It was purely as a minister of religion that he had the honour of his sovereign’s command. The truth of God, as he believed it, the same message which a hundred times he had spoken to bereaved wives in the lowliest homes, that, and nothing other, would he carry to the royal widow, whom he should regard only as ‘an immortal being, a sister in humanity.’ Their first meeting was at divine service, and if the occasion was a trying one to the preacher, it was evidently exciting to the Queen. ‘Hurried to be ready,’ so runs the royal Journal, ‘for the service which Dr. Macleod was kindly going to perform. And a little before ten, I went down with Lenchen and Affie (Alice being still in bed unwell) to the dining-room, in which I had not yet been.... And never was service more beautifully, touchingly, simply, and tenderly performed.... The sermon, entirely extempore, was admirable, all upon affliction, God’s love, our Saviour’s sufferings, which God would not spare Him, the blessedness of suffering in bringing us nearer to our eternal home, where we should all be together, and where our dear ones were gone on before us.... The children and I were much affected on coming upstairs.’ After dinner he was summoned to the Queen’s room, and there, after some conversation about the Prince, he told about an old woman in the Barony who had lost her husband and several of her children, and who, on being asked how she had been able to bear her many sorrows, replied, ‘When _he_ was ta’en it made sic a hole in my heart that a’ other sorrows gang lichtly through.’ When Macleod recalled this period, he would express the whole burden of it in the solemn murmur, ‘_That May_.’ He has written: ‘God enabled me to speak in public and private to the Queen in such a way as seemed to me to be the truth, the truth in God’s sight--that which I believed she needed, though I felt it would be very trying to her spirit to receive it. And what fills me with deepest thanksgiving is that she has received it, and written to me such a kind, tender letter of thanks, which shall be treasured in my heart while I live.’ In the spring of the following year he was for several days a guest at Windsor. ‘I walked,’ he says, ‘with Lady Augusta to the mausoleum to meet the Queen. She had the key and opened it herself, undoing the bolts; and alone we entered, and stood in solemn silence beside Marochetti’s beautiful statue of the Prince.’