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KATE CARNEGIE AND THOSE MINISTERS.

by

IAN MACLAREN.







Toronto:
Fleming H. Revell Company,
140-142 Yonge Street.
1896.
Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada,
in the year 1896, by Hodder & Stoughton,
at the Department of Agriculture.




TO

A CERTAIN BROTHERHOOD


Faithful in Criticism

Loyal in Affection

Tender in Trouble




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER

I. PANDEMONIUM
II. PEACE
III. A HOME OF MANY GENERATIONS
IV. A SECRET CHAMBER
V. CONCERNING BESOMS
VI. A PLEASAUNCE
VII. A WOMAN OF THE NEW DISPENSATION
VIII. A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION
IX. A DAUGHTER OF DEBATE
X. A SUPRA-LAPSARIAN
XI. IN THE GLOAMING
XII. KILBOGIE MANSE
XIII. PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT
XIV. A MODERATE
XV. JOINT POTENTATES
XVI. DRIED ROSE LEAVES
XVII. SMOULDERING FIRES
XVIII. LOVE SICKNESS
XIX. THE FEAR OF GOD
XX. THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND
XXI. LIGHT AT EVENTIDE
XXII. WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH
XXIII. MARGET HOWE'S CONFESSIONAL
XXIV. LOVE IS LORD




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.


Carmichael had taken his Turn

"Many a Ploy we had together"

Peter was standing in his Favourite Attitude

"I am the General's Daughter"

Janet Macpherson was waiting in the Deep Doorway

"It's a Difficult Key to turn"

Kate in her Favourite Position

One Gardener who . . . works for Love's Sake

Among the Great Trees

"Mr. Carmichael, you have much Cause for Thankfulness"

Carmichael sang a Solo

"Here iss your Silver Piece"

"I should call it a Deliberate--"

"She had an Unfortunate Tendency to meddle with my Books"

Mother Church cast her Spell over his Imagination

"Ye'll be hanging Dr. Chalmers there"

A Tall, Bony, Forbidding Woman

Gathering her Berry Harvest

He was a Mere Wisp of a Man

"Will you let me walk with you for a Little?"

"Private Capaucity"

Standing with a Half-Dried Dish in her Hand

The Old Man escorted her Ladyship

Would gossip with him by the Hour

The Driver stops to exchange Views

Two Tramps held Conference

Wrestling in Darkness of Soul

His Attitude for Exposition

"Ay, he's in, but ye canna see him"

"To put Flowers on his Grave"

"You have been awfully Good to me"

"He sat down by the River-side to meditate"




KATE CARNEGIE.


CHAPTER I.

PANDEMONIUM.

It was the morning before the Twelfth, years ago, and nothing like unto
Muirtown Station could have been found in all the travelling world.
For Muirtown, as everybody knows, is the centre which receives the
southern immigrants in autumn, and distributes them, with all their
belongings of servants, horses, dogs, and luggage, over the north
country from Athole to Sutherland. All night, express trains, whose
ordinary formation had been reinforced by horse boxes, carriage trucks,
saloons and luggage vans, drawn by two engines, and pushed up inclines
by a third, had been careering along the three iron trunk roads that
run from London to the North. Four hours ago they had forced the
border, that used to be more jealously guarded, and had begun to
converge on their terminus. Passengers, awakened by the caller air and
looking out still half asleep, miss the undisciplined hedgerows and
many-shaped patches of pasture, the warm brick homesteads and shaded
ponds of the south. Square fields cultivated up to a foot of the stone
dykes or wire-fencing, the strong grey-stone farm-houses, the
swift-running burns, and the never-distant hills, brace the mind.
Local passengers come in with deliberation, whose austere faces condemn
the luxurious disorder of night travel, and challenge the defence of
Arminian doctrine. A voice shouts "Carstairs Junction," with a command
of the letter _r_, which is the bequest of an unconquerable past, and
inspires one with the hope of some day hearing a freeborn Scot say
"Auchterarder." The train runs over bleak moorlands with black peat
holes, through alluvial straths yielding their last pickle of corn,
between iron furnaces blazing strangely in the morning light, at the
foot of historical castles built on rocks that rise out of the fertile
plains, and then, after a space of sudden darkness, any man with a soul
counts the ten hours' dust and heat but a slight price for the sight of
the Scottish Rhine flowing deep, clear, and swift by the foot of its
wooded hills, and the "Fair City" in the heart of her meadows.

