"I was going to say, Mrs. Caird, that new truths affecting old clerical dogmas are generally offensive to old church members. Many good men live by serving the altar. They must be considered, and your brother and I, and every minister, knows that our people judge for themselves and only accept what they desire to accept. Is not that so, Macrae?" And Macrae, as he looked at his watch, answered indifferently, "You are right, Doctor. It is now time we took the carriage if we intend to catch our train." So there was movement and a little noise, but, amid it, Ian heard his sister's answer, "To be sure, Dr. Scott, we all know well that Scotsmen do that which is right in their own eyes--and, also, that which is wrong." With the usual pleasant formalities the men went away together, and Jessy sadly walked through the perishing garden, whispering to herself, as she did so: "Through sins of sense, perversities of will, Through doubt and pain, through guilt and shame, and ill, Thy pitying eye is on Thy creatures still." For she knew in her heart that no man could be more miserable than Ian Macrae. His religion was no longer even a habit, it had become an acute fever, and all conversation on this tremendous subject seemed so ineffectual, so mockingly beneath its meaning and its needs. It wearied his aching heart and brain, and gave him neither hope nor consolation. For he knew that any reasoned argument would be but the surface exhibition; it was only the unreasoned and immediate assurance that could satisfy his soul. CHAPTER VI DONALD TAKES HIS OWN WAY "Love is a sea for which no compass has been invented." There are times which mark epochs in life; they cut it sharply asunder--the continuity of life is broken. There was a sense of relief when the two divines were comfortably beyond the horizon of the Little House the next morning, and Mrs. Caird could begin her preparations for their own removal. "I was fain to come to this place, Marion," she said, "and mightily set up with it when I got here. But I have had lots of care in its pretty rooms and among its flowers. So I am just as fain to go back to the big, dull rooms in Bath Street. Paradise is fairly lost, dear. We may dream of it, but we never find it." "O Aunt Jessy, some surely find it." "They may think they do for awhile, but indeed, 'There's none exempt from worldly cares, And few from some domestic cross; All whiles are in, and whiles are out, For grief and joy come time about.'" She was tearing up some old cotton for dusters as she repeated the rhyme, and she emphasized "some domestic cross" by a rent of rather angry vigor; then she added, "Go to your father's study, you will be out of the way of the cleaners there, and I have no doubt whatever that you have an important letter to write." "Aunt, when did you hear from Donald?" "It is so long since, I have forgotten." "Where were they then?"