“You are not yet one of us. You have yet a far road to travel. But I, that am old, see a vision. And one day you, Quintin MacClellan, shall serve tables among us of the Covenant. I shall not see it with the eyes of flesh. For even now my days are numbered, and the tale of them is brief. Farewell! Be not afraid. The Seven Thousand will stand behind you. No evil shall befall you here or otherwhere. The Seven Thousand have sworn it--they have sworn it on the Holy Book, in the place of Martyrs and in the House of Tears!” And with that the six men went out through the door and were lost in the darkness of the night. And the wind from the waste swept in and the lowe of the candle flickered eerily as if they had been visitants from another world. CHAPTER XXX. SILENCE IS GOLDEN. It was not long after this that I found myself, almost against my will, skirting the side of the long Loch of Ken, on the road to the Great House of Earlstoun. The lady of the Castle met me by the outer gate. When I came near her she lifted up her hands like a prophetess. “Three times have ye been warned! The Lord will not deal always gently with you. It is ill to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds!” “Mistress Gordon,” said I, “wherein have I now offended?” For indeed there was no saying what cantrip she had taken into her head. “How was it then,” she said, “that the talk went through the countryside that ye were married to that lassie Jean Gemmell on her dying bed?” “It is true,” said I, “but wherein was the sin?” “Oh,” said she, “the sin was not in the marrying (though that was doubtless a silly caper and the lass so near Dead’s door), but in being married by a minister of the Kirk Established and uncovenanted.” “But what else could I have done?” I hasted to make answer; “there are none other in all Scotland. For the Hill Folk have never had an ordained minister, since they took down James Renwick’s body from the gallows tree, and wrapped him gently in swaddling clothes for his burial.” “It is even true,” she said, “but I would have gone unmarried till my dying day before I would have let an Erastian servant of Belial couple me. But I forgat--’tis not long since you yourself escaped from that fold!” So there she stood so long on the step of the door and argued concerning the points of faith and doctrine without ever asking me in, that at last I grew weary, and begged that she would permit me to sit and refresh me on the step of the well-house, which was close at hand, even under the arch of the gateway. “Aye, surely, ye may that!” she made me answer, and again took up her parable without further offer of hospitality. And even thus they found us, when Mary Gordon and her father returned from the hill, walking hand in hand as was their wont.