“To Him that lov'd the souls of men,
And washed us in His blood,”
the Doctor charged those present to carry his greetings to the folk at home, and tell them they were all in his heart After which he looked at his people as they stood for at least a minute, and then lifting his hands, according to the ancient fashion of the Scottish Kirk, he blessed them. His gifts, with a special message to each person, he sent by faithful messengers, and afterwards he went out through the snow to make two visits. The first was to blind Marjorie, who was Free Kirk, but to whom he had shown much kindness all her life. His talk with her was usually of past days and country affairs, seasoned with wholesome humour to cheer her heart, but to-day he fell into another vein, to her great delight, and they spoke of the dispensations of Providence.
“'Whom the Lord loveth, he chasteneth,' Marjorie, is a very instructive Scripture, and I was thinking of it last night You have had a long and hard trial, but you have doubtless been blessed, for if you have not seen outward things, you have seen the things... of the soul.” The Doctor hesitated once or twice, as one who had not long travelled this road.
“You and I are about the same age, Marjorie, and we must soon... depart My life was very... prosperous, but lately it has pleased the Almighty to... chasten me. I have now, therefore, some hope also that I may be one of His children.”
“He wes aye gude grain, the Doctor,” Marjorie said to her friend after he had left, “but he's hed a touch o' the harvest sun, and he's been ripening.”
Meanwhile the Doctor had gone on to Tochty Lodge, and was standing in the stone hall, which was stripped and empty of the Camegies for ever. Since he was a laddie in a much-worn kilt and a glengarry bonnet without tails, he had gone in and out the Lodge, and himself had seen four generations—faintly remembering the General's grandfather. Every inch of the house was familiar to him, and associated with kindly incidents. He identified the spaces on the walls where the portraits of the cavaliers and their ladies had hung; he went up to the room where the lairds had died and his friend had hoped to fall on sleep; he visited the desolate gallery where Kate had held court and seemed to begin a better day for the old race; then he returned and stood before the fireplace in which he had sat long ago and looked up to see the stars in the sky. Round that hearth many a company of brave men and fair women had gathered, and now there remained of this ancient stock but two exiles—one eating out his heart in poverty and city life, and a girl who had for weal or woe, God only knew, passed out of the line of her traditions. A heap of snow had gathered on the stone, where the honest wood fire had once burned cheerily, and a gust of wind coming down the vast open chimney powdered his coat with drift It was to him a sign that the past was closed, and that he would never again stand beneath that roof.
He opened the gate of the manse, and then, under a sudden impulse, went on through deep snow to the village and made a third visit—to Archie Moncur, whom he found sitting before the fire reading the Temperance Trumpet. Was there ever a man like Archie?—so gentle and fierce, so timid and fearless, so modest and persevering. He would stoop to lift a vagrant caterpillar from the cart track, and yet had not adjectives to describe the infamy of a publican; he would hardly give an opinion on the weather, but he fought the drinking customs of the Glen like a lion; he would only sit in the lowest seat in any place, but every winter he organised—at great trouble and cost of his slender means—temperance meetings which were the fond jest of the Glen. From year to year he toiled on, without encouragement, without success, hopeful, uncomplaining, resolute, unselfish, with the soul of a saint and the spirit of a hero in his poor, deformed, suffering little body. He humbled himself before the very bairns, and allowed an abject like Milton to browbeat him with Pharisaism, but every man in the Glen knew that Archie would have gone to the stake for the smallest jot or tittle of his faith.
“Archie,” said the Doctor, who would not sit down, and whose coming had thrown the good man into speechless confusion, “it's the day of our Lord's birth, and I wish to give you and all my friends of the Free Kirk—as you have no minister just now—hearty Christmas greeting. May peace be in your kirk and homes... and hearts.
“My thoughts have been travelling back of late over those years since I was ordained minister of this parish and the things which have happened, and it seemed to me that no man has done his duty by his neighbour or before God with a more single heart than you, Archie.”
“God bless you.” Then on the doorstep the Doctor shook hands again and paused for a minute. “You have fought a good fight, Archie—I wish we could all say the same... a good fight.”