In reply, he touched with his forefinger the lease I had signed with him, which lay on his writing-table.
“You cannot, my friend,” he said.
I cannot do anything that I would. I am driven on a dark road by the creature with the whip that is surely after every man who once yields to his worst desires.
Just after this I received a visit from Mr. Mackenzie, the new minister, a young and fervent, but not very knowledgeable man, whose zeal was red-hot, but incompetent, and who would have died for the faith he could never properly expound, like many young ministers of our church. The little man was in a twisting turmoil of distress, and was moved, so he said, to deal very plainly with me. I bade him deal on. It seemed that his flock was becoming infected with atheism, which spread like the plague, from the old Manse. The young children lisped it to each other in the lanes; lovers talked it between their kisses; youths chattered perdition at the idle corner by the church wall. Even the old began to look askance at the Bible that had been their only book of age, and to shiver wantonly at the inevitable approach of death. The young minister cried denunciation upon Fraser, like a vague-minded, but angry Jonah before a provincial Nineveh.
“Turn him out, Mr. Ralston, drive him forth,” he ejaculated. “What is his rent to you? What is his money in comparison with the immortal souls of men? Away with him, away with him.”
I mentioned the small matter of the lease. The young minister, with a quivering scarlet face, replied stammering:—
“A lease! But—but—your own wife—she is—is—”
“I do not discuss her,” I said sternly.
“Well; they are deserting the services. You see that yourself. They will not come to hear me preach. They will not listen to me.”
The man was tasting bitterness. He was almost crying. I was terribly sorry for him. Yet, all I could do was to think of the spectre at the Manse and answer:—