RABBI SAUNDERSON, minister of Kilbogie, had been the preacher on the fast day before Carmichaele's first sacrament in the Glen, and, under the full conviction that he had only been searching out his own sins, the old man had gone through the hearts of the congregation as with the candle of the Lord, till Donald Menzies, who had all along suspected that he was little better than a hypocrite, was now fully persuaded that for him to take the sacrament would be to eat and drink condemnation to himself, and Lauchlan Campbell was amazed to discover that a mere Lowland Scot like the rabbi was as mighty a preacher of the law as the chief of the Highland host. The rabbi had been very tender withal, so that the people were not only humbled, but also moved with the honest desire after better things.

Although it was a bitter day, and the snow was deep upon the ground, the rabbi would not remain over-night with Carmichael. Down in Kilbogie an old man near fourscore years of age was dying, and was not assured of the way everlasting, and the rabbi must needs go back through the snow that he might sit by his bedside and guide his feet into the paths of peace. All that night the rabbi wrestled with God that it might be His good pleasure to save this man even at the eleventh hour; and it was one of the few joys that visited the rabbi in his anxious ministry, that, before the grey light of a winter morning came into that lowly room, this aged sinner of Kilbogie had placed himself within the covenant of grace.

While he was ministering the promises in that cottage, and fighting a strong battle for an immortal soul, Carmichael had sent away his dogs, and was sitting alone in the low-roofed study of the Free Kirk manse, with the curtains drawn and the wood fire lighting up the room—for he had put out the lamp—but leaving shadows in the corners where there were no books, and where occasionally the red paper loomed forth like blood.

As the rabbi preached that day, the buoyancy and self-confidence of youth had been severely chastened, and sitting in the manse pew, curtained off from the congregation, the conscience of the young minister had grown tender. It was a fearful charge to lay on any man, and he only four-and-twenty years of age, the care of human souls; and what manner of man must he be who should minister unto them after a spiritual sort the body and blood of Jesus Christ? How true must be his soul, and how clean his hands! For surely, if any man would be damned in this world, and in that which is to come, it would be the man who dispensed the sacrament unworthily.

As he sat in the firelight the room seemed to turn into a place of judgment. Round the walls were the saints of the Church Catholic, and St. Augustine questioned him closely regarding the evil imagination of youthful days, and Thomas À Kempis reproached him because he had so often flinched in the way of the holy cross. Scottish worthies whose lives he had often read, and whose sayings had been often quoted from the pulpit, sat in judgment upon him as to his own personal faith and to his own ends in the ministry. Samuel Rutherford, with his passionate letters, reproached him for his coldness towards Christ; and MacCheyne's life, closed in early manhood, and filled with an unceasing hunger for the salvation of human souls, condemned him for his easy walk and conversation; and Leighton, the gentlest of all the Scotch saints, made him ashamed of bitter words and resentful feelings. And from the walls the face of his mother's minister regarded him with wistful regret, and seemed to plead with him to return to his first love and the simplicity of his mother's faith.

The roof hung heavy over his head, and the walls took a deeper red, while the burning logs reminded him of the consuming fire. An owl hooted outside—a weird and mournful cry—and to the mind of a Celt like Carmichael it seemed to be a warning to set his house in order. He crossed to the window, which faced west, and commanded a long stretch of Glen, and, standing within the curtain, he looked out upon the clear winter night. How pure was the snow, putting all other white to shame! How merciless the cold light of the moon, that flung into relief the tiniest branches of the trees! “Holiness be-cometh thine house, O Lord, for ever.” And he was a minister of the Word and sacrament! The people had been called unto repentance, but he needed most of all the contrite heart. The people had been commanded to confess their sins; it were time that he began.

He knelt at his table, bending his head over the very place where he wrote his sermons, and as he prayed before God the sins of early years came up before him, and passed as in a woful procession—ghosts which had risen from their graves, in which they had long been hid beneath the green grass and the flowers. There remained nothing for him but to acknowledge them one by one with shame and confusion of face, and behold! as he did so, and humbled himself before the Lord, they vanished from his sight till he hoped that the last of them had come and gone. When it seemed to him as if one had lingered behind the rest, and desired to see him quite alone, and when the shroud fell down, he looked into the face of one who had been his friend in college days, and then he knew that all which had gone before was only a preparation, and this was now his testing time.

It was a mighty college to which Carmichael had belonged, and the men thereof had been lifted high above their fellows, and among them all there had been none so superior as this man who was once his friend. Some he looked down upon because they were uncouth in manner; and some because they were deficient in scholarship; and others, who were neither ill-bred nor unlearned, he would have nothing to do with because they had not the note of culture, but were Philistine in their ideas of art and in their ignorance of “precious” literature.

In spite of all this foolishness, the root of the matter was in Frederick Harris. No man had a keener sense of honour, no man was more ready to help a fellow-student, none worked harder in the mission of the college, none lived a simpler life. Yet because he was without doubt a superior person, even beyond all other superior persons—and the college was greatly blessed with this high order of beings—certain men were blind to his excellences, and cherished a dull feeling of resentment against him; and there were times when Carmichael dared to laugh at him, whereat Harris was very indignant, and reproached him for vulgar frivolity.

