Then, ere I pronounced the benediction, I told them how that one dear to me and well known to them had a certain matter to set before them. With that uprose Alexander Gordon in the midst, looming great like a hero seen in the morning mist. I put him to the solemn oath, and then and there he declared before them his innocence of the greater evil, purging himself, as the manner was, by solemn and binding oath, which purgation had been refused him by the Presbytery. “By the grace and kindness of your minister, I, Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun, being known to you all, declare myself wholly innocent of the crime laid to my charge by the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright. May the Lord in whom I believe have no mercy on my soul if I speak not the truth. “But as for the lesser shame,” so he continued, “that I brought on myself and on the cause for which I have been in time past privileged to suffer, in that I was overcome with wine in the change-house of St. John’s, Clachan--that much is true. With contrition do I confess it. And I confess also to the unholy and hellish anger that descended on my spirit, from which blackness of darkness I was brought by your minister. For which I, unworthy, shall ever continue to praise the Lord of mercies, who did not cut me off with my sin unconfessed or my innocence unproclaimed.” Alexander Gordon sat down, and there went a sigh and a murmur over all the folk like the wind over ripe wheat in a large field. Then I told them how that my resolve was taken, and that it was necessary that I should depart from the midst of them in order that there might be peace. But one and another throughout the kirk cried, “Nay, we will not let you go! We have fought for you; desert us not now. The bitterness of the blast is surely over; now they will let us alone!” Thus one and another cried out there in the kirk, but the most part only groaned in spirit and were troubled. “Ye shall not be less my people that another is set in my place. I go indeed to seek a wider ministry. I have been called by the remnant of the Hill-folk that have so long been without a pastor. Whether I am fitted to be their minister I do not know, but in weakness and the acknowledgment of it there is ever the beginning of strength. I have loved your parish and you. Dear dust lies in that kirkyard out there, and when for me the Angel of the Presence comes who calls not twice, that is where I should like to lie, under the blossoming hawthorn trees near by where the waters of Dee flow largely and quietly about the bonny kirk-knowe of Balmaghie.” CHAPTER XXXVIII. “I LOVE YOU, QUINTIN!” There was little more to do. The scanty stock of the glebe was, by Hob’s intervention, sold in part to Nathan Gemmell, of Drumglass, and the remainder driven along the Kenside by the fords of the Black Water to Ardarroch, where my mother received it with uplifted, querulous hands, and my father calmly as if he had never expected anything else.