All this time, when Mr. Ablethorpe was improving me and leading me in the way of the Thirty-nine Articles (no, not exactly—I forgot—he didn't like them; he thought he could have made much better ones, but in the way of the catechism and Prayer Book), we were legging it across big bare Brom Common. He would stop and argue, keeping me looking straight at him till the water came into my eyes. Then on he would go again, more set than ever on making a good Churchman out of me. I never saw anybody quite so certain that he was right as Mr. Ablethorpe. Why, he would have taken his Davy that even the best of Dissenters would only get into a kind of half-way house, back-stairs heaven, and might count themselves lucky if they were not sent flying altogether.
But all this got us over the ground pretty quick, and we were at old Caleb Fergusson's before we knew it. Then, just as we were going into the stackyard I remembered that old Caleb was a Presbyterian, and of the worst and toughest kind—Free Kirk elder right through to the back seam of his coat. So I asked curate how that was, and how he reconciled helping old Caleb with his conscience and all that he had been drilling into me.
But Mr. Ablethorpe only said, "Caleb Fergusson is a Presbyterian, it is true, and very obstinate and blinded. But he has a farm at too dear a rent, and has lost the only son who helped him in the working of it. So I go sometimes to give him a hand."
It was not a very logical explanation after what he had just been unlading into me. But all the same I liked him the better for it—jolly well, too.
We found Caleb just at the end of stacking his meadow hay, and very testy. He had his old wife out to help him. She was tottering on the edge of a rick, half-way up, and all the other help he had was a small boy grandson, whom he was making sorry that he had ever been born. I thought Caleb would have been glad to see us, and so I dare say he was. But his crusty Scotchness would not let him show it. Show it? No fear.
He let Mr. Ablethorpe take his fork, it is true, and ordered down his wife from the stack with the grumble that she had left "the hale affair as saft as saps!"
Then he turned and rated the curate for not coming earlier, if he meant to be any use.
"But it's just like you English Kirkers," he said. "Ye are at the fore wi' your chants and vain ceremonies, but when it comes to the halesome milk o' the Word—faith, but your coo's dry!"
I stood aghast. I expected such a volley from the fervid curate as would sweep the daring old man off the shafts of his red farm cart. But I did not know Mr. Ablethorpe yet.
"I am sorry, Caleb," he said meekly; "I meant to come earlier, but I had a few calls to make and a service to take——"