Now, as in some other mystical natures, a certain something had been developed in the soutar not unlike a spirit of prophecy—an insight which, seemingly without exercise of the will, sometimes laid bare to him in a measure the thoughts and intents of hearts in which he was more than usually interested; or perhaps it was rather a faculty, working unconsciously, of putting signs together, and drawing from them instantaneous conclusion of the fact at which they pointed. After their greeting, he suddenly looked up at his visitor with a certain fixed attention: the mere glance had shown him that he looked ill, and he now saw that something in the man’s heart was eating at it like a canker. Therewith at once arose in his brain the question: could he be the father of the little one crowing in the next room? But he shut it into the darkest closet of his mind, shrinking from the secret of another soul, as from the veil of the Holy of Holies! The next moment, however, came the thought: what if the man stood in need of the offices of a friend? It was one thing to pry into a man’s secret; another, to help him escape from it! As out of this thought the soutar sat looking at him for a moment, the minister felt the hot blood rush to his cheeks. “Ye dinna luik that weel, minister,” said the soutar: “is there onything the maitter wi’ ye, sir?” “Nothing worth mentioning,” answered the parson. “I have sometimes a touch of headache in the early morning, especially when I have sat later than usual over my books the night before; but it always goes off during the day.” “Ow weel, sir, that’s no, as ye say, a vera sairious thing! I couldna help fancyin ye had something on yer min’ by ord’nar!” “Naething, naething,” answered James with a feeble laugh. “—But,” he went on—and something seemed to send the words to his lips without giving him time to think—“it is curious you should say that, for I was just thinking what was the real intent of the apostle in his injunction to confess our faults one to another.” The moment he uttered the words he felt as if he had proclaimed his secret on the housetop; and he would have begun the sentence afresh, with some notion of correcting it; but again he knew the hot blood shoot to his face.—“I _must_ go on with something!” he felt rather than said to himself, “or those sharp eyes will see through and through me!” “It came into my mind,” he went on, “that I should like to know what _you_ thought about the passage: it cannot surely give the least ground for auricular confession! I understand perfectly how a man may want to consult a friend in any difficulty—and that friend naturally the minister; but—” This was by no means a thing he had meant to say, but he seemed carried on to say he knew not what. It was as if, without his will, the will of God was driving the man to the brink of a pure confession—to the cleansing of his stuffed bosom “of that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart.”