[Illustration:  When Carmichael gave him the cup in the sacrament.]

“God’s hand is heavy in anger on us both this day, John,” and Carmichael was arrested by the awe and sorrow in the Rabbi’s voice, “else . . . you had not spoken as you did this forenoon, nor would necessity be laid on me to speak . . . as I must this night.

“His ways are all goodness and truth, but they are oftentimes encompassed with darkness, and the burden He has laid on me is . . . almost more than I can bear; it will be heavy for you also.

“You will drink the wine of astonishment this night, and it will be strange if you do not . . . turn from the hand that pours it out, but you will not refuse the truth or . . . hate the preacher”; and at the vestry door the Rabbi looked wistfully at Carmichael.

During the interval the lad had been ill at ease, suspecting from the Rabbi’s manner at the Table, and the solemnity of his address, that he disapproved of the action sermon, but he did not for a moment imagine that the situation was serious.  It is one of the disabilities of good-natured and emotional people, without much deepness of earth, to belittle the convictions and resolutions of strong natures, and to suppose that they can be talked away by a few pleasant, coaxing words.

The Rabbi had often yielded to Carmichael and his other boys in the ordinary affairs of life—­in meat and drink and clothing, even unto the continuance of his snuffing.  He had been most manageable and pliable—­as a child in their hands—­and so Carmichael was quite confident that he could make matters right with the old man about a question of doctrine as easily as about the duty of a midday meal.  Certain bright and superficial people will only learn by some solitary experience that faith is reserved in friendship, and that the most heroic souls are those which count all things loss—­even the smile of those they love—­for the eternal.  For a moment Carmichael was shaken as if a new Rabbi were before him; then he remembered the study of Kilbogie, and all things that had happened therein, and his spirits rose.

“How dare you suggest such wickedness, Rabbi, that any of us should ever criticise or complain of anything you say?  Whatever you give us will be right, and do us good, and in the evening you will tell me all I said wrong.”

Saunderson looked at Carmichael for ten seconds as one who has not been understood, and sighed.  Then he went down the kirk after the beadle, and the people marked how he walked like a man who was afraid he might fall, and, turning a corner, he supported himself on the end of a pew.  As he crept up the pulpit stairs Elspeth gave her husband a look, and, although well accustomed to the slowness of his understanding, was amazed that he did not catch the point.  Even a man might have seen that this was not the same minister that came in to the Sacrament with hope in his very step.