big Bible open
between the pages where it is laid; but the note might very well have
been laid in at a place where the Bible was in the habit of opening.
"Without an instant's hesitation, Robert slipped it away, and crumpling
it up in his hand, gave out the twenty-third psalm, over which it had
lain, and read it through. Finding it too short, however, for the
respectability of worship, he went on with the twenty-fourth, turning
the leaf with thumb and forefinger, while the rest of the fingers
clasped the note tight in his palm, and reading as he turned,

"He that hath clean hands and a pure heart--"

As soon as he had finished this psalm, he closed the book with a snap;
feeling which to have been improper, he put an additional compensating
solemnity into the tone in which he said:

"Thomas Crann, will you engage in prayer?"

"Pray yersel'," answered Thomas gruffly.

Whereupon Robert rose, and, kneeling down, did pray himself.

But Thomas, instead of leaning forward on his chair when he knelt,
glanced sharply round at Bruce. He had seen him take something from the
Bible, and crumple it up in his hand but would not have felt any
inclination to speculate about it, had it not been for the peculiarly
keen expression of eager surprise and happy greed which came over his
face in the act. Having seen that, and being always more or less
suspicious of Bruce, he wanted to know more; and was thus led into an
action of which he would not have believed it possible he should ever
be guilty.

He saw Bruce take advantage of the posture of devotion which he had
assumed, to put something into his pocket unseen of his guests, as he
believed.

When worship was over, Bruce did not ask them to slay to supper.
Prayers did not involve expense; supper did. But Thomas at least could
not have stayed longer.

He left his friends and went home pondering. The devotions of the day
were not to be concluded for him with any social act of worship. He had
many anxious prayers yet to offer before his heart would be quiet in
sleep. Especially there was Alec to be prayed for, and his dawtie,
Annie; and in truth the whole town of Glamerton, and the surrounding
parishes--and Scotland, and the world. Indeed sometimes Thomas went
further, and although it is not reported of him that he ever prayed for
the devil, as that worthiest of Scotch clergymen prayed, he yet did
something very like it once or twice, when he prayed for "the haill
universe o' God,