Part 2 (1/2)

”May you never lose sight of G.o.d, Mr. Dishart,” the old man said in the parlour. Then he added, as if he had asked too much, ”May you never turn from Him as I often did when I was a lad like you.”

As this aged minister, with the beautiful face that G.o.d gives to all who love Him and follow His commandments, spoke of his youth, he looked wistfully around the faded parlour.

”It is like a dream,” he said. ”The first time I entered this room the thought pa.s.sed through me that I would cut down that cherry-tree, because it kept out the light, but, you see, it outlives me. I grew old while looking for the axe. Only yesterday I was the young minister, Mr. Dishart, and to-morrow you will be the old one, bidding good-bye to your successor.”

His eyes came back to Gavin's eager face.

”You are very young, Mr. Dishart?”

”Nearly twenty-one.”

”Twenty-one! Ah, my dear sir, you do not know how pathetic that sounds to me. Twenty-one! We are children for the second time at twenty-one, and again when we are grey and put all our burden on the Lord. The young talk generously of relieving the old of their burdens, but the anxious heart is to the old when they see a load on the back of the young. Let me tell you, Mr. Dishart, that I would condone many things in one-and-twenty now that I dealt hardly with at middle age. G.o.d Himself, I think, is very willing to give one-and-twenty a second chance.”

”I am afraid,” Gavin said anxiously, ”that I look even younger.”

”I think,” Mr. Carfrae answered, smiling, ”that your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry.

When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in humility.”

He paused.

”I hope,” he said nervously, ”that you don't sing the Paraphrases?”

Mr. Carfrae had not grown out of all his prejudices, you see; indeed, if Gavin had been less bigoted than he on this question they might have parted stiffly. The old minister would rather have remained to die in his pulpit than surrender it to one who read his sermons.

Others may blame him for this, but I must say here plainly that I never hear a minister reading without wis.h.i.+ng to send him back to college.

”I cannot deny,” Mr. Carfrae said, ”that I broke down more than once to-day. This forenoon I was in Tillyloss, for the last time, and it so happens that there is scarcely a house in it in which I have not had a marriage or prayed over a coffin. Ah, sir, these are the scenes that make the minister more than all his sermons. You must join the family, Mr. Dishart, or you are only a minister once a week. And remember this, if your call is from above, it is a call to stay. Many such partings in a lifetime as I have had to-day would be too heartrending.”

”And yet,” Gavin said, hesitatingly, ”they told me in Glasgow that I had received a call from the mouth of h.e.l.l.”

”Those were cruel words, but they only mean that people who are seldom more than a day's work in advance of want sometimes rise in arms for food. Our weavers are pa.s.sionately religious, and so independent that they dare any one to help them, but if their wages were lessened they could not live. And so at talk of reduction they catch fire. Change of any kind alarms them, and though they call themselves Whigs, they rose a few years ago over the paving of the streets and stoned the workmen, who were strangers, out of the town.”

”And though you may have thought the place quiet to-day, Mr. Dishart, there was an ugly outbreak only two months ago, when the weavers turned on the manufacturers for reducing the price of the web, made a bonfire of some of their doors, and terrified one of them into leaving Thrums. Under the command of some Chartists, the people next paraded the streets to the music of fife and drum, and six policemen who drove up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were sent back tied to the seats.”

”No one has been punished?”

”Not yet, but nearly two years ago there was a similar riot, and the sheriff took no action for months. Then one night the square suddenly filled with soldiers, and the ringleaders were seized in their beds.

Mr. Dishart, the people are determined not to be caught in that way again, and ever since the rising a watch has been kept by night on every road that leads to Thrums. The signal that the soldiers are coming is to be the blowing of a horn. If you ever hear that horn, I implore you to hasten to the square.”

”The weavers would not fight?”

”You do not know how the Chartists have fired this part of the country. One misty day, a week ago, I was on the hill; I thought I had it to myself, when suddenly I heard a voice cry sharply, 'Shoulder arms.' I could see no one, and after a moment I put it down to a freak of the wind. Then all at once the mist before me blackened, and a body of men seemed to grow out of it. They were not shadows; they were Thrums weavers drilling, with pikes in their hands.

”They broke up,” Mr. Carfrae continued, after a pause, ”at my entreaty, but they have met again since then.”

”And there were Auld Lichts among them?” Gavin asked. ”I should have thought they would be frightened at our precentor, Lang Tammas, who seems to watch for backsliding in the congregation as if he had pleasure in discovering it.”

Gavin spoke with feeling, for the precentor had already put him through his catechism, and it was a stiff ordeal.

”The precentor!” said Mr. Carfrae. ”Why, he was one of them.”

The old minister, once so brave a figure, tottered as he rose to go, and reeled in a dizziness until he had walked a few paces. Gavin went with him to the foot of the manse road; without his hat, as all Thrums knew before bedtime.