One day a leaflet was found in every class-room of the college, and in the dining-hall, and in the gymnasium, and in every other room—even, it is said, in the Senate-room itself. Its title was, A Mighty Young Man, and it was a merciless description of Harris in verse, from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, in all his ways and words—coarse and insulting, but incisive and clever. He was late in entering the Hebrew class-room that morning, and was soon conscious that the students were interested in other things besides the authorship of the Pentateuch. Opposite him lay the poem, and, after he had read the first verse, his face turned to a fiery red, and then he left the class-room with much dignity.

It had been better for himself, and it would have saved much sorrow to Carmichael, if Harris had treated the poem with indifference; but, like many other people who allow themselves the luxury of despising their fellow-creatures, he was morbidly sensitive when his fellow-creatures turned on him. For some reason, known only to himself, he concluded that Carmichael had written the poem, and demanded an apology with threats; and Carmichael, who had thought the thing in very poor taste, and would have been willing to laugh at it along with Harris, was furious that he should have been supposed guilty of such a breach of friendship. So, being a Celt, who acts by impulse rather than by reason, he told Harris in the Common Hall that, if he supposed that he had written the sheet, he was at liberty to do so, and need not expect either a denial or an apology.

They never spoke again, nor met except in a public place, and when Carmichael was ordained minister in the Glen, Harris joined a mission settlement in one of the lowest quarters of a southern city.

From time to time Carmichael read greedily of his heroic service, and the power which he was acquiring—for he had never been haughty with poor people, but ever with them most gentle and humble. Again and again it had been laid on Carmichael to write to his old friend, and express regret for his pride, and assure him of his innocence in the matter of the squib, but he thought that Harris ought first to write to him, and then, if he did, Carmichael meant to telegraph, and invite his friend to come up to the Glen, where they would renew the fellowship of former days. But Harris gave no sign, and Carmichael had no need to telegraph.

Carmichael rose from his knees, and opened a drawer in his writing-table, and from below a mass of college papers took out a photograph. The firelight was enough to show the features, and memory did the rest. They had once shared rooms together, and a more considerate chum no man could have. They had gone on more than one walking tour together, and never once had Harris lost his temper; they had done work together in a mission school, and on occasion Harris had been ready to do Carmichael's as well as his own; they had also prayed together, and there was no pride in Harris when he prayed.

What were his faults, after all? A certain fastidiousness of intellect, and an unfortunate mannerism, and a very innocent form of self-approbation, and an instinctive shrinking from rough-mannered men—nothing more. There was in him no impurity, nor selfishness, nor meanness, nor trickiness, nor jealousy, nor evil temper. And this was the man—his friend also—to whom he had refused to give the satisfaction of an explanation, and whom he had made to suffer bitterly during his last college term. And just because Harris was of porcelain ware, and not common delf, would he suffer the more.

He had refused to forgive this man his trespass, which was his first transgression against him, and now that he thought of it, hardly to be called a transgression. How could he ask God to forgive him his own trespasses? and if he neither forgave nor was forgiven, how dare he minister the sacrament unto his people? He would write that night, and humble himself before his friend, and beseech him for a message, however brief, that would lift the load from off his heart before he broke bread in the sacrament.

Then it came to his mind that no letter could reach that southern town till Saturday morning, and therefore no answer come to him till Monday, and meanwhile who would give the people the sacrament, and how could he communicate himself? For his own sin, his foolish pride and fiery temper, would fence the holy table and hinder his approach. He must telegraph, and an impression took hold upon his heart that there must be no delay. The clock in the lobby—an eight-day clock that had come from his mother's house, and seemed to him a kind of censor of his doings—struck three, for the hours had flown in the place of judgment, and now the impression began to deepen that there was not an hour to be lost. He must telegraph, and as the office at Kilbogie would be open at five o'clock to dispatch a mail, they would send a wire for him. It would be heavy walking through the snow, but the moon was still up, and two hours were more than enough.

As he picked his way carefully where the snow had covered the ditches, or turned the flank of a drift, he was ever grudging the lost time, and ever the foreboding was deeper in his heart that he might be too late, not for the opening of Kilbogie post-office, but for something else—he knew not what. So bravely had he struggled through the snow that it was still a quarter to five when he passed along sleeping Kilbogie; and so eager was he by this time that he roused the friendly postmaster, and induced him by all kinds of pleas, speaking as if it were life and death, to open communication with Muirtown, where there was always a clerk on duty, and to send on to that southern city the message he had been composing as he came down through the snow and the woods:

“It was not I. I could not have done it. Forgive my silence, and send a message before Sunday, for it is my first sacrament in Drumtochty.

“Your affectionate friend,

“John Carmichael.”

It was still dark when he reached the manse again, and before he fell asleep he prayed that the telegram might not be too late, but as he prayed, he asked himself what he meant, and could not answer. For the Celt has warnings other men do not receive, and hears sounds they do not hear.

It was noon next day, the Saturday before the sacrament, and almost time for the arrival of the preacher, before he awoke, and then he had not awaked unless the housekeeper had brought him this telegram from “Mistress Harris, St. Andrew's Settlement, Mutford, E.”:

“My son Frederick died this morning at eight o'clock of malignant fever. He was conscious at the end, and we read your telegram to him. He sent this message: 'Long ago I knew it was not you, and I ought to have written. Forgive me, as I have forgiven you. My last prayer is for a blessing upon you and your people in the sacrament to-morrow. God be with you till we meet at the marriage supper of the Lamb!'”

The text which Carmichael took for his action sermon on the morrow was, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us,” and he declared the forgiveness of sins with such irresistible grace that Donald Menzies twice said “Amen” aloud, and there are people who will remember that day unto the ages of ages.