Ann laughed. "Davie was very much against all things religious at that time, and he wouldn't even say his prayers. Marget used to toil up from the kitchen to reason with him, and when he heard her coming he would give a wicked wallop in his bed and say, 'That's Marget comin' to convert me.' You know, Mother, in some ways Davie was a much more abandoned character than we were as children. We reverenced the Covenanters, but Davie said he preferred Claverhouse, and most blasphemously said of John Brown, of Priesthill--he must have got the expression from Marget--'I think John Brown was a _gey lawd_.' Speaking of conversion, I think Dr. Struthers was the only person we didn't mind 'speaking personally' to us. We realised that he, like Nehemiah, 'feared the Lord above many.' When Mark told him he meant to go to Oxford and then to the Bar, he said, 'Look higher than the Woolsack, Mark.' He spoke kindly to Jeanie Tod about her home in Kirkcaple, and said, 'Do you ever think where you are going?' and I shall always remember how one day he laid his big soft hand on my unruly head and said, 'Little Ann, _take Jesus_.' Do you remember one day when he was preaching I announced that I had a sore throat and couldn't possibly go to church, and was allowed to remain at home? Dr. Struthers missed me, and asked why I wasn't there, and you--not greatly believing, I daresay, in the excuse--said I had a sore throat. Mark rushed home between services to tell me that Dr. Struthers had prayed for me in church, prayed that my bodily affliction might pass from me! Guiltily aware of perfect health--my sore throat hadn't kept me from eating apples and reading a story-book--I didn't know what awful consequences the prayer might have. Anyway, I flew upstairs, flung on my coat and hat, and was in my place for the afternoon service, determined to ward off any more petitions on my behalf. But I was never frightened for Dr. Struthers after I found he liked adventure books and didn't even mind the swear words. He was surely a very rich man, Mother? Ministers don't as a rule have places like Langlands, and man-servants and maid-servants. A house and a wife, and a stranger within the gates are about all they ever attain to." "Yes, he was rich, but I never met anyone who gave one so little an impression of great possessions. Having his treasure laid up where thieves cannot break through and steal, he cared little for the gold of this world. He gave largely, but so unobtrusively that it wasn't until his death that we realised the extent of his givings. He was the humblest of men, lowly and a peacemaker."