“Lord,” said he, for the first time lifting up his head, “Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.” It was after midnight when the minister wrote out the minute of that meeting, and it states that an objection was taken to the life of Andrew Harris; but the Session ruled that it was not relevant, in which ruling the objector acquiesced, and the Session therefore appointed that Andrew Harris, farmer at Rochally, be ordained on the day appointed to the office of elder in the Free Kirk of Thomgreen. XXI.--WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN WHEN Carmichael was Free Kirk minister of Dramtochty, and in the days of his youth, he had casual ways, and went at his own free will. He never came across the moor behind his manse on a summer day, and entered the cool pine wood which separated it from the ploughed land, without sitting down beside a certain pool of a burn which ran through the fringe of the wood. Because the water broke over a little rock and then gathered in a cup of gravel, and there was a heather bank where he could he as comfortably as in his favourite study chair, which had seen the Rebellion, but had changed its covering as well as its creed more than once since then; because the Highland cattle came to drink at that pool if you were not fussy and suspicious; and because all the sounds of the moor--the bleating of the sheep, the cry of the grouse, and the wail of the whaup and the drone of the bees--mingled in one music, and fell pleasantly upon your ear. “For five minutes only,” he said to himself, and then some Highland cows, with their absurd little calves, arrived, and would have considered it ill-mannered for him to rise; and he fell a-thinking while time flew. He rose with a start and hurried down to the main road, and made for the bridge over the Tochty, fearful lest he should be too late when the messenger came with momentous tidings from the telegraph office at Kildrummie.