“Aye.  The God who slays the Amalekites.”

M’Nab turned his wintry glance upon him.  “And is not that God?”

The other looked at the hill and at the vast, quiet, gray field of cloud.  “Perhaps!...  Let’s talk of something else.  I am too tired to argue.  I sat up with him last night.”

The minister would have preferred to continue to discuss the character of Deity.  He turned heavily.  “I was in company, not long ago, with some gentlemen who were wondering why you stayed on at Glenfernie House.  They said that you had good offers elsewhere—­much better than with a Scots laird.”

“I promised Mrs. Jardine that I would stay.”

“While the laird lived?”

“No, not just that—­though I think that she would have liked me to do so.  But so long as the laird would keep Jamie with him at home.”

“What will he do now—­Jamie?”

“He has set his heart on the army.  He’s strong of body, with a kind of big, happy-go-luckiness—­”

A horseman came up behind them.  It proved to be Robin Greenlaw, of Littlefarm.  He checked his gray and exchanged greetings with the minister and the tutor.  “How does the laird find himself the day?” he asked Strickland.

“No better, I think, Mr. Greenlaw.”

“I’m sorry.  It’s the end, I jalouse!  Is Mr. Alexander come?”

“We look for him to-morrow.”

“The land and the folk’ll be blithe to see him—­if it was not for the occasion of his coming!  If there’s aught a body can do for any at Glenfernie—?”

“Every one has been as good as gold, Greenlaw.  But you know there’s not much at the last that can be done—­”

“No.  We all pass, and they that bide can but make the dirge.  But I’ll be obliged if you’ll say to Mr. Alexander that if there is aught—­” He gathered up the reins.  “It will be snowing presently.  I always thought that I’d like to part on a day like this, gray and quiet, with all the color and the shouting lifted elsewhere.”  He was gone, trotting before them on his big horse.

Strickland and the minister looked after him.  “There’s one to be liked no little!” said Strickland.

But Mr. M’Nab’s answering tone was wintry yet.  “He makes mair songs than he listens to sermons!  Jarvis Barrow, that’s a strong witness, should have had another sort of great-nephew!  And so he that will be laird comes home to-morrow?  It’s little that he has been at home of late years.”

“Yes, little.”

The manse with the kirk beyond rose before them, drawn against the pallid sky.  “A wanderer to and fro in the earth, and I doubt not—­though we do not hear much of it—­an eater of husks!—­Will you not come in, Mr. Strickland?”

“Another time, Mr. M’Nab.  I’ve an errand in the village.—­Touching Alexander Jardine.  I suppose that the whole sense-bound world might be called by a world farther on an eater of husks.  But I know naught to justify any especial application of the phrase to him.  I know, indeed, a good deal quite to the contrary.  You are, it seems to me, something less than charitable—­”