their mouths sealed by any love for me.  Were there only my own life and good name to consider, they would speak instantly, and I should be deposed, without cavil or word spoken in my own defence.  Nay, by what I have already spoken, I have put myself in your hands.  All that you have to do is simply to rise in your place on the Sabbath morn and tell the congregation what I have told you—­ that the minister of the Marrow kirk in Dullarg is a man rebuking sin when his own hearthstone is unclean—­a man irregularly espoused, who wrongfully christened his own unacknowledged child.”

Allan Welsh laid his brow against the hard wood of the study table as though to cool it.

“No,” he continued, looking Ralph in the face, as the midnight hummed around, and the bats softly fluttered like gigantic moths outside, “your father is silent for the sake of the good name of the Marrow kirk; but this thing shall never be said of his own son, and the only hope of the Marrow kirk—­the lad she has colleged and watched and prayed for—­not only the two congregations of Edinburgh and the Dullarg contributing yearly out of their smallest pittances, but the faithful single members and adherents throughout broad Scotland—­many of whom are coming to Edinburgh at the time of our oncoming synod, in order to be present at it, and at the communion when I shall assist your father.”

“But why can not I marry Winsome Charteris, even though she be your daughter, as you say?” asked Ralph.

“O young man,” said the minister, “ken ye so little about the kirk o’ the Marrow, and the respect for her that your father and myself cherish for the office of her ministry, that ye think that we could permit a probationer, on trials for the highest office within her gift, to connect himself by tie, bond, or engagement with the daughter of an unblest marriage?  That wouald be winking at a new sin, darker even, than the old.”  Then, with a burst of passion—­“I, even I, would sooner denounce it myself, though it cost me my position!  For twenty years I have known that before God I was condemned.  You have seen me praying—­yes, often—­all night, but never did you or mortal man hear me praying for myself.”

Ralph held out his hand in sympathy.  Mr. Welsh did not seem to notice it.  He went on: 

“I was praying for this poor simple folk—­the elect of God—­their minister alone a castaway, set beyond the mercy of God by his own act.  Have I not prayed that they might never be put to shame by the knowledge of the minister’s sin being made a mockery in the courts of Belial?  And have I not been answered?”

Here we fear that Mr. Welsh referred to the ecclesiastical surroundings of the Reverend Erasmus Teends.

“And I prayed for my poor lassie, and for you, when I saw you both in the floods of deep waters.  I have wept great and bitter tears for you twain.  But I am to receive my answer and reward, for this night you shall give me your word that never more will you pass word of love to Winsome, the daughter of Allan Charteris Welsh.  For the sake of the Marrow kirk and the unstained truth delivered to the martyrs, and upheld by your father one great day, you will do this thing.”