"Just gang awa’ back tae yer beds," said Sandie, and with these parting words he felt his way out to the green gate, and they heard his footsteps going plop-plop on the wet road till they died away in the distance. Edmund sighed. "It was a pity we couldn’t bash his head or anything," he murmured regretfully. "I hope a real one’ll come some day when Aunt Esperance is well, and we don’t need to be so hushified. Then we could have a jolly good mill." Rather dispirited and extremely cold they crept back to bed. "I wonder," Montagu murmured thoughtfully, "why he didn’t want Robina to know he’d been here." Edmund gave a smothered laugh. "My word, but he did catch his breath when we douched him, an’ wasn’t he cross when he thought it was Robina? I wonder if she’s ever done it before?" *CHAPTER XX* *A QUESTION OF THEOLOGY* Nae shauchlin’ testimony here— We were a’ damned, an’ that was clear, I owned, wi’ gratitude an’ wonder, He was a pleisure to sit under. R.L.S. The while that Mr. Wycherly looked after Montagu’s secular education, Miss Esperance undertook the religious, and long, weary Sunday evenings did he spend in wrestling with the polemics of the "Shorter Catechism." "Why shorter?" he would ask bitterly. "It’s as long as ever it can be." "There’s a longer one than that, my dear son," Miss Esperance would answer cheerfully; "but you won’t need to learn it unless you become a minister." "I shall never be a minister," said Montagu firmly, one day when he had made four mistakes in the answer which defines "Effectual Calling"—an answer, by the way, which he could have learned in two minutes had he been in the slightest degree interested. "I shall never be a minister. I shall be an Epicurean when I’m grown up. Mr. Wycherly was telling me about them yesterday, and I liked them." Miss Esperance gave a positive gasp of dismayed astonishment. "Oh, my dear!" she exclaimed. "I hope that you will always be too sincere a Christian ever to dream of being anything else. I must indeed have taught you badly that any such idea should be possible." "Oh, no, dear aunt," said Montagu reassuringly, rubbing his head against her shoulder. "It’s not that at all; but people do sometimes change their religion, you know, when they’re grown up—like Calvin and Luther you told me about—and you know I really think I like the old gods best; they were very pleasant on the whole." "Montagu, Montagu, you don’t know what you are saying! Those heathen gods that you speak of never existed. There were no such beings." "Are you sure, auntie?" Montagu asked earnestly. "They sound very real, quite as real, and much cheerfuller than—the Shorter Catechism," he concluded lamely, checked by the unfeigned horror he saw in his aunt’s face.