Mr. Geddie looked to his two associates, appalled at such persistence, and sadly shook his head. The associates shook their heads also, and looked uncomfortable. They were aware from the attitude of the Laird that there was a certain degree of thinness as yet in their case, when it came to be stated in detail without inference and insinuation; and they had been hoping that the solemn exercises in which they had engaged were to move the sinner to repentance and compel him to confess his fault. For they began to fear it might be hard for the present to prove the fault, and would have preferred to be left only the easier parts, rebuking the offender, and figuring before the Church as its zealous and victorious champions. The silence continued. Mr. Geddie had been dwelling on the moral and emotional aspects of the case, rather than the circumstantial. To his excellent, and even devout, but far from legal mind, the question had appeared to be one of sin, repentance, and church discipline; the more secular considerations of guilty or not guilty, facts, proofs, and probabilities, had never occurred to him at all. The case had been presented to him by persons whom he believed to be excellent and of sound evangelical views, and he had never dreamed of questioning what they said, revising the grounds of their suspicions, or asking what there might be to urge on the other side. When, therefore, the defendant requested, as it were, to hear the indictment against him, his thoughts and ideas had to be called in from the wide and very different field over which they were scattered, and brought to bear on a different and entirely new aspect of the case. While he had been deeply moved and interested in the case, viewed as one of established ill-doing, and had thought out very fully the relations of the church to the sinner and the sin, he found that his mind had entirely left out of consideration the grounds on which the accusation had been based, and that if it came to discussing the question of guilty or not guilty, he knew nothing about it and had nothing to say. It is not to be supposed, however, that on that account he believed any the less utterly in the guilt of the accused. He felt that he could not discuss it, being unprepared; but his mind, though well-meaning and incapable of intentional disingenuousness, was of the tenacious rather than that facile and self-styled candid order which, because it is incapable of taking strong hold, and is easily moved by every fresh suggestion, claims to be dispassionate and judicial. This man had been represented to him by what he considered good authority, as a sinner, and a sinner he would continue to regard him till irrefragable proof or higher authority declared the reverse. Mr. Geddie, therefore, kept silence under the new aspect of the case. He was clearly entitled to do so, seeing that in a question of circumstance, a parishioner with local knowledge must be able to speak with more understanding than a