The mistress had been very busy with her knitting while her husband was speaking; but, notwithstanding her devotion to her work, she was uneasy and could not help showing it. “If we had been our lane it would have been naething,” she said to Colin, privately; “but afore yon man that’s a stranger and doesna ken!” With which sentiment she sat listening, much disturbed in her mind. “It’s no a thing to say before the bairns,” she said, when she was thus appealed to, “nor before folk that dinna ken you. A stranger might think you were a careless man to hear you speak,” said Mrs. Campbell, turning to Lauderdale with bitter vexation, “for a’ that you havena missed the kirk half a dozen times a’ the years I have kent you--and that’s a long time,” said the mother, lifting hers soft eyes to her boy. When she looked at him she remembered that he too had been rash in his talk. “You’re turning awfu’ like your father, Colin,” said the mistress, “taking up the same thoughtless way of talking. But I think different for a’ you say. Our ain kirk is aye our ain kirk to you as well as to me, in spite o’ your speaking. I’m well accustomed to their ways,” she said, with a smile, to Lauderdale, who, so far from being the dangerous observer she thought him, had gone off at a tangent into his own thoughts. “The Confession of Faith is a real respectable historical document,” said Lauderdale. “I might not like to commit myself to a’ it says, if you were to ask me; but then I’m not the kind o’ man that has a heart to commit myself to anything in the way of intellectual truth. I wouldna bind myself to say that I would stand by any document a year after it was put forth, far less a hundred years. There’s things in it naebody believes--for example, about the earth being made in six days; but I would not advise a man to quarrel with his kirk and his profession for the like of that. I put no dependence on geology for my part, nor any of the sciences. How can I tell but somebody might make a discovery the morn that would upset all their fine stories? But, on the whole, I’ve very little to say against the Confession. It’s far more guarded about predestination and so forth than might have been expected. Every man of common sense believes in predestination; though I would not be the man to commit myself to any statement on the subject. The like of me is good for little,” said Colin’s friend, stretching his long limbs towards the fire, “but I’ve great ambition for that callant. He’s not a common callant, though I’m speaking before his face,” said Lauderdale; “it would be terrible mortifying to me to see him put himself in a corner and refuse the yoke.”