“Then it’s doctrine—­wae’s me, wae’s me!  I wuss it had been the lasses.  What wull his faither say?  Gin it had been ill-doin’, he micht hae pitten it doon to the sins o’ yer youth; but ill-doctrine he canna forgie.  O Maister Ralph, gin ye canna tell a lee yersel’, wull ye no haud yer tongue—­I can lee, for I’m but an elder—­an’ I’ll tell him that at a kirn [harvest festival] ye war persuaded to drink the health o’ the laird, an’ you no bein’ acquant wi’ the strength o’ Glenlivat—­”

“John, John, indeed I cannot allow it.  Besides, you’re a sailor-man, an’ even in Galloway they do not have kirns till the corn’s ripe,” replied Ralph with a smile.

“Aweel, can ye no say, or let me say for ye, gin ye be particular, that ye war a wee late oot at nicht seein’ a bit lassie—­or ocht but the doctrine?  It wasna anything concernin’ the fundamentals o’ the Marrow, Maister Ralph, though, surely,” continued John Bairdieson, whose elect position did not prevent him from doing his best for the interests of his masters, young and old.  Indeed, to start with the acknowledged fact of personal election sometimes gives a man like John Bairdieson an unmistakable advantage.  Ralph went to his own room, leaving John Bairdieson listening, as he prayed to be allowed to do, at the door of his father’s room.

In a minute or two John Bairdieson came up, with a scared face.

“Ye’re to gang doon, Maister Ralph, an’ see yer faither.  But, O sir, see that ye speak lown [calm] to him.  He hasna gotten sleep for twa nichts, an’ he’s fair pitten by himsel’ wi’ thae ill-set Conformists—­weary fa’ them! that he’s been in the gall o’ bitterness wi’.”

Ralph went down to his father’s study.  Knocking softly, he entered.  His father sat in his desk chair, closed in on every side.  It had once been the pulpit of a great Reformer, and each time that Gilbert Peden shut himself into it, he felt that he was without father or mother save and except the only true and proper Covenant-keeping doctrine in broad Scotland, and the honour and well-being of the sorely dwindled Kirk of the Marrow.

Gilbert Peden was a noble make of a man, larger in body though hardly taller than his son.  He wore a dark-blue cloth coat with wide flaps, and the immense white neckerchief on which John Bairdieson weekly expended all his sailor laundry craft.  His face was like his son’s, as clear-cut and statuesque, though larger and broader in frame and mould.  There was, however, a coldness about the eye and a downward compression of the lips, which speaks the man of narrow though fervid enthusiasms.

Ralph went forward to his father.  As he came, his father stayed him with the palm of his hand, the finger-tips turned upward.

“Abide, my son, till I know for what cause you have left or been expelled from the house of the man to whom I committed you during your trials for license.  Answer me, why have you come away from the house of Allan Welsh like a thief in the night?”