The hour was heavier to the parents up-stairs, where the minister was so despondent and depressed that his wife had hard ado to cheer him. The window which down-stairs they had heard him throw open, stood wide to the night, admitting a breeze which blew about the flame of the candles, threatening every moment to extinguish them; for the air, though soft and warm, blew in almost violently fresh from the sea. Mrs. Buchanan put down the window, and drew the blind, restoring the continuity and protecting enclosure of the walls; for there are times and moods when an opening upon infinite air and space is too much for the soul travailing among the elements of earth. She went to his side and stood by him, with her hand on his shoulder. “Dinna be so down-hearted, Claude, my man,” she said, with her soft voice. Her touch, her tone, the contact of her warm, soft person, the caressing of her hand came on him like dew. “Mary,” he said, leaning his head back upon her, “you don’t know what I have done. I did it in meaning, if not in fact. The thought of you kept me back, my dear, more than the thought of my Maker. I am a miserable and blood-guilty man.” “Whisht, whisht,” she said, trembling all over, but putting now a quivering arm round him; “you are not thinking what you say.” “Well am I thinking, well am I knowing it. Me, His body-servant, His man--not merely because He is my Saviour, as of all men, but my Master to serve hand and foot, night and day. For the sake of a little pain, a little miserable money, I had well-nigh deserted His service, Mary. Oh, speak not to me, for I am a lost soul----” “Whisht, Claude! You are a fevered bairn. Do you think He is less understanding, oh, my man, than me? What have you done?” He looked up at her with large, wild eyes. Then she suddenly perceived his hand clenched upon something, and darting at it with a cry forced it open, showing a small bottle clasped in the hollow of his palm. She gripped his shoulder violently, with a low shriek of horror. “Claude, Claude! you have not--you did not----” “I poured it out before the Lord,” he said, putting the phial on the table; “but the sin is no less, for I did it in meaning, if not in deed. How can I ever lift my head or my hand before His presence again?” “Oh, my laddie! my man!” cried his wife, who was the mother of every soul in trouble, “oh, my Claude! Are you so little a father, you with your many bairns, that you do not know in your heart how He is looking at you? ‘Such pity as a father hath unto His children dear.’ You are just fevered and sick with trouble. You shut out your wife from you, and now you would shut out your Lord from you.” “No,” he said, grasping her hand, “never again, Mary, never again. I am weak as water, I cannot stand alone. I have judged others for less, far less, than I myself have done.”