"Rented!" cried Ragnor scornfully. "No, indeed! There are no dear chairs and no cheap chairs, all are equal and all are free. I never felt so like worshipping in a church before. The religious spirit had free way in our midst." "What did Macrae say?" "He said, he supposed the rush chairs were an 'Armenian innovation'; and I answered, 'The pews, sir, they are the innovation.'" "Did thou have any argument with him? I have often heard Ian say he plunged into religious argument with every one he met." "Well, Rahal, I don't know how it happened, but I quickly found myself in a good atmosphere of contradictions. I do not remember either what I had been saying, but I heard him distinctly assert, that 'it was the Armenians who had described the Calvinists, and they had not wasted their opportunities.' Then I found myself telling him that Armenianism had ruled the religious world ever since the birth of Christianity; but that Calvinism was a thing of yesterday, a mere Geneva opinion. Rahal, the man has a dogma for a soul, and yet through this hard veil, I could see that he was full of a longing for love; but he has not found out the way to love, his heart is ice-bound. He made me say things I did not want to say, he stirred my soul round and round until it boiled over, and then the words would come. Really, Rahal, I did not know the words were in my mind, till his aggravating questions made me say them." "What words? Art thou troubled about them?" "A little. He was talking of faith and doubt, especially as it referred to the Bible, and I listened until I could bear it no longer. He was asking what proof there was for this, and that, and the other, and as I said, he got me stirred up beyond myself and I told him I cared nothing about proofs. I said proofs were for sceptics and not for good men who _knew_ in whom they had believed." "Well then, Coll, that was enough, was it not?"