Old Angus followed them to the gate when they drove away, his heart swelling with high hope. He would live to see all his ambitions realised in Roderick. He sat up very late that night and when he went to bed and remembered how the Lad had promised to help rid Peter of the drink curse, he could not sleep until he had sung the long-meter doxology. He sang it very softly, for Kirsty was asleep and it might be hard to explain to her if she were disturbed; nevertheless he sang it with an abounding joy and faith. As Roderick and Lawyer Ed drove homeward, down the moon-lit length of the Pine Road; they were surprised to hear ahead of them, within a few rods of Peter Fiddle's house, the sound of singing. Very wavering and uncertain, now loud and high, now dropping to a low wail, came the slow splendid notes of Kilmarnock to the sublime words of the 103rd psalm. The two in the buggy looked at each other. "Peter!" cried Lawyer Ed in dismay. When Old Peter was only a little bit drunk he inclined to frivolity and gaiety, and was given to playing the fiddle and dancing, but when he was very drunk, he was very solemn, and intensely religious. He gave himself to the singing of psalms, and if propped up would preach a sermon worthy of Doctor Leslie himself. A turn in the road brought him into sight. There, between the silver mirror of the moonlit lake and the dark scented green of the forest, insensible to the beauty of either, sat the man. He was perched perilously on the seat of his wagon and was swaying from side to side, swinging his arms about him and singing in a loud maudlin voice, the fine old psalm that he had learned long, long ago before he became less than a man. Lawyer Ed pulled up before him. "Oh Peter, Peter!" he cried, "is this you?" Peter Fiddle stopped singing, with the righteously indignant air of one whose devotions have been interrupted by a rude barbarian. "And who will you be," he demanded witheringly, "that dares to be speaking to the McDuff in such a fashion? Who will you be, indeed?" "Come, come, Peter, none of that," said his friend soothingly. "I cannot think who you are. You surely can't be my old friend, Peter McDuff, sitting by the roadside this way. Who are you, anyway?" Peter became suddenly grave. The question raised a terrible doubt in his mind. He looked about him with the wavering gaze of a man on board a heaving ship. His unsteady glance fell on the empty wagon shafts lying on the ground. He looked at them in bewilderment, then took off his old cap and scratched his head. "How is this, I'd like to know?" demanded Lawyer Ed, pushing his advantage. "If you're not Peter McDuff, who are you? And where is the horse gone?"