he will conceive a rooted dislike for
her, and will flee her house. So simple is a man.

When Sarah proposed to Carmichael that she should prepare breakfast
after he rung for his hot water, and when he never caught a hint of
reproach on her face though he sat up till three and came down at
eleven, he was lifted, hardly believing that such humanity could be
found among women, who always seem to have a time table they are
carrying out the livelong day.

"The millennium is near at hand," said MacQueen, when the morning
arrangements of the Free Kirk manse of Drumtochty were made known to
him--MacQueen, who used to arrive without so much as a nightshirt,
having left a trail of luggage behind him at various junctions, and has
written books so learned that no one dares to say that he has not read
them. Then he placed an ounce of shag handy, and Carmichael stoked the
fire, and they sat down, with Beaton, who could refer to the Summa of
St. Thomas Aquinas from beginning to end, and they discussed the
Doctrine of Scripture in the Fathers, and the formation of the Canon,
and the authorship of the Pentateuch till two in the study. Afterwards
they went to MacQueen's room to hear him on the Talmud, and next
adjourned to Beaton's room, who offered a series of twelve preliminary
observations on the Theology of Rupert of Deutz, whereupon his host
promptly put out his candle, leaving that man of supernatural memory to
go to bed in the dark; and as Carmichael pulled up the blind in his own
room, the day was breaking and a blackbird had begun to sing. Next
afternoon Beaton had resumed his observations on Rupert, but now they
were lying among the heather on the side of Glen Urtach, and Carmichael
was asleep, while MacQueen was thinking that they would have a good
appetite for dinner that evening.

Sarah had only one fault to find with her master, and that was his
Bohemian dress; but since it pleased him to go one button less through
studied carelessness, she let him have his way; and as for everything
else, she kept her word to his aunt, and saw that he wanted for
nothing, serving him with perpetual thoughtfulness and swift capacity.

Little passed between them except a good-natured word or two from him
and her courteous answer, but she could read him as a book, and when he
came home that day from Muirtown she saw he was changed. He was
slightly flushed, and he could not sit still, wandering in and out his
study till dinner-time.