As a rule Mr. Wycherly was rather shy and nervous in the presence of the minister, but there was no sign of this usual mental perturbation as he stopped him with a courteous gesture. "Mr. Gloag," said Mr. Wycherly, and he looked the minister straight in the eyes, "I have done something which you will probably disapprove and condemn. Curly has been here, and I went to the Manse and told Mrs. Gloag that he was here." "Did he dare to enter my house?" asked the minister, and he glowered at Mr. Wycherly from under his heavy brows. "I think," that gentleman replied, and he met the minister’s keen glance with one that was quite equally combative, "that he would have dared anything to see his mother. As it happened she came to him. And I want to spare her the exertion of telling you that she did so." "Since when," asked the minister, looking as though he would greatly like to annihilate Mr. Wycherly; "since when has my wife needed a go-between to spare her the necessity of telling me anything?" "Good heavens, sir!" Mr. Wycherly exclaimed, "can’t you see that what I want you to realise is that Mrs. Gloag is very ill—that whatever you may feel on the subject of Curly’s coming, it would have been inhuman to prevent her seeing her son—once more, whatever he had done." Even as Mr. Wycherly spoke the eyes of the two men that a moment before had been bright with mutual antagonism changed. The minister’s to a dumb agony, Mr. Wycherly’s to an awe-struck pity. He turned and walked hastily away. Blindly the minister opened the gate and went through the garden into his own house. His wife met him in the hall, and her face, he thought, was as the face of an angel, full of a soft radiance not of earth. "Peter," she said in her soft "Englishey" voice, "God has been good to me. I have seen Curly, and he is not changed. I know it; we may not like what he has done, but he is not changed. He is good, Peter; he is our own dear good boy all the same. He didn’t come in because he thought you wouldn’t like it, but I had a long, beautiful talk with him in the lane. I felt somehow that I should see him—once more." Again the ominous phrase, "Once more." "Felicity," said the minister, "you have stood much longer than is good for you," and he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the sofa in the parlour. She caught him round the neck and rubbed her soft cheek against his hair. "Why are you not surprised—and angry?" she asked with a little nervous laugh, and he felt how her whole body was trembling in his arms. "Because I knew already," said the minister; and not one other word did he say on the subject that day, but he noticed that her pretty eyes had lost their look of strained expectancy and watchfulness, and in its place there was an expression of beautiful serenity and almost joyous content.