"Dear people," he said, "the decision has been sharp and sudden, and the pain of it still lingers in my heart as I talk to you to-day; but I dare not have it otherwise lest, in hesitating, my will should cross the will of God, for, as soldiers must obey the command of their captain, nor ask the reason why, so I, Christ's soldier and servant, must be ready at His Word to pass on to where the battle is most fierce, and where, maybe, the army needs reinforcement. Shall I be less brave than Abraham, who, at the call of God, left home and kindred to settle in a strange land amongst an alien people? Dear friends, as clearly as God's message came to Abraham in those far-off days, it has seemed to come to me, telling me to leave the home and people that I love, and to go, work for Him in another part of His vineyard. Therefore I obey." There were tears on the upturned faces that listened, and, when the people left the church, there was an almost universal wail of lamentation. But reticent natures like the Macdonalds could find no relief in words; they walked silently side by side with tears in their eyes and an untold aching in their hearts. "Life won't be the same again, John; we shan't get another like the good man," said Mrs. Macdonald, as they neared home. "No," said John, slowly. "But if he don't make a fuss about it, no more won't we; he's sure about the call, and he dursn't disobey. But now we'll save for the collectin'!" "What collectin'?" "They'll make him a present. They are sure to make him a present; and we'll be ready when they call," said John. But, with all his brave words, John's dinner was pushed away untouched, and his broad back was turned resolutely to his wife so that she might not guess that he was crying! CHAPTER XIV. A CHANGE OF MIND. Three months later Paul Lessing stood, one morning in March, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, looking out of his sitting-room window. His eyes rested on the little plot of ground before him, with its borders of snowdrops and crocuses, and the road beyond, along which the village children in their scarlet cloaks hurried to school: a narrow boundary to a narrow life, he told himself--and lonely, since Sally had left him a week or two ago. He was intolerably dull, and Sally's letter, which lay open on the table, brimful as it was of new energies and interests, had set him wondering whether he could continue his present course of life much longer. There was positively no one left in the village, at present, with whom he could interchange an idea.