Ann nodded. "He never said a word, but the fact was Father hated cities. Rosamund used to call the Park 'the policeman's country,' because of the notices to keep off the grass, and she called Etterick 'God's country.' Father longed all the time for 'God's country.' He would have been supremely happy as minister of some moorland place, with time to write, and time to love his books and flowers, and instead he had to spend his days toiling up and down endless stairs, never getting away from the sight of squalor and misery, doing the King's work through the unfeatured years. And yet he was perfectly content. He was able to find a Sabbath stillness in the noise, and from some hidden spring he could draw wells of living water to make in that dreary place a garden 'bright with dawn and dew' to refresh a haggard world.... You must have felt very bad about leaving Martyrs, Mother?--after all those years." "Oh.... We felt it to be almost treachery on our part to leave some of those poor people. They depended on us. We considered whether we ought to stay on in Glasgow and still help a little, unofficially, as it were, but you were all against that, and finally we took a house in Priorsford to be near Jim. I was glad when it was settled, and glad when those last months in Glasgow were over. It was miserable work dismantling the house and packing up and saying good-bye." "Everything has an end," said Ann, "'and a pudden has twa,' to quote Marget's favourite saying. But I could hardly believe we were finished with Martyrs, that we would tramp no more that long road, and sit no more in that back pew to the side of the pulpit, and look up at Father Sunday after Sunday--Mother, surely Father was a very good preacher?" Mrs. Douglas sat up very straight, as if she were challenging anyone to contradict her, and said proudly: "He was the best preacher I ever heard. And if he were here he would laugh at me for saying so." "He would," said Ann; "but I think I agree with you." "A communion in Martyrs," her mother went on; "what an occasion it was! Except for length--our services were always short--I expect it was the same service that the Covenanters held, fearfully, as hunted men. 'Following the custom of our fathers'--can't you hear him say it?--your father always 'fenced' the tables and read the warrant. Then we sung those most mournful words: ''Twas on that night when doomed to know The eager rage of every foe'; and your father took his place among the elders round the table in the choir seat. He always held a slice of the bread, and, breaking it, said, 'Mark the breaking of the bread,' and after the tables were served he said a few concluding words. I used to listen for his voice falling on the stillness--'Communicants!' It seemed to me very beautiful."