Discerning people, like Elspeth Macfadyen, saw the whole tragedy from beginning to end, and felt the pity of it keenly, For a while the Rabbi waited with fond confidence--for was not he to hear the best-loved of his boys?--and he caught eagerly at a gracious expression, as if it had fallen from one of the fathers. Anything in the line of faith would have pleased the Rabbi that day, who was as a little child, and full of charity, in spite of his fierce doctrines. By-and-by the light died away from his eyes as when a cloud comes over the face of the sun and the Glen grows cold and dreary. He opened his eyes and was amazed, looking at the people and questioning them what had happened to their minister. Suddenly he flushed as a person struck by a friend, and then, as one blow followed another, he covered his face with both hands, sinking lower and lower in his chair, till even that decorous people were almost shaken in their attention. When Carmichael gave him the cup in the Sacrament the Rabbi's hand shook and he spilled some drops of the wine upon his beard, which all that day showed like blood on the silvery whiteness. Afterwards he spake in his turn to the communicants, and distinguished the true people of God from the multitude--to whom he held out no hope--by so many and stringent marks that Donald Menzies refused the Sacrament with a lamentable groan. And when the Sacrament was over, and the time came for Carmichael to shake hands with the assisting minister in the vestry, the Rabbi had vanished, and he had no speech with him till they went through the garden together--very bleak it seemed in the winter dusk--unto the sermon that closed the services of the day. [Illustration: WHEN CARMICHAEL GAVE HIM THE CUP IN THE SACRAMENT.] "God's hand is heavy in anger on us both this day, John," and Carmichael was arrested by the awe and sorrow in the Rabbi's voice, "else . . . you had not spoken as you did this forenoon, nor would necessity be laid on me to speak . . . as I must this night. "His ways are all goodness and truth, but they are oftentimes encompassed with darkness, and the burden He has laid on me is . . . almost more than I can bear; it will be heavy for you also. "You will drink the wine of astonishment this night, and it will be strange if you do not . . . turn from the hand that pours it out, but you will not refuse the truth or . . . hate the preacher"; and at the vestry door the Rabbi looked wistfully at Carmichael. During the interval the lad had been ill at ease, suspecting from the Rabbi's manner at the Table, and the solemnity of his address, that he disapproved of the action sermon, but he did not for a moment imagine that the situation was serious. It is one of the disabilities of good-natured and emotional people, without much deepness of earth, to belittle the convictions and resolutions of strong natures, and to suppose that they can be talked away by a few pleasant, coaxing words.