By the time it reached the Oa it was to the effect that in his college days Mr. Egerton had been a very wild and dissolute youth. Glenoro might not have objected to a thoroughly reformed villain, but this young man's gay conduct left them in doubt whether at heart he was any better now than in the past. Old Andrew Johnstone, who had been somewhat mollified by the young man's action in regard to the organ, was once more aroused. At first he paid no heed to the story, for his son had told it to him. Wee Andra did not think it necessary to repeat it verbatim; he was rather vague concerning details, but extremely serious. Some tale 'Liza Cotton had heard, he explained. It was quite true, he feared, something or other about his playing a fiddle and dancing, far worse than Sandy Neil had ever been guilty of, for this was in a theatre. Wee Andra knew the word theatre was to his father a synonym for the bottomless pit. "Mebbe the minister had been an actor once." Wee Andra hoped, for the sake of the Church, that it wasn't true. "Ah, ye tale-bearer!" cried his father with a withering contempt, which could not quite hide his perturbation. "It's a fine pack ye meet every night in the Glen! Their only thought is to hear or tell some new thing, let it be false or true! Ye canna' even keep yer ill tongues aff a meenister o' the Gospel!" "But this is true, father," declared the young man seriously. "'Liza Cotton saw him herself; you can ask her, if you don't believe me. Man!" he continued, growing frivolous again, "it'll be fine here next winter if he plays the fiddle! Sandy Neil's goin' to ask him to learn him some new dance tunes!" "Ah, ye irreverent fool!" shouted his father, rising up from the dinner table where this conversation had been held. "Man, ye an' yon Neil pack neither fear God nor regard man! Get oot o' ma' sight!" Wee Andra, having wisely deferred his last shot until his dinner was finished, obeyed his father's injunction with alacrity, and went off to the fields, consumed with unfilial mirth. Meantime the subject of all this discussion was not oblivious to the fact that some strange undercurrent of feeling was working against him. Coonie was the instrument used to make a reality out of the intangible thing.