y had reached the church door.

Mrs Murchison saw with relief that Dr Drummond occupied his own pulpit,
but if her glance had gone the length of three pews behind her she
would have discovered that Hugh Finlay made one of the congregation.
Fortunately, perhaps, for her enjoyment of the service, she did not
look round. Dr Drummond was more observing, but his was a position
of advantage. In the accustomed sea of faces two, heavy shadowed and
obstinately facing fate, swam together before Dr Drummond, and after he
had lifted his hands and closed his eyes for the long prayer he saw them
still. So that these words occurred, near the end, in the long prayer--

"O Thou Searcher of hearts, who hast known man from the beginning, to
whom his highest desires and his loftiest intentions are but as
the desires and intentions of a little child, look with Thine own
compassion, we beseech Thee, upon souls before Thee in any peculiar
difficulty. Our mortal life is full of sin, it is also full of the
misconception of virtue. Do Thou clear the understanding, O Lord, of
such as would interpret Thy will to their own undoing; do Thou teach
them that as happiness may reside in chastening, so chastening may
reside in happiness. And though such stand fast to their hurt, do Thou
grant to them in Thine own way, which may not be our way, a safe issue
out of the dangers that beset them."

Dr Drummond had his own method of reconciling foreordination and free
will. To Advena his supplication came with that mysterious double
emphasis of chance words that fit. Her thought played upon them all
through the sermon, rejecting and rejecting again their application
and their argument and the spring of hope in them. She, too, knew that
Finlay was in church and, half timidly, she looked back for him, as the
congregation filed out again into the winter streets. But he, furious,
and more resolved than ever, had gone home by another way.

CHAPTER XXVII

Octavius Milburn was not far beyond the facts when he said that the
Elgin Chamber of Commerce was practically solid this time against the
Liberal platform, though to what extent this state of things was due
to his personal influence might be a matter of opinion. Mr Milburn was
President of the Chamber of Commerce, and his name stood for one of
the most thriving of Elgin's industries, but he was not a person of
influence except as it might be represented in a draft on the Bank of
British North America. He