‘You’re aboot right there, sir. Not that they dare take any credit to themselves--it’s grace, sir, all grace.’ ‘Aunt Ellen,’ said Catherine, while a sudden light broke over her face; ‘I just want you to take Edward a little story from me. Ministers are good things, but God can do without them.’ And she laid her hand on her aunt’s knee with a smile in which there was the slightest touch of affectionate satire. ‘I was up among the fells the other day’--she went on--‘I met an elderly man cutting wood in a plantation, and I stopped and asked him how he was. “Ah, miss,” he said, “verra weel, verra weel. And yet it was nobbut Friday morning lasst, I cam oop here, awfu’ bad in my sperrits like. For my wife she’s sick an a’ dwinnelt away, and I’m gettin’ auld, and can’t wark as I’d used to, and it did luke to me as thoo there was naethin’ afore us nobbut t’ Union. And t’ mist war low on t’ fells, and I sat oonder t’ wall, wettish and broodin’ like. And theer--all ov a soodent the Lord found me! Yes, puir Reuben Judge, as dawn’t matter to naebody, the Lord found un. It war leyke as thoo His feeace cam a glisterin’ an’ a shinin’ through t’ mist. An’ iver sense then, miss, aa’ve jest felt as thoo aa could a’ cut an’ stackt all t’ wood on t’ fell in naw time at a’!” And he waved his hand round the mountain side which was covered with plantation. And all the way along the path for ever so long I could hear him singing, chopping away, and quavering out “Rock of Ages.”’ ‘She paused; her delicate face, with just a little quiver in the lip, turned to her aunt, her eyes glowing as though a hidden fire had leapt suddenly outward. And yet the gesture, the attitude, was simplicity and unconsciousness itself. Robert had never heard her say anything so intimate before. Nor had he ever seen her so inspired, so beautiful. She had transmuted the conversation at a touch. It had been barbarous prose; she had turned it into purest poetry. Only the noblest souls have such an alchemy as this at command, thought the watcher on the other side, of the room, with a passionate reverence. ‘I wasn’t thinkin’ of narrowin’ the Lord down to ministers; said Mrs. Fleming, with a certain loftiness. ‘We all know He can do without us puir worms.’ Then, seeing that no one replied, the good woman got up to go. Much of her apparel had slipped away from her in the fervors of revivalist anecdote, and while she hunted for gloves and reticule--officiously helped by the younger girls--Robert crossed over to Catherine. ‘You lifted us on to your own high places!’ he said, bending down to her; ‘I shall carry your story with me through the fells.’ She looked up, and as she met his warm, moved look a little glow and tremor crept into the face, destroying its exalted expression. He broke the spell; she sank from the poet into the embarrassed woman. ‘You must see my old man,’ she said, with an effort; ‘he is worth a library of sermons. I must introduce him to you.’