, Cary!" She came and put her arms round me. "Pray for Angus;
we shall never see him again. And he is not ready--he is not ready."

"My poor Flora!" I said, and I did my best to soothe her. But Annas
did better.

"The Lord can make him ready," she said. "He healed the paralytic man,
dear, as some have it, entirely for the faith of them that bore him.
And surely the daughter of the Canaanitish woman could have no faith
herself."

"Pray for him, Annas!" sobbed Flora. "You have more faith than I."

"I am not so hard tried--yet," was the grave reply.

"You do not think Mr Keith in danger?" said I.

"I think the Lord sitteth above the water-floods, Cary; and I would
rather not look lower. Not till I must, and that may be very soon."

"Annas," said I, "I wish you would tell me what right is. I do get so
puzzled."

"What puzzles you, Cary? Right is what God wills."

"But would the Prince not have the right, if God did not will him to
succeed?"

"The Lawgiver can always repeal His own laws. We in the crowd, Cary,
can only judge when they be repealed by hearing Him decree something
contrary to them. And there are no precedents in that Court.
`Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did He.' We can only wait and see.
Until we do see it, we must follow our last orders."

"My Father says," added Flora, "that this question was made harder than
it need have been, by the throwing out of the Exclusion Bill. The House
of Commons passed it, but the Bishops and Lord Halifax threw it out; if
that had been passed, making it impossible for a Papist to be King, then
King James would never have come to the throne at all, and all the
troubles and persecutions of his reign would not have happened. That,
my Father says, was where they went wrong."

"Well," said I, "it does look like it. But how queer that the Bishops
should be the people to go wrong!"

Annas laughed.

"You will find that nothing new, Cary, if you search," said she. "`They
that lead thee cause thee to err' is as old a calamity as the Prophets.
And where priests or would-be priests are the leaders, they very
generally do go wrong."

"I wish," said I, "there were a few more `Thou shalt nots' in the
Bible."

"Have you finished obeying all there are?"

I considered that question with one sleeve off.

"Well, no, I suppose not," I said at length, pulling off the other.

Annas smiled gravely, and said no more.

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