“A’m no here tae say ‘that a’ kent what wes comin’’”—­Elspeth, like all experts, was strictly truthful—­“for the like o’ that wes never heard in Drumtochty, and noo that Doctor Saunderson is awa’, will never be heard again in Scotland.  A’ jaloused that vials wud be opened an’ a’ wesna wrang, but ma certes”—­and that remarkable woman left you to understand that no words in human speech could even hint at the contents of the vials.

When the Rabbi gave out his text, “Vessels of wrath,” in a low, awestruck voice, Carmichael began to be afraid, but after a little he chid himself for foolishness.  During half an hour the Rabbi traced the doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty through Holy Scripture with a characteristic wealth of allusion to Fathers ancient and reforming, and once or twice he paused, as if he would have taken up certain matters at greater length, but restrained himself, simply asserting the Pauline character of St. Augustine’s thinking, and exposing the looseness of Clement of Alexandria with a wave of the hand, as one hurrying on to his destination.

“Dear old Rabbi”—­Carmichael congratulated himself in his pew—­“what need he have made so many apologies for his subject?  He is going to enjoy himself, and he is sure to say something beautiful before he is done.”  But he was distinctly conscious all the same of a wish that the Rabbi were done and all . . . well, uncertainty over.  For there was a note of anxiety, almost of horror, in the Rabbi’s voice, and he had not let the Fathers go so lightly unless under severe constraint.  What was it?  Surely he would not attack their minister in face of his people. . . .  The Rabbi do that, who was in all his ways a gentleman?  Yet . . . and then the Rabbi abruptly quitted historical exposition and announced that he would speak on four heads.  Carmichael, from his corner behind the curtains, saw the old man twice open his mouth as if to speak, and when at last he began he was quivering visibly, and he had grasped the outer corners of the desk with such intensity that the tassels which hung therefrom—­one of the minor glories of the Free Kirk—­were held in the palm of his hand, the long red tags escaping from between his white wasted fingers.  A pulpit lamp came between Carmichael and the Rabbi’s face, but he could see the straining hand, which did not relax till it was lifted in the last awful appeal, and the white and red had a gruesome fascination.  It seemed as if one had clutched a cluster of full, rich, tender grapes and was pressing them in an agony till their life ran out in streams of blood, and dripped upon the heads of the choir sitting beneath, in their fresh, hopeful youth.  And it also came to Carmichael with pathetic conviction even then that every one was about to suffer, but the Rabbi more than them all together.  While the preacher was strengthening his heart for the work before him, Carmichael’s eye was attracted by the landscape that he could see