The letter was from his father.  It began with many inquiries as to his progress in the special studies to which he had been devoting himself.  Then came many counsels as to avoiding all entanglements with the erroneous views of Socinians, Erastians, and Pelagians In conclusion, a day was suggested on which it would be convenient for the presbytery of the Marrow kirk to meet in Edinburgh in order to put Ralph through his trials for license.  Then it was that Ralph Peden felt a tingling sense of shame.  Not only had he to a great extent forgotten to prepare himself for his examinations, which would be no great difficulty to a college scholar of his standing, but unconsciously to himself his mind had slackened its interest in his licensing.  The Marrow kirk had receded from him as the land falls back from a ship which puts out to sea, swiftly and silently.  He was conscious that he had paid far more attention to his growing volume of poems than he had done to his discourses for license; though indeed of late he had given little attention to either.

He went up-stairs and looked vaguely at his books.  He found that it was only by an effort that he could at all think himself into the old Ralph, who had shaken his head at Calvin under the broom-bush by the Grannoch Water.  Sharp penitence rode hard upon Ralph’s conscience.  He sat down among his neglected books.  From these he did not rise till the morning fully broke.  At last he lay down on the bed, after looking long at the ridge of pines which stood sharp up against the morning sky, behind which Craig Ronald lay.  Then the underlying pang, which he had been crushing down by the night’s work among the Hebrew roots, came triumphantly to the surface.  He must leave the manse of Dullarg, and with it that solitary white farmhouse on the braeface, the orchard at the back of it, and the rose-clambered gable from which a dear window looked down the valley of the Grannoch, and up to the heathery brow of the Crae Hill.

So, unrefreshed, yet unconscious of the need of any refreshment, Ralph Peden rose and took his place at the manse table.

“I saw your candle late yestreen,” said the minister, pausing to look at the young man over the wooden platter of porridge which formed the frugal and sufficient breakfast of the two.

Porridge for breakfast and porridge for supper are the cure-alls of the true Galloway man.  It is not every Scot who stands through all temptation so square in the right way as morning and night to confine himself to these; but he who does so shall have his reward in a rare sanity of judgment and lightness of spirit, and a capacity for work unknown to countrymen of less Spartan habit.

So Ralph answered, looking over his own “cogfu’ o’ brose” as Manse Bell called them, “I was reading the book of Joel for the second time.”

“Then you have,” said the minister, “finished your studies in the Scripture character of the truly good woman of the Proverbs, with which you were engaged on your first coming here?”