Mr. Galbraith made vain efforts to speak; the murmurs rose higher and higher, and began at last to direct themselves to him. ‘Is the like of that weirdless Dominie to stand against ye a’, feeble loons?’ cried a woman. ‘Wha’s he that he should daur to stand against us?’ ‘Let me at him!’ ‘Eh, lads, canny, canny, he’s an auld man.’ Such were the cries of indignation and alarm that rose in the stillness. The remnant of people who had been left in the village came rushing forth to see what was the matter. Mr. Lothian was at the other end of the parish, but young Stapylton, who had just returned from a fruitless ramble on the braes, came lounging to the Manse gate. The moon went suddenly behind a cloud, leaving all that darkling mass confused and struggling. Then it was that the Dominie made himself heard. ‘Lads,’ he shouted, his voice reaching the entire crowd though he was himself unseen, ‘I’ve trained ye, and I’m reaping the credit. If it was for your sakes ye might tear the auld man in pieces before you should have your will. Dinna think ye can frighten me. If I give the key to Ailie, it is for the women’s sake; and the bairns. Women, are ye mad that ye bring bairns here?’ ‘It’s because their souls are mair precious to us than a’ the world,’ cried some mother in the crowd. ‘It’s little enough you teach them,’ cried another. ‘Where would they hear the Gospel if no in the meetings?’ ‘No in the kirk, wi’ a moderate minister and his moral essays.’ ‘And now when we’ve found the Word of God ye would drive us to the hill-side to seek it.’ ‘They would drive us into the Loch if they had their will,’ cried the crowd. Isabel Diarmid, with all her sensibilities in arms, humiliated to the dust, indignant, terrified, stood trembling in the midst of this seething, agitated mass, thrust about by its sudden movements, ready to cry or to faint, feeling her self-respect for ever lost, no better than ‘a common lass’ among the crowd. She felt herself drawn along by the movement of the people round her rushing in one body for the door, which, with much noise of the key in the keyhole, had at length been opened. Clinging to her stepmother, vainly resisting, overwhelmed with shame, she felt herself swept out of the fresh air into the dark schoolroom no longer an individual with a will of her own, but a helpless portion of the crowd. When the first pioneers succeeded in lighting one miserable candle to throw a glimmer over the scene, its feeble rays gave no one any assistance, but only cast a wretched twinkle of revelation, showing the struggle--the benches pushed aside by the blind, uncertain crowd; the throng pouring in darkling through the black doorway. By degrees a few other feeble twinkles began to glitter about the room, and the people subsided into seats, with much commotion and struggling.