"I am very glad that you will not go. You would not be appointed if you did."
"How do you know?"
"Read the rest of the letter."
"You tell me the substance of it. Life's too short to spend so much time reading McGuffin's effusions."
"Your sins have found you out." MacKay's face showed a gleam of grim humour as he spoke. "You are not spiritual. You were accustomed to spend only fifteen or twenty minutes in your morning devotions instead of a full hour as required by McGuffin's standards. You are not meek. You once thrashed a rough who insulted a lady on the street instead of sweetly reasoning with him. Then you took him to the hospital to recover from the thrashing. You are not sound. It is whispered that you said that you didn't think Moses wrote the account of his own funeral in the Book of Deuteronomy."
As Sinclair listened to this epitome of McGuffin's catalogue of his shortcomings he went off into peals of laughter, in which MacKay joined. The inner nature of the quiet, reserved man had come out in the intimacies of a rare friendship.
"Do they think that I would corrupt the morals of the heathen?" Sinclair inquired as he recovered himself.
"Apparently. Perhaps you would batter your heresies into them with your fists."
"What would McGuffin have thought if he had seen me at Sin-tiam or where the Hakkas were trying to cut the head off poor young MacAllister?"
"He wouldn't have seen you. He would have swooned away."