“No matter who told me. How am I to get at that man? I should make him pay up somehow, oh trust me for that, if I could only make out who he was.” “There was no such man,” said the minister. There breathed across his mind, as he spoke, the burden of the parable: “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore.” “I have not heard of any of Mr. Anderson’s debtors who had got so large a loan as that: but Morrison expressly said that it was in the will he had freely forgiven them all.” “I should not forgive them,” cried the lady, harshly. “Get me a list of them, Mr. Buchanan, give me a list of them, and then we shall see what the law will say. Get me a list of them, Mr. Buchanan! I am sure that you must know them all.” “I don’t know that I could tell you more than one of them.” “That will be the four hundred man!” cried Mrs. Mowbray. “Tell me of him, tell me of him, Mr. Buchanan, and I shall always be grateful to you. Tell me the one you know.” “I must first think it over--and--take counsel,” the minister said. CHAPTER IX. MAN AND WIFE. “What did that woman want with you, Claude?” said Mrs. Buchanan, coming in with panting breath, and depositing herself in the chair from which Mrs. Mowbray had risen but a little while before. The minister sat with his head in his hands, his face covered, his aspect that of a man utterly broken down. He did not answer for some time, and then: “I think she wants my life-blood,” he said. “Your life-blood! Claude, my man, are you taking leave of your senses--or what is it you mean?” Once more there was a long pause. His wife was not perhaps so frightened as she might have been in other circumstances. She was very tired. The satisfaction of having got rid of all her guests was strong in her mind. She had only just recovered her breath, after toiling upstairs. Lastly, it was so absurd that any one should want the minister’s life-blood; last of all, the smiling and flattering Mrs. Mowbray, that she was more inclined to laugh than to be alarmed. “You may laugh,” said Mr. Buchanan, looking up at her from below the shadow of his clasped hands, with hollow eyes, “but it is death to me. She wants me to give her a list of all old Anderson’s debtors, Mary. I told her I only knew one.” “Goodness, Claude! did you say it was yourself?” “Not yet,” he said, with a deep sigh.