The communion hymn was followed by an abbreviated—for time pressed—but none the less soul-searching address, known in old-time Presbyterian parlance as the “Fencing of the Table.” This part of the communion “Exercises,” however necessary in communities only nominally religious and in times when “coming forward” had come to be regarded as a purely formal duty associated with the attaining of “years of discretion” rather than with any particular religious experience, the minister during his years in the valley had come to touch somewhat lightly. Among the people of the valley there was little need of a “fence” to warn back the rashly self-complacent from “unworthily communing.” Yet custom dies hard in matters religious, and in consequence the “Fencing of the Table” could not be neglected. Encouraged by the invitation to the holy ordinance given with a warmth and breadth of appeal to “all who desired to remember with grateful and penitent heart the Lord Who had given His life for them,” Paul, without much previous thought and moved chiefly by the desire quite unusual at such a moment to share in the solemn service with his father, who apparently had suddenly resolved to renew his relation to his faith and to his Church today, had slipped from the piano seat to his father’s side. During the “fencing” process, Paul’s mind, borne afar upon the spiritual tides released by the whole service and its environment and quite oblivious to the argument and appeal in the words of the address, was suddenly and violently arrested by a phrase, “You must forgive him who has wronged you, else you dare not partake.” As the idea was elaborated and enforced with all the fervent passion of the minister’s Highland soul the boy’s whole mental horizon became blocked with one terrible and forbidding object, the face of Asa Sleeman. The sin of the unforgiving soul daring to enter into communion with the forgiving Lord was pressed with relentless logic upon the boy’s conscience. An overwhelming horror fell upon him. Forgive him who had uttered the foul lie about his father? The thing was simply a moral impossibility. The whole moral order of his Universe would in that case come tumbling in ruins about him. The thing called for judgment, not forgiveness—judgment and condign punishment. Wrong things and wrong people must be punished, else what was hell for? Yet, “forgive him who has wronged you,” the minister was saying, “else you cannot be forgiven.” Clearly there was no hope for him. His whole theory of forgiveness and restoration was rudely shattered. Asa and his father might possibly escape hell after all. It was a disturbing thought. At any rate, the communion was not for him. He glanced hastily at his father. “I am going out a bit,” he whispered. “Are you ill?” inquired his father, startled at the pallor in his face. “No, I’m all right,” he replied, and rising quietly he passed out and through the open door of the church.