sir
John Macdonald gerrymandered the electoral districts and gave votes to
the Moneida Indians. The way he put it, the Tories in the congregation
couldn't say a word, but it was a treat for his fellow Grits."

Finlay smiled gravely. "Political convictions are a man's birthright,"
he said. "Any man or any minister is a poor creature without them. But
of course there are limits beyond which pulpit influence should not go,
and I am sure Dr Drummond has the clearest perception of them. He seems
to have been a wonderful fellow, Macdonald, a man with extraordinary
power of imaginative enterprise. I wonder whether he would have seen his
way to linking up the Empire as he linked up your Provinces here?"

"He'd have hated uncommonly to be in opposition, but I don't see how
he could have helped it," Lorne said. "He was the godfather of Canadian
manufacturers, you know--the Tories have always been the industrial
party. He couldn't have gone for letting English stuff in free, or
cheap; and yet he was genuinely loyal and attached to England. He would
discriminate against Manchester with tears in his eyes! Imperialist in
his time spelled Conservative, now it spells Liberal. The Conserva