“Like people, like priest!” The folk that gathered in the little church that morning were simple people of the glen, shepherds and cotters from the countryside, humble villagers. They were women for the most part, with old men and children. The girls were away at the munition plants, the young men at the war, fighting or lying under their little crosses or in their unknown and unmarked graves, on one of Britain's five battle fronts, or under the tossing waters of the Seven Seas where Britain's navy rides, guarding the world's freedom. Simple peasant folk they were, but with that look of grave and thoughtful steadfastness with which Scotland knows how to stamp her people.
The devotions were conducted by the minister with simple sincerity, and with a prophet's mystic touch and a prophet's vision of things invisible.
Barry made no attempt at a sermon. He yielded himself to the spirit of the place, the spirit of the manse and its people, whose serene fortitude under the burden of their sorrow had stirred him to his soul's depths. Their spirit recalled the spirit of his own father and the spirit of the men he had known in the trenches. He made a slight reference to the horrors of the war. He touched lightly upon the soldiers' trials but he told them tales of their endurance, their patience, their tenderness to the wounded, their comradeship, their readiness to sacrifice. Before he closed, he lifted them up to see the worth and splendour of it all and gave them a vision of the world's regeneration through the eternal mystery of the cross.
They listened with uplifted face, on which rested a quiet wonder, touched with that light that only falls where sacrifice and sacrament are joined. There were tears on many faces, but they fell quietly, without bitterness, without passion, without despair.
A woman with a grief worn face waited for him at the foot of the pulpit stairs, the minister's wife and Phyllis beside her.
“Mrs. Finlayson wishes to speak to you,” she said.
“Ay, ay! I jist want to say that you had the word for me the day. I see it better the noo. A'm mair content that ma mon sud be sleepin' oot yonder.” She held Barry's hand while she spoke, her tears falling on it, then kissed it and turned away.
“And this,” said the minister's wife, “is Mrs. Murray, who has given three sons, and who has just sent her last son away this week.”
“Three sons,” echoed Barry, gazing at the strong face, beaten and brown with the winds and suns of fifty years, “and you sent away your last. Oh, I wonder at you. How could you?”
“A cudna haud him back wi' his three brithers lyin' oot there, and,” she added, with a proud lift of her head, “and wudna.”