“I wish to Heaven you had been there in a physical sense; you would have been far more useful!” replied Elijah. “And so he died and Elsie was saved?”
“Yes, Posty died and went to his account; that was how he lived, and that was how he died.” And I waited.
Elijah sprang out of his seat and stood on the hearthrug, his face flushed, and his eyes shining.
“It's a pity that he tasted; I wish he hadn't It's a pity he did not think more about his own soul; I wish he had. But Posty was a hero, and played the man that day. Posty will have another chance. Posty loved, and God is Love; if there's such a thing as justice, it's all right with Posty.”
We did not look at one another for a full minute—a print of Perugino's Crucifixion over the mantelpiece interested me, and Elijah's eye seemed to be arrested by the Encyclopedia Britannica on the other side of the room—a minute later we shook hands upon the basis of the Divine Love and our common humanity, and nothing more passed between us.
From my window I could see him go along the street He stopped and slapped his leg triumphantly. I seemed to hear the evangelist say again with great joy: “It's all right with Posty!” I said, “And it's all right with Elijah Higginbotham.”
THE COLLECTOR'S INCONSISTENCY
There were many capable men in the session of the North Free Kirk, Muirtown—such as Bailie MacCallum, from whom Drumsheugh bought Kate Carnegie's wedding present after a historical tussle—but they were all as nothing beside the Collector, and this was so well known in Muirtown that people spoke freely of the Collector's kirk. When he arrived in Muirtown, it was understood that he sampled six kirks, three Established and three Free—the rumour about the Original Seceders was never authenticated—and that the importance of his visits was thoroughly appreciated. No unseemly fuss was made on his appearance; but an ex-bailie, or the Clerk to the Road Trustees, or some such official person, happened to meet him at the door, and received him into his pew with quiet, unostentatious respect; and when he left, officious deacons did not encompass his exit, rubbing their hands and asking how he liked their place, but an elder journeying in the same direction entered into general conversation and was able to mention with authority next day what the Collector had said. Various reasons were canvassed for his settlement in the North Kirk, where old Dr. Pitten-driegh was then drawing near to the close of his famous exposition of the Epistle to the Romans, published after the Doctor's death, and sold to the extent of fifty-seven copies among the congregation. It was, for one thing, a happy coincidence that on that occasion the Doctor, having taken an off day from Romans, had preached from the text “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's,” and had paid a high tribute to the character of a faithful servant of the Crown. Some importance, no doubt, also attached to the fact that the Procurator Fiscal sat in the “North Free,” austere and mysterious, whose power of detecting crime bordered on the miraculous, and whose ways were veiled in impenetrable darkness, so that any one with a past felt uncomfortable in his presence; and it was almost synonymous with doom to say of a man, “The Fiscal has his eye on him.” Perhaps it was not without influence that the Supervisor, who was the Collector's subordinate, with power also of official life and death, had long sat under Dr. Pittendriegh—the Doctor and the Collector were indeed the only persons the Supervisor did sit under. He had admirable opportunities of enlarging to the Collector on the solid and edifying qualities of Dr. Pittendriegh's ministry, and the unfortunate defects in the preaching and pastoral gifts of neighbouring ministers, in the intervals of business, when the two of them were not investigating into the delinquencies of some officer of excise, who had levied a tax on the produce of Dunleith Distillery not only in money but also in kind; or concocting cunning plans for the detection of certain shepherds who were supposed to be running an entirely unlicensed still in the recesses of Glen Urtach. It was at least through this official, himself an elder, that the Collector's decision was intimated to the Doctor and the other authorities of the North Kirk, and they lost no time in giving it proper and irrevocable effect The Supervisor set an example of patriotic sacrifice by surrendering his pew in the centre of the church and retiring to the modest obscurity of the side seats, so that the Collector could be properly housed; for it was not to be thought of for a moment that he should sit anywhere except in the eye of the public, or that ordinary persons—imagine for instance young children—should be put in the same pew with him. So he sat there alone, for he had neither wife nor child, from January to December, except when on his official leave—which he took not for pleasure but from a sense of duty—and he gave a calm, judicial attention to all the statements put before him by the preacher. Very soon after this arrangement the Doctor discovered that the Deacons' Court required strengthening, and, as a man of affairs, the Collector was added at the head of the list; and when a year later a happy necessity compelled an election of elders, the Collector was raised to this higher degree, and thereafter was “thirled” to the North Free, and the history of that kirk and of the Collector became one.