Then David told the minister "why not." He listened at first with incredulity, and then with anger. "Nanna Sinclair is guilty of great presumption," he answered. "Why should she sift God's ordination and call in question results she is not able to understand? Marriage is in the direct command of God, and good men and women innumerable have obeyed the command without disputing. It is Nanna's place to take gratefully the love God has sent her--to obey, and not to argue. Obedience is the first round of the ascending ladder, David; and when any one casts it off, he makes even the commencement of spiritual life impossible." He spoke rapidly, and more as if he was trying to convince himself than to console David. His words, in any case, made no impression. David listened in his shy, sensitive, uncomplaining way, but the minister was quite aware he had touched only the outermost edge of feeling. David's eyes, usually mild and large, had now his soul at their window. It was not always there, but when present it infected and went through those upon whom it looked. The minister could not bear the glance. He rose, and gently pushed David into a chair, and laid his hands on his shoulders, and looked steadily at him. He could see that a gap had been made in his life, and that the bright, strong man had emerged from it withered and stricken. He sat down by his side and said: "Talk, David. Tell me all." And David told him all, and the two men wept together. Yet, though much that David said went like a two-edged sword through the minister's convictions, he resented the thrust, and held on to his stern plan of sin and retribution like grim death, all the more so because he felt it to be unconsciously attacked. And when David said: "It is the Shorter Catechism, minister; it is a hard book for women and bairns, and I wonder why they don't teach them from the Scriptures, which are easy and full of grace," the answer came with a passionate fervor that was the protest for much besides the catechism. "David! David! You must say nothing against the Shorter Catechism. It is the Magna Charta of Calvinism, and woe worth the day for dear old Scotland when its silver trumpet shall no longer be heard and listened to. Its rules and bonds and externals are all very necessary. Believe me, David, few men would remain religious without rules and bonds and externals." "I am, as I said, minister, all at sea. I find nothing within my soul, nothing within my life-experience, to give me any hope, and I am going away a miserable man." "David, your hope is not to be grounded on anything within yourself or your life-experience. When you wish to steady your boat, do you fix your anchor on anything within it, or do you cast your anchor outside?" "I cast it out."