“But there are good folk outside Dr. Morrison’s kirk, deacon, surely.”

“We’ll trust so, surely, we’ll trust so, Jenny; but a man wi’ broad notions about religion soon gets broad notions about business and all other things.  Why, Jenny, I hae heard that Robert Leslie once spoke o’ the house o’ John Callendar & Co. as ‘old fogyish!’”

“That’s no hanging matter, deacon, and ye must see that the world is moving.”

“Maybe, maybe; but I’se never help it to move except in the safe, narrow road.  Ye ken the Garloch mill-stream?  It is narrow enough for a good rider to leap, but it is deep, and it does its wark weel summer and winter.  They can break down the banks, woman, and let it spread all over the meadow; bonnie enough it will look, but the mill-clapper would soon stop.  Now there’s just sae much power, spiritual or temporal, in any man; spread it out, and it is shallow and no to be depended on for any purpose whatever.  But narrow the channel, Jenny, narrow the channel, and it is a driving force.”

“Ye are getting awa from the main subject, deacon.  It is the L2,000, and ye had best mak up your mind to gie it to Davie.  Then ye can gang awa to your bed and tak your rest.”

“You talk like a—­like a woman.  It is easy to gie other folks’ siller awa.  I hae worked for my siller.”

“Your siller, deacon?  Ye hae naught but a life use o’ it.  Ye canna take it awa wi’ ye.  Ye can leave it to the ane you like best, but that vera person may scatter it to the four corners o’ the earth.  And why not?  Money was made round that it might roll.  It is little good yours is doing lying in the Clyde Trust.”

“Jenny Callendar, you are my ain cousin four times removed, and you hae a kind o’ right to speak your mind in my house; but you hae said enough, woman.  It isna a question of money only; there are ither things troubling me mair than that.  But women are but one-sided arguers.  Good-night to you.”

He turned to the fire and sat down, but after a few moments of the same restless, confused deliberation, he rose and went to his Bible.  It lay open upon its stand, and John put his hand lovingly, reverently upon the pages.  He had no glasses on, and he could not see a letter, but he did not need to.

“It is my Father’s word,” he whispered; and, standing humbly before it, he recalled passage after passage, until a great calm fell upon him.  Then he said,

“I will lay me down and sleep now; maybe I’ll see clearer in the morning light.”

Almost as soon as he opened his eyes in the morning there was a tap at his door, and the gay, strong voice he loved so dearly asked,

“Can I come in, Uncle John?”

“Come in, Davie.”

“Uncle, I was wrong last night, and I cannot be happy with any shadow between us two.”

Scotchmen are not demonstrative, and John only winked his eyes and straightened out his mouth; but the grip of the old and young hand said what no words could have said half so eloquently.  Then the old man remarked in a business-like way,