ce-bearer, David Davidson! How
his words marched, sorrowing to the close! "Much I have said of him,
and more than he would have had me say." Will it not stay with those who
heard it till the very end, the trenchant, mournful fall of that "more
than he would have had me say"?

It was a thing that Hugh Finlay could not abide in Dr Drummond.

As the winter passed, the little Doctor was hard put to it to keep his
hands off the great political issue of the year, bound up as it was in
the tenets of his own politics, which he held only less uncompromisingly
than those of the Shorter Catechism. It was, unfortunately for him,
a gradual and peaceful progress of opinion, marked by no dramatic
incidents; and analogy was hard to find in either Testament for a change
of fiscal policy based on imperial advantage. Dr Drummond liked a pretty
definite parallel; he had small opinion of the practice of drawing a
pint out of a thimble, as he considered Finlay must have done when he
preached the gospel of imperialism from Deuteronomy XXX, 14. "But the
word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou
mayest do it." Moreover, to preach politics in Knox Church was a liberty
in Finlay.

The fact that Finlay had been beforehand with him operated perhaps to
reconcile the Doctor to his difficulty; and the candidature of one of
his own members in what was practically the imperial interest no doubt
increased his embarrassment. Nevertheless, he would not lose sight of
the matter for more than two or three weeks together. Many an odd blow
he delivered for its furtherance by way of illustrating higher things,
and he kept it always, so to speak, in the practical politics of the
long prayer.

It was Sunday evening, and Abby and her husband, as usual, had come to
tea. The family was complete with the exception of Lorne, who had driven
out to Clayfield with Horace Williams, to talk over some urgent matters
with persons whom he would meet at supper at the Metropole Hotel
at Clayfield. It was a thing Mrs Murchison thought little short of
scandalous--supper to talk business on the Sabbath day, and in a hotel,
a place of which the smell about the door was enough to knock you down,
even on a weekday. Mrs Murchison considered, and did not scruple to say
so, that politics should be left alone on Sundays. Clayfield votes
might be very important, but there were such things as commandments,
she supposed. "It'll bring no blessing," she declare