ature--an' if I had followed out this profession, I make nae doot
that, with my aunt's seventy thousand, I should be a vera comfortable,
respectable, selfish type of a man, who was decently embarked in an
apparently important but really useless career--"

"Useless?" interrupted Lorimer archly. "I say, Mac, take care! A
minister of the Lord, _useless_!"

"I'm thinkin' there are unco few meen-isters o' the Lord in this warld,"
said Macfarlane musingly. "Maist o' them meen-ister to themselves, an'
care na a wheen mair for Christ than Buddha. I tell ye, I was an altered
man after we'd been to Norway--the auld pagan set me thinkin' mony an'
mony a time--for, ma certes! he's better worthy respect than mony a
so-called Christian. And as for his daughter--the twa great blue eyes
o' that lassie made me fair ashamed o' mysel'. Why? Because I felt that
as a meen-ister o' the Established Kirk, I was bound to be a sort o'
heep-ocrite,--ony thinkin', reasonable man wi' a conscience canna be
otherwise wi' they folk,--and ye ken, Errington, there's something in
your wife's look that maks a body hesitate before tellin' a lee.
Weel--what wi' her face an' the auld _bonde's_ talk, I reflectit that I
couldna be a meen-ister as meen-isters go,--an' that I must e'en follow
oot the Testament's teachings according to ma own way of thinkin'.
First, I fancied I'd rough it abroad as a meesionary--then I remembered
the savages at hame, an' decided to attend to them before onything else.
Then my aunt's siller came in handy--in short, I'm just gaun to live on
as wee a handfu' o' the filthy lucre as I can, an' lay oot the rest on
the heathens o' London. An' it's as well to do't while I'm alive to see
to't mysel'--for I've often observed that if ye leave your warld's gear
to the poor when ye're deed, just for the gude reason that ye canna tak
it to the grave wi' ye,--it'll melt in a wonderfu' way through the hands
o' the 'secretaries' an' 'distributors' o' the fund, till there's
naething left for those ye meant to benefit. Ye maunna think I'm gaun to
do ony preachin' business down at East-end,--there's too much o' that
an' tract-givin' already. The puir soul whose wee hoosie I've rented
hadna tasted bit nor sup for three days--till I came an' startled her
into a greetin' fit by takin' her rooms an' payin' her in advance--eh!
mon, ye'd have thought I was a saint frae heaven if ye'd heard her
blessin' me,--an' a gude curate had called on her just before