“‘Dinna gie me his hair,’ was a’ I could say, and I wouldna take it frae her; but she laid it in my hand, and—­and syne what could I do?  Ay, it’s easy to speak about thae things now, and to wonder how I could hae so disgraced the position o’ chief elder o’ the kirk, but I tell you I was near greeting for the woman.  Call me names, dominie; I deserve them all.”

I did not call Whamond names for being reluctant to break Margaret’s heart.  Here is a confession I may make.  Sometimes I say my prayers at night in a hurry, going on my knees indeed, but with as little reverence as I take a drink of water before jumping into bed, and for the same reason, because it is my nightly habit.  I am only pattering words I have by heart to a chair then, and should be as well employed writing a comic Bible.  At such times I pray for the earthly well-being of the precentor, though he has been dead for many years.  He crept into my prayers the day he told me this story, and was part of them for so long that when they are only a recitation he is part of them still.

“She said to me,” Whamond continued, “that the women o’ the congregation would be fond to handle the hair.  Could I tell her that the women was waur agin him than the men?  I shivered to hear her.

“’Syne when they’re a’sitting breathless listening to his preaching,’ she says, ’they’ll be able to picture him as a bairn, just as I often do in the kirk mysel’.’

“Andrew Luke, you’re sneering at me, but I tell you if you had been there and had begun to say, ’He’ll preach in our kirk no more,’ I would hae struck you.  And I’m chief elder o’ the kirk.

“She says, ’Oh, Mr. Whamond, there’s times in the kirk when he is praying, and the glow on his face is hardly mortal, so that I fall a-shaking, wi’ a mixture fear and pride, me being his mother; and sinful though I am to say it, I canna help thinking at sic times that I ken what the mother o’ Jesus had in her heart when she found Him in the temple.’

“Dominie, it’s sax-and-twenty years since I was made an elder o’ the kirk.  I mind the day as if it was yestreen.  Mr. Carfrae made me walk hame wi’ him, and he took me into the manse parlor, and he set me in that very chair.  It was the first time I was ever in the manse.  Ay, he little thocht that day in his earnestness, and I little thocht mysel’ in the pride o’ my lusty youth, that the time was coming when I would sweat in that reverenced parlor.  I say swear, dominie, for when she had finished I jumped to my feet, and I cried, ‘Hell!’ and I lifted up my hat.  And I was chief elder.

“She fell back frae my oath,” he said, “and syne she took my sleeve and speired, ’What has come ower you, Mr. Whamond?  Hae you onything on your mind?’

“‘I’ve sin on it,’ I roared at her.  ‘I have neglect o’ duty on it.  I am one o’ them that cries “Lord, Lord,” and yet do not the things which He commands.  He has pointed out the way to me, and I hinna followed it.’