But with the dawning of the morning came some rest and a growing clearness of purpose—such as always comes to the soul of man when, out of the indefinite turmoil of perplexity, something to be done swims up from the gulf and stands clear before the inward eye.
I would go to Earlstoun and have speech with Alexander Gordon. The Presbytery had condemned him unheard. His own folk of the Societies—at least, some of the elders of them—had been ready to believe an evil report and had suspended him from his office. He needed a minister’s dealing, or at least a friend’s advice. I was both, and there was all the more reason because I was neither of the Kirk that had condemned nor of the communion which was ready to believe an ill report of its noblest and highest.
It was little past the dawning when, being still sleepless, I set my hat on my head, and, taking staff in hand, set off up the wet meadow-edges to walk to Earlstoun. I heard the black-cap sing sweetly down among the gall-bushes of the meadow. A blackbird turned up some notes of his morning song, but drowsily, and without the young ardour of spring and the rathe summer time. Suddenly the east brightened and rent. The day strode over the land.
I journeyed on, the sun beating hotly upon me. It was very evidently to be a day of fervent heat. Soon I had to take off my coat, and as I carried it country fashion over my shoulder the harvesters gave me good-day from the cornfields of the pleasant strath of the ken, and over the hated park-dykes which the landlords were beginning to build.
Mostly when I walked abroad I observed nothing, but to-day I saw everything with strange clearness, as one sometimes does in a vision or when stricken with fever.
I noted how the red willow-herb grew among the river stones and set fire to little pebbly islands. The lilies, yellow and white, basked and winked belated on the still and glowing water. The cattle, both nolt and kye, stood knee-deep in the shallows—to me the sweetest and most summersome of all rural sights.
As I drew near to New Galloway a score of laddies squattered like ducks and squabbled like shrill scolding blackbirds in and out of the water, or darted naked through the copsewood at the loch’s head, playing “hide-and-seek” about the tree-trunks.
And through all pulsed the thought, “What shall I say to my friend? Shall I be faithful in questioning, faithful in chastening and rebuke? Shall I take part with Mary Gordon’s father, and for her sake stand and fall with him? Or are my message and my Master more to me than any earthly love?” I feared the human was indeed mightier in my heart of hearts. Nevertheless something seemed to arise within me greater than myself.
CHAPTER XXXII.
LOVE OR DUTY.
I passed by the little Clachan of St. John’s Town of Dalry, leaving it stretching away up the braeface on my right hand. A little way beyond the kirk I struck into the fringing woods of Earlstoun which, like an army of train-bands in Lincoln green, beset the grey tower.