Robin Greenlaw pushed back his chair.  He saw the inside of the kirk again, and two miserable, loutish, lawless lovers standing for public discipline.  His color rose.  “Aye, it was a sair sight,” he said, abruptly, made a pause, then went on with the impetuousness of a burn unlocked from winter ice.  “If I should say just what I think, I suppose, uncle, that I could not come here again!  So I’ll e’en say only that I think that was a sair sight and that I felt great shame and pity for all sinners.  So, feeling it for all, I felt it for Mallie and Jock, standing there an hour, first on one foot and then on the other, to be gloated at and rebukit, and for the minister doing the rebuking, and for the kirkful all gloating, and thinking, ’Lord, not such are we!’ and for Robin Greenlaw who often enough himself takes wildfire for true light!  I say I think it was sair sight and sair doing—­”

Barrow’s hand came down upon the table.  “Robin Greenlaw!”

“You need not thunder at me, sir.  I’m done!  I did not mean to make such a clatter, for in this house what clatter makes any difference?  It’s the sinner makes the clatter, and it’s just promptly sunk and lost in godliness!”

The old man and the young turned in their chairs, faced each other.  They looked somewhat alike, and in the heart of each was fondness for the other.  Greenlaw, eye to eye with the patriarch, felt his wrath going.

“Eh, uncle, I did not mean to hurt the Sunday!”

Jarvis Barrow spoke with the look and the weight of a prophet in Israel.  “What is your quarrel about, and for what are ye flyting against the kirk and the minister and the kirkkeepers?  Are ye wanting that twa sinners, having sinned, should hae their sin for secret and sweet to their aneselves, gilded and pairfumed and excused and unnamed?  Are ye wanting that nane should know, and the plague should live without the doctor and without the mark upon the door?  Or are ye thinking that it is nae plague at all, nae sin, and nae blame?  Then ye be atheist, Robin Greenlaw, and ye gae indeed frae my door, and wad gae were ye na my nephew, but my son!” He gathered force.  “Elder of the kirk, I sit here, and I tell ye that were it my ain flesh and blood that did evil, my stick and my plaid I wad take and ower the moor I wad gae to tell manse and parish that Sin, the wolf, had crept into the fauld!  And I wad see thae folly-crammed and sinfu’ sauls, that had let him in and had his bite, set for shame and shawing and warning and example before the congregation, and I wad say to the minister, ‘Lift voice against them and spare not!’ And I wad be there the day and in my seat, though my heart o’ flesh was like to break!” His hand fell again heavily upon the board.  “Sae weak and womanish is thae time we live in!” He flashed at his great-nephew.  “Sae poetical!  It wasna sae when the Malignants drove us and we fled to the hills and were fed on the muirs with the word of the Lord!  It wasna sae in the time when Gawin Elliot that Glenfernie draws frae was hanged for gieing us that word!  Then gin a sin-blasted ane was found amang us, his road indeed was shawn him!  Aye, were’t man or woman! ’For while they be folded together as thorns, and while they are drunken as drunkards, they shall be devoured as stubble fully dry!’”