“Not yet! do you mean that after the great deliverance we got, and the blessed kindness of that old man, you are going to put your head under the yoke again? What has she to do with it? He thought nothing of her. He let the boy get it because there was nobody else, but he never took any interest even in the boy. He never would have permitted--Claude! those scruples of yours, they are ridiculous; they are quite ridiculous. What, oh! what do you mean? To ruin your own for the sake of that little puppy of a boy? God forgive me; it is probably not the laddie’s fault. He is just the creation of his silly mother. And they are well off already. If old Anderson had left them nothing at all, they were well off already. Claude, if she has come here to play upon your weakness, to get back what the real owner had made you a present of----” “Mary, I have never been able to get it out of my mind that it was the smaller debtors he wanted to release, but not me.” “Had you any reason to mistrust the old man, Claude?” He gave her a look, still from under his clasped hands, but made no reply. “Which of them were more to him than you,” said Mrs. Buchanan, vehemently; “the smaller debtors? Joseph Sym, the gardener, that he set up in business, or the Horsburghs, or Peter Wemyss? Were they more to him than you?--was this woman, with her ringlets, and her puffed sleeves more to him than you? Or her silly laddie, no better than a bairn, though he may be near a man in years? I have reminded you before what St. Paul says: ‘Albeit, I do not say to thee how thou owest me thine own self besides.’ He was not slow to say that, the old man, when you would let him. And you think he was more taken up with that clan-jamfry than with you?” “No--no; I don’t say that, Mary. I know he was very favourable to me, too favourable; but I have never felt at rest about this. Morrison would not let me speak; perhaps he thought I had got less than I really had. This has always been in my head.” The minister got up suddenly and began to walk about the room. “Take now thy bill, and sit down quickly, and write fourscore,” he said, under his breath. “What is that you are saying, Claude? That is what Elsie heard you saying the day of Mr. Anderson’s death. She said, quite innocent, it gave you a great deal of trouble, your sermon, that you were always going over and over----” “What?” said Mr. Buchanan, stopping short in his walk, with a scared face.