“Naughty dog!” said the voice outside the window.  “Go home!  Don’t dare to lick my hand!”

One of the choir members grew red in the face and choked.  It was outrageous!  And then, as if nothing at all had happened, the girl who had been the cause of the whole unfortunate incident entered and walked down the aisle.  She appeared to be quite undisturbed; was, in fact, smiling.  Every eye in the church followed her as, a little out of breath, a little flushed, with dark hair slightly disarranged as if from an exciting chase, she took her seat, unconscious, or careless, of them all.  The minister, who had paused with almost reproachful obviousness, gave out the opening psalm and the congregation freed itself from embarrassment with an accustomed flutter of hymn-books.

Going to church was somewhat interesting after all, thought Professor Willits.  Then, in common with the rest of the congregation, he detached his eyes from the girl’s exquisite profile and focused them upon the minister.

Friends of the Rev. Angus Macnair asserted that he was a man in a thousand.  For that matter he was a man in any number of thousands; for his was a personality, true to type, yet not likely to be duplicated.  Born of a Highland Scotch father and a Lowland Scotch mother, he developed almost exclusively in his father’s vein.  Loyal in the extreme, narrow to fanaticism, passionate, emotional, yet trained to the cold control of a red Indian, he was a man of power, at once the victim and the triumph of his creed.

Early in life he had come under a conviction of sin, had received assurance of forgiveness and of election and, before he had left the Public School, his Call had come.  From that time forward he had burnt with a fierce fire of godliness which, together with a natural incapacity for seeing two sides to anything, had carried him safely through the manifold temptations to unbelief and heresy which beset a modern college education.  Many wondered that a man so gifted should remain in Coombe, but the explanation is simple.  He suited Coombe; the larger churches of the larger cities he did not suit.  Lax opinions, heretical doctrines, outlooks appallingly wide were creeping in everywhere.  It is safe to say that in most of the churches of his own faith he would have seemed bravely but hopelessly behind the times.  But in Coombe he had found his place.  Coombe was conservative.  Coombe Presbyterians were still content to do without frills in the matter of doctrine.  Coombe could still listen to hell fire and, if not unduly disturbed, did not at least smile behind its hand.

Something of all this the Button-Moulder, student of men, felt as he watched the sombre yet glowing face of the preacher.