“Well, that is true,” she replied, but doubtfully: “I am not denying a man’s right to do what he likes with his own. And if it had been only you, his minister, that perhaps he owed much more to, even his own soul, as Paul says----” “No, no; not so much as that.” “But if there are many,” Mrs. Buchanan went on, shaking her head, “it might be a sore heritage for Frank. Claude, if ever in the days to come we can do anything for that lad, mind I would think it was our duty to prefer him before our very own: for this is a great deliverance, and wrought, as you may say, at his cost but without his consent----” “My dear, a sum like that,” said Mr. Buchanan, with a faint smile and a heavy heart, “is not a fortune.” “That is true, but it is a great deliverance to us; and if ever we can be helpful to him, in siller or in kindness, in health or in sickness----” There came a rush of tenderness to Mrs. Buchanan’s heart, with the tears that filled her eyes, and she could say no more. “Yes, yes,” he said a little fretfully, “yes, yes; though he had no merit in it, and not any such great loss either that I can see.” She judged it wise to leave the minister to himself after this; for, though nerves were not much thought of in those days, she saw that irritability and a tendency to undervalue the great deliverance, which filled her with such overflowing gratitude, had taken the place of more amiable feelings in his mind. It was better to leave him quiet, to recover from his ill mood, and from the consequence of being overdone. “I have so many things to take off my mind,” she said to herself. Perhaps she thought the minister’s cares--though most people would have thought them so much more important--nothing to hers, which were so many, often so petty, so absorbing, leaving her no time to brood. And had she not provided him with the new _Waverley_, which most people thought the best anodyne for care--that is, among the comforts of this world, not, of course, to count among higher things?