‘By all I hear,’ said the Dominie, ‘she’ll soon be out of all risk of disturbance.’
‘You speak at your ease,’ said the minister, rising in agitation to pace about the little room. ‘When Margaret Diarmid dies it will be like the quenching of a light to me, and more than me. And how can I protect her deathbed but by putting a stop to this? Her deathbed, aye, or her very grave. Have you forgot that they go further and further every day?’
‘I heard they were raising the dead,’ said the Dominie, calmly. ‘It’s the sense o’ power that leads them away.’
‘And they _have_ power,’ said the minister, ‘that is the strangest of all. Wherever it comes from, from God or the devil, they have power in their hands. I cannot deny it--I cannot understand it. Are we to believe what we see in contradiction of every instinct, or are we to hold by reason and common sense, and the truth we understand, and give facts the lie? The thought is too much for me.’
‘And so you would put a stop to it?’ the Dominie said, with a long puff of smoke. ‘But ye’ll have discussion enough before that’s done. I’m more concerned for the two poor things at the Glebe. If Margaret dies, as she must die, what is to become of bonnie Isabel?’
The minister, though he was a man of vigorous frame, gave a momentary shiver, as if the cold had seized him, and then sat down again, and began to turn over his papers, averting his face. ‘You know what would become of her,’ he said, ‘if I had my will.’
‘You would bring the lassie down here to be mistress and mair,’ said Galbraith. ‘I’m no blaming you, though I cannot understand it myself. You and me are more wiselike companions than her and you could ever be. If you had married in your youth, like most men, ye might have had a daughter of your own as old as she is now.’
‘I’ve said all that to myself,’ said the minister, ‘a hundred times over. But it makes no difference. And I can bear whatever may happen--but my heart craves this thing from the Lord, and no other, before I die.’
‘You’re taking up their phraseology, for all your objections to them,’ said the Dominie, with a little disdain.
‘It’s the phraseology of all that yearn,’ cried the minister. ‘Why should I not ask it of the Lord? It’s a lawful thing I crave. God do so to me and more also if I would not cherish her like Christ His Church. I am old enough to be her father, as you say; but I never loved woman till now, and that is the youth of the heart. The boy there is fond of her in his way--but what sort of a way? a fancy of the moment for her sweet face. And you’ll say it’s more natural. But I tell you, Galbraith, there is no nature in it,’ he said, once more rising in his excitement, ‘to link that creature’s pure soul to a hardened, heathen, self-seeking man of the world. I know the lad; he is near her in age, but in nothing else. She makes a God of him in her imagination; and when her eyes were opened, and she saw the loathly creature by her side, what would become of my Isabel? She would break her heart, and she would die.’