CHAPTER VII
Upon a quiet, gray December afternoon, nine years and more from the June day when he had fished in the glen and Mother Binning had told him of her vision of the Jacobite gathering at Braemar, English Strickland, walking for exercise to the village and back, found himself overtaken by Mr. M'Nab, the minister who in his white manse dwelt by the white kirk on the top of the windy hill. This was, by every earthly canon, a good man, but a stern and unsupple. He had not been long in this parish, and he was sweeping with a strong, new besom. The old minister, to his mind, had been Erastian and lax, weak in doctrine and in discipline of the fold. Mr. M'Nab meant not to be weak. He loathed sin and would compel the sinner also to loathe it. Now he came up, tall and darkly clad, and in his Calvinistic hand his Bible.
"Gude day, sir!"
"Good day, Mr. M'Nab!" The two went on side by side. The day was very still, the sky an even gray, snow being prepared. "You saw the laird?"
"Aye. He's verra low."
"He'll not recover I think. It's been a slow failing for two years—ever since Mrs. Jardine's death."
"She was dead before I came to this kirk. But once, when I was a young man, I stayed awhile in these parts. I remember her."
"She was the best of women."
"So they said. But she had not that grip upon religion that the laird has!"