“Dr Drummond can’t stand Liscombe,” said Alec, as they all laughed a little at the Doctor’s foible, all except Advena, who laughed a great deal.  She laughed wildly, then weakly.  “I wouldn’t—­think it a pleasure—­to be buried by Liscombe myself!” she cried hysterically, and then laughed again until the tears ran down her face, and she lay back in her chair and moaned, still laughing.

Mr and Mrs Murchison, Alec, Stella, and Advena made up the family party; Oliver, for reasons of his own, would attend the River Avenue Methodist Church that evening.  They slipped out presently into a crisp white winter night.  The snow was banked on both sides of the street.  Spreading garden fir trees huddled together weighted down with it; ragged icicles hung from the eaves or lay in long broken fingers on the trodden paths.  The snow snapped and tore under their feet; there was a glorious moon that observed every tattered weed sticking up through the whiteness, and etched it with its shadow.  The town lay under the moon almost dramatic, almost mysterious, so withdrawn it was out of the cold, so turned in upon its own soul of the fireplace.  It might have stood, in the snow and the silence, for a shell and a symbol of the humanity within, for angels or other strangers to mark with curiosity.  Mr and Mrs Murchison were neither angels nor strangers; they looked at it and saw that the Peterson place was still standing empty, and that old Mr Fisher hadn’t finished his new porch before zero weather came to stop him.

The young people were well ahead; Mrs Murchison, on her husband’s arm, stepped along with the spring of an impetus undisclosed.

“Is it to be the Doctor tonight?” asked John Murchison.  “He was so hoarse this morning I wouldn’t be surprised to see Finlay in the pulpit.  They’re getting only morning services in East Elgin just now, while they’re changing the lighting arrangements.”

“Are they, indeed?  Well, I hope they’ll change them and be done with it, for I can’t say I’m anxious for too much of their Mr Finlay in Knox Church.”

“Oh, you like the man well enough for a change, Mother!” John assured her.

“I’ve nothing to say against his preaching.  It’s the fellow himself.  And I hope we won’t get him tonight for, the way I feel now, if I see him gawking up the pulpit steps it’ll be as much as I can do to keep in my seat, and so I just tell you, John.”

“You’re a little out of patience with him, I see,” said Mr Murchison.

“And it would be a good thing if more than me were out of patience with him.  There’s such a thing as too much patience, I’ve noticed.”

“I dare say,” replied her husband, cheerfully.

“If Advena were any daughter of mine she’d have less patience with him.”

“She’s not much like you,” assented the father.

“I must say I like a girl to have a little spirit if a man has none.  And before I’d have him coming to the house week after week the way he has, I’d see him far enough.”