Its plain wooden pews and old-fashioned elevated pulpit rather pleased than offended David, and the air of antiquity about the place consecrated it in his eyes.  Men like whatever reminds them of their purest and best days, and David had been once in the old Relief Church on the Doo Hill in Glasgow—­just such a large, bare, solemn-looking house of worship.  The still, earnest men and women, the droning of the precentor, the antiquated singing pleased and soothed him.  He did not notice much the thin little fair man who conducted the services; for he was holding a session with his own soul.

A peculiar movement among the congregation announced that the sermon was beginning, and David, looking up, saw that the officiating minister had been changed.  This man was swarthy and tall, and looked like some old Jewish prophet, as he lifted his rapt face and cried, like one crying in the wilderness, “Friends!  I have a question to ask you to-night:  ’What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’”

For twenty-three years David had silenced that voice, but it had found him out again—­it was Willie Caird’s.  At first interested and curious, David soon became profoundly moved as Willie, in clear, solemn, thrilling sentences, reasoned of life and death and judgment to come.  Not that he followed his arguments, or was more than dimly conscious of the moving eloquence that stirred the crowd as a mighty wind stirs the trees in the forest:  for that dreadful question smote, and smote, and smote upon his heart as if determined to have an answer.

What shall it profit?  What shall it profit?  What shall it profit?  David was quick enough at counting material loss and profit, but here was a question beyond his computation.  He went silently out of the church, and wandered away by Holyrood Palace and St. Anthony’s Chapel to the pathless, lonely beauty of Salisbury Crags.  There was no answer in nature for him.  The stars were silent above, the earth silent beneath.  Weariness brought him no rest; if he slept, he woke with the start of a hunted soul, and found him asking that same dreadful question.  When he looked in the mirror his own face queried of him, “What profit?” and he was compelled to make a decided effort to prevent his tongue uttering the ever present thought.

But at noon he would meet the defaulting bank committee, “and doubtless his lawful business would take its proper share of his thought!” He told himself that it was the voice and face of his old friend that had affected him so vividly, and that if he went and chatted over old times with Willie, he would get rid of the disagreeable influence.

The influence, however, went with him into the creditors’ committee room.  The embarrassed officials had dreaded greatly the interview.  No one hoped for more than bare justice from David Lockerby.  “Clemency, help, sympathy!  You’ll get blood out o’ a stane first, gentlemen,” said the old cashier, with a dour, hopeless face.