"Your tongues are evil!" he said, "ye are not fit to take her name on your lips. She is to me as the mother of our Lord—yes, as Mary, the wife of Joseph, the carpenter!"
"And indeed I never thocht sae muckle o' that yin either," said Matthew of Craigs, "the Papishes make ower great a to-do about her for my liking!"
"Matthew Carment and John Allanson, I bid you hearken to me," cried the young minister.
"Aye, Allan Syme, we will hearken!" they answered, fronting him eye to eye.
"God judge between you and me," he said. "He hath said that for this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife. Now, I know well that if ye like, you two can take from me my kirk and all my living. But I have spoken, and I will adhere. I have promised, and I will keep. Take this my parting message. Do your duty as it is revealed to you. I will go forth freely and willingly. Naked I came among you—naked will I go. The hearts of my people are dearer to me than life. Ye can twine them from me if you will. Ye can out me from my kirk, send me forth of my manse—cast me upon the world as a man disgraced. But, as I am a sinner answerable to God, there are two things you cannot do, ye cannot make me break my plighted word nor make me other than proud of the love I have won from God's fairest creature upon earth."
And with these words he turned on his heel and strode straight uphill away from them in the direction of his distant home.
The two men stood looking after him. Drows stroked his shaggy fringe of beard. Matthew Carment put his hand to his eyes and gazed under it as if he had been looking into the sunset. There was a long silence. At last the two turned and looked at each other.
"Weel, what think ye?" said Drows, ruling elder and natural leader in debate.
There was a still longer pause, for Matthew Carment was a man slow by nature and slower by habit.
"He's a fine lad!" he said at last.