"Either you say, mother, that my father was not so good as I think him, or that he did what he did in his own strength!"
"' Let him that thinketh '—you know the rest!" rejoined the mother.
"I don't think I am tempted to anything just now."
"There it is, you see!—the temptation so subtle that you do not suspect its character!"
"I am confident my father would have done just as I mean to do!"
"What do you mean to do?"
"Is it my own mother asks me? Does she distrust her husband and her son together?"
It began to dawn on the mother that she had fallen into her own temptation through distrust of her son. Because she-distrusted him, she sought excuse for him, and excuse had turned to all but justification: she had given place to the devil! But she must be sure about Alister! She had had enough of the wiles of Satan: she must not trust her impressions! The enemy might even now be bent on deceiving her afresh! For a moment she kept silence, then said:—
"It would be a grand thing to have the whole country-side your own again—wouldn't it, Alister?"
"It would, mother!" he answered.