The roof hung heavy over his head, and the walls took a deeper red, while the burning logs reminded him of the consuming fire. An owl hooted outside--a weird and mournful cry--and to the mind of a Celt like Carmichael it seemed to be a warning to set his house in order. He crossed to the window, which faced west, and commanded a long stretch of Glen, and, standing within the curtain, he looked out upon the clear winter night. How pure was the snow, putting all other white to shame! How merciless the cold light of the moon, that flung into relief the tiniest branches of the trees! “Holiness be-cometh thine house, O Lord, for ever.” And he was a minister of the Word and sacrament! The people had been called unto repentance, but he needed most of all the contrite heart. The people had been commanded to confess their sins; it were time that he began. He knelt at his table, bending his head over the very place where he wrote his sermons, and as he prayed before God the sins of early years came up before him, and passed as in a woful procession--ghosts which had risen from their graves, in which they had long been hid beneath the green grass and the flowers. There remained nothing for him but to acknowledge them one by one with shame and confusion of face, and behold! as he did so, and humbled himself before the Lord, they vanished from his sight till he hoped that the last of them had come and gone. When it seemed to him as if one had lingered behind the rest, and desired to see him quite alone, and when the shroud fell down, he looked into the face of one who had been his friend in college days, and then he knew that all which had gone before was only a preparation, and this was now his testing time. It was a mighty college to which Carmichael had belonged, and the men thereof had been lifted high above their fellows, and among them all there had been none so superior as this man who was once his friend. Some he looked down upon because they were uncouth in manner; and some because they were deficient in scholarship; and others, who were neither ill-bred nor unlearned, he would have nothing to do with because they had not the note of culture, but were Philistine in their ideas of art and in their ignorance of “precious” literature. In spite of all this foolishness, the root of the matter was in Frederick Harris. No man had a keener sense of honour, no man was more ready to help a fellow-student, none worked harder in the mission of the college, none lived a simpler life. Yet because he was without doubt a superior person, even beyond all other superior persons--and the college was greatly blessed with this high order of beings--certain men were blind to his excellences, and cherished a dull feeling of resentment against him; and there were times when Carmichael dared to laugh at him, whereat Harris was very indignant, and reproached him for vulgar frivolity.