Mr. Buchanan was more blanched and pale than ever, as he walked bareheaded behind the coffin. There was one, everybody said, who had a feeling heart--and many were glad when the ceremonial--always of so very simple a kind in the Scotch church, and in those days scarcely anything at all, a short prayer and no more--was over, with the thought that the minister being evidently so much out of health and spirits, and feeling the loss of the kind old elder so deeply, was just in the condition in which some “get their death,” from the exposure and chill of a funeral. Several of his friends convoyed him home after all was completed, and warned Mrs. Buchanan to take very good care of him, to give him some good, strong, hot toddy, or other restorative, and do all she could to bring back his colour and his spirit. “We have all had a great loss,” said Mr. Moncrieff, who was another leading elder, shaking his head, “but we are not all so sensitive as the minister.” Poor Mrs. Buchanan knew much better than they did what made the minister look so wae. She took all their advices in very good part, and assured his friends that the minister felt their kindness, and would soon be himself again. Alas, there was that interview still to come, which she thought secretly within herself she would have got over had she been the minister, and not have thus prolonged the agony day after day. There were a great many things that Mrs. Buchanan would have done, “had she been the minister,” which did not appear in the same light to him--as indeed very commonly happens on either side between married people. But she accepted the fact that she was not the minister, and that he must act for himself, and meet his difficulties in his own way since he would not meet them in hers. She did not comfort him with hot and strong toddy, as the elders recommended; but she did all she knew to make him comfortable, and to relieve his burdened spirit, pointing out to him that Mr. Morrison, the man of business, was also a considerate man, and acquainted with the difficulties of setting out a family in the world, and impressing upon him the fact that it was a good thing, on the whole, that Willie’s outfit had been paid at once, since Mr. Morrison, who would be neither better nor worse of it in his own person, would be, no doubt, on behalf of the heir, who was not of age nor capable of grasping at the money, a more patient creditor than a shop in Edinburgh, where a good discount had been given for the immediate payment of the account. “They would just have worried us into our graves,” Mrs. Buchanan said, and she added that Willie would probably be able to send home something to help in the payment before it had to be made. She said so much indeed, and it was all so reasonable, that poor Buchanan almost broke down under it, and at last implored her to go away and leave him quiet.