to mellow the
strength of his vocabulary. Nothing definite was openly formulated
against him, but Torquil became aware that in certain quarters his
reputation was being slowly undermined. It is precisely this vague kind
of aggression on a man's character that is the most difficult to combat.
He took the bull by the horns in a most heroic way. _He got up a public
testimonial to himself, and went round canvassing for signatures._ The
testimonial ran thus:--"We, the undersigned women of the parish, have
pleasure in bearing witness that we have known Torquil Halcrow for
twenty years, and never have we known him do an unseemly act or utter an
unworthy expression." Thereafter followed a list of forty names.
Furnished with this document, he strode up to the manse, fluttered it in
the minister's face with a gesture of triumph, laid it down on the study
table, then turned on his heel and walked away. The minister, when he
examined the paper minutely, found that Torquil, in the belief that the
heading of the testimonial was not sufficiently strong, had added this
further clause in his own handwriting: "_but many a precious word of
truth and gracious spiritual comfort have we heard proceeding from his
lips_."

I have already referred to the beautiful and pathetic saying of Mr.
Barrie that every window-blind is the curtain of a tragedy. I thought of
that dictum as the minister of Cunningsburgh pointed to one cot after
another in the neighbourhood, and narrated the calamities that had
fallen upon them within recent years. Here, an old widow was mourning
the loss of a son who had gone to the deep-sea fishing and would never
return: his bright young life had been swallowed up in the insatiable
ocean, and she was left lamenting in her indigence. There, it was a
father who had been engulfed in the roost; or again, the illness of a
mother had cast a blight for years upon this other household. Sometimes
I have seen two old people, all their sons dead, living a kind of
stupefied half-life, automatically moving about, poor and wretchedly
clad, unable to understand anything except the welcome heat of the sun
and the animal comfort of a little food. There are many sad things in
this world: none is more sad than the sight of two old people outliving
their progeny and wandering about in decrepit second childhood with no
more substance than a dream. The sea is mainly answerable for the great
and deep tragedies of the Shetlands: it is like a piti