His wife lifted her light blue eyes to his face, with a look of incredulous wonder on her own.
"Do you really mean that you would sooner bear the penalty than obey, David Gray?" she asked.
"The penalty I would bear gladly if it did not involve breaking up our home. I doubt not the Lord will guide my feet in the right way. If He shows me that it is my duty to endure hardship for His sake, will my wife not willingly endure with me? On such a vital question, Lilian, we cannot, dare not be divided!" said the minister, hoarsely.
Lilian Gray shrugged her slender shoulders, and an expression of scorn somewhat marred the childish beauty of her face.
"None but a madman, David, would give up a comfortable manse and a good stipend for such a small thing; but doubtless though your folly should render your wife and children homeless, it would not greatly exercise your spirit. But I am glad to think that my father's house will not be closed against me," she said, pettishly, and turned her face away from her husband.
The minister groaned in the anguish of his spirit for his shallow-hearted wife tried him to the utmost limit of endurance. Before he had time to frame an answer to her most unfeeling speech, there came a loud knocking to the outer door, and presently he heard the voice of his father-in-law, Gilbert Burnet of Haughhead, enquiring whether he was within. So he turned upon his heel, and, quitting the room, met his father-in-law in the hall. Opening the study door, he motioned him to enter therein, for he saw well enough that it was the proclamation which had brought him to the manse. Burnet of Haughhead was a little burly man, of very self-important and consequential demeanour, for, in truth, he thought himself of no mean importance in the parish, and considered that he had greatly honoured the minister of Broomhill in giving him his daughter to wife.
"I see by your face, son-in-law, that you have already received notification of the august decree concerning the bishops and the ministers," he said, in a facetious voice. "Ha! ha! they are to be dealt with like refractory schoolboys now--mastered or expelled."
David Gray turned his head away with a swift gesture, for he was tempted to speak somewhat unbecomingly to the father of his wife. Such jesting and mocking allusion to such a serious matter were more than painful to him; nay, he could scarcely endure it in patience.
"Would it not have been a much more satisfactory state of things had you quietly acquiesced in the desires of the king, without having to be brought under this humiliating ban?" said Haughhead presently. "You are still a young man, and ought to have been guided by the counsels of your elders."
"Mr. Burnet, do you think that, though still a young man, I have neither opinions nor conscience of my own?" enquired David Gray, hotly, for his quick temper was touched by the manner and words addressed to him.