e atheism of
this boy, I who had formerly sown the seeds of destruction in the soul
of Doctor Wedderburn. But it was as if my own act of the past rose and
conquered me in the present. I declare solemnly it was so. Some
emanation from the poor dead creature's soul clung round that cursed
place of his doom, and, seizing upon the soul of Fraser, spread tyranny
from its throne. And whom did it take first as its victim, think you?
Kate, my wife.

Let our individual beliefs be what they may, one thing we must all--when
we think--acknowledge, that the pulse which beats eternally in the heart
of life is reparation.

Kate, as I have said, was originally finely pure and finely dowered with
the blessings of faith in a divine Providence, trust in the eventual
redemption of the world, hope that sin, sorrow, and sighing would,
indeed, flee away, and all mankind find eternal and unutterable peace.
In my worst moments I had never tried to destroy this beauty of her
soul; and, in her fall, now repaired, she had never abandoned her
religion. It was, I know, a haunting memory of the last moments of the
doctor that held me back from ever attacking the faith of another. For
myself, I did not think much of my future beyond death. Life filled my
horizon then.

But now, after a short absence in England, during which I left Kate at
Carlounie, I returned to find her infected with Fraser's pestilent
notions. She declined to go to the kirk, declaring that it was better to
act up to her real convictions than to set what is called a good example
to her dependants. She and Fraser gloried openly in their new-found
damnation. I say damnation, for this was actually how the matter struck
me when I began carefully to consider it. Men often see only what
irreligion really is and means when they find it existing in a woman. I
was appalled at this deadly fire flaring up in the heart of Kate, and I
set myself, at first feebly, at length determinedly, to quench it and
stamp it out.

But I fought against my own former self. I fought against the influence
of the spectre that surely haunted the Manse, and that spectre rose
originally from the very bosom of the burn at my summons. Am I mad to
think so? No, no. Oh, the eternal horror that may spring from one wild
and lawless action, from the recital of one diabolic litany! This was
surely the strangest, subtlest reparation that ever beat in the
inexorable heart of Life. Hugh Fraser was enveloped by the influen