"Do you see the last wreath of mist floating off the summit of the
hill, and the silver sheen of the river against the green of the woods?
Quick, dad," and the General, accustomed to obey, stood up beside Kate
for the brief glimpse between the tunnel and a prison. Yet they had
seen the snows of the Himalayas, and the great river that runs through
the plains of India. But it is so with Scottish folk that they may
have lived opposite the Jungfrau at Mürren, and walked among the big
trees of the Yosemite Valley, and watched the blood-red afterglow on
the Pyramids, and yet will value a sunset behind the Cuchullin hills,
and the Pass of the Trossachs, and the mist shot through with light on
the sides of Ben Nevis, and the Tay at Dunkeld--just above the
bridge--better guerdon for their eyes.

"Ay, lassie"--the other people had left at Stirling, and the General
fell back upon the past--"there 's just one bonnier river, and that's
the Tochty at a bend below the Lodge, as we shall see it, please God,
this evening."

"Tickets," broke in a voice with authority. "This is no the station,
an' ye 'll hae to wait till the first diveesion o' yir train is
emptied. Kildrummie? Ye change, of coorse, but yir branch 'll hae a
lang wait the day. It 'll be an awfu' fecht wi' the Hielant train.
Muirtown platform 'll be worth seein'; it 'll juist be michty," and the
collector departed, smacking his lips in prospect of the fray.

"Upon my word," said the General, taken aback for a moment by the easy
manners of his countryman, but rejoicing in every new assurance of
home, "our people are no blate."

"Is n't it delicious to be where character has not been worn smooth by
centuries of oppression, but where each man is himself? Conversation
has salt here, and tastes in the mouth. We 've just heard two men
speak this morning, and each face is bitten into my memory. Now our
turn has come," and the train wound itself in at last.

Porters, averaging six feet and with stentorian voices, were driving
back the mixed multitude in order to afford foothold for the new
arrivals on that marvellous landing place, which in those days served
for all the trains which came in and all that went out, both north and
south. One man tears open the door of a first with commanding gesture.
"A' change and hurry up. Na, na," rejecting the offer of a private
engagement; "we hev nae time for that trade the day. Ye maun cairry
yir bags yersels; the dogs and boxes 'll tak us a' oor time." He
unlocks an under compartment and drags out a pair of pointers, who fawn
upon him obsequiously in gratitude for their release. "Doon wi' ye,"
as one to whom duty denies the ordinary courtesies of life, and he
fastens them to the base of an iron pillar. Deserted immediately by
their deliverer, the pointers made overtures to two elderly ladies,
standing bewildered in the crush, to be repulsed with umbrellas, and
then sit down upon their tails in despair. Their forlorn condition,
left friendless amid this babel, gets upon their nerves, and after a
slight rehearsal, just to make certain of the tune, they lift up their
voices in melodious concert, to the scandal of the two females, who
cannot escape the neighbourhood, and regard the pointers with horror.
Distant friends, also in bonds and distress of mind, feel comforted and
join cheerfully, while a large black retriever, who had foolishly
attempted to obstruct a luggage barrow with his tail, breaks in with a
high solo. Two collies, their tempers irritated by obstacles as they
follow their masters, who had been taking their morning in the
second-class refreshment room, fall out by the way, and obtain as by
magic a clear space in which to settle details; while a fox-terrier,
escaping from his anxious mistress, has mounted a pile of boxes and
gives a general challenge.

Porters fling open packed luggage vans with a swing, setting free a
cataract of portmanteaus, boxes, hampers, baskets, which pours across
the platform for yards, led by a frolicsome black leather valise, whose
anxious owner has fought her adventurous way to the van for the purpose
of explaining to a phlegmatic Scot that he would know it by a broken
strap, and must lift it out gently, for it contained breakables.

"It can gang itsel, that ane," as the afflicted woman followed its
reckless progress with a wail. "Sall, if they were a' as clever on
their feet as yon box there wud be less tribble," and with two
assistants he falls upon the congested mass within. They perform
prodigies of strength, handling huge trunks that ought to have filled
some woman with repentance as if they were Gladstone bags, and light
weights as if they were paper parcels. With unerring scent they detect
the latest label among the remains of past history, and the air
resounds with "Hielant train," "Aiberdeen fast," "Aiberdeen slow,"
"Muirtown"--this with indifference--and at a time "Dunleith," and once
"Kildrummie," with much contempt. By this time stacks of baggage of
varying size have been erected, the largest of which is a pyramid in
shape, with a very uncertain apex.

Male passengers--heads of families and new to Muirtown--hover anxiously
round the outskirts, and goaded on by female commands, rush into the
heart of the fray for the purpose of claiming a piece of luggage, which
turns out to be some other person's, and retire hastily after a
fair-sized portmanteau descends on their toes, and the sharp edge of a
trunk takes them in the small of the back.