ent tear it to pieces. But she did not, she
finally lifted it and forced herself to continue reading:

I was hating to tell thee some things I knew, and I was often
writing and then tearing up my letter, for it made me sick to be
thy true friend in such a cruel way. But often I have heard the
wise tell "when the knife is needed, the salve pot will be of no
use." Now then, this day, I tell myself with a sad heart, "Jean,
thou must take the knife. The full time has come."

"Why won't the woman tell what she has got to tell," said Thora in a
voice of impatient anguish, and in a few minutes she whispered, "I am
cold." Then she threw a knitted cape over her shoulders and lifted the
letter again, oh, so reluctantly, and read:

The young man will have told your father, that he is McLeod's
agent and a sort of steward of his large properties. This does
not sound like anything wrong, but often I have been told
different. Old McLeod left to his son many houses. Three of them
are not good houses, they are really fashionable gambling houses.
Macrae has the management of them as well as of many others in
various parts of the city. Of these others I have heard no wrong.
I suppose they may be quite respectable.

This story has more to it. Whenever there is a great horse race
there Macrae will be, and I saw myself in the daily newspapers
that his name was among the winners on the horse Sergius. It was
only a small sum he won, but sin is not counted in pounds and
shillings. No, indeed! So there is no wonder his good father is
feeling the shame of it.

Moreover, though he calls himself Ian, that is not his name. His
name is John Calvin and his denial of his baptismal name, given to
him at the Sabbath service, in the house of God, at the very altar
of the same, is thought by some to be a denial of God's grace and
mercy. And he has been reasoned with on this matter by the ruling
elder in his father's kirk, but no reason would he listen to, and
saying many things about Calvin I do not care to write.

Many stories go about young men and young women, and there is this
and that said about Macrae. I have myself met him on Prince's
Street in the afternoon very often, parading there with various
gayly dressed women. I do not blame him much for that. The
Edinburgh girls are very forward, not like the Norse girls, who
are modest and retiring in their ways. I am forced to say th