the letter offered him.

"I cannot explain this letter," he said, "unless I preface it with
some facts regarding my unhappy childhood and youth. I am, as you
know, the son of Dr. Macrae, but I have been a disinherited son ever
since I can remember. I suppose that in my earliest years I was loved
and kindly treated, but I have no remembrance of that time. I know
only that before I was five years old, my father had accepted the
solemn conviction that I was without election to God's grace.
Personally I was a beautiful child, but I was received and considered,
body and soul, as unredeemable. Father then regarded me as a Divine
decree which it was his duty to receive with a pious acquiescence. My
mother pitied and, in her way, loved me, and suffered much with me. I
have a little sister also, who would like to love me, but there is in
all her efforts just that touch of Phariseeism which destroys love."

"But, Ian, there must have been some reason for your father's
remarkable conviction?"

"That is most likely. If so, he never explained the fact to me or even
to my mother. She told me once that he did not suspect that I had
missed God's election until I was between five and six years old. I
suppose that about that age I began to strengthen his cruel fear by my
antipathy to the kirk services and my real and unfortunate inability
to learn the Shorter Catechism. This was a natural short-coming. I
could neither spell or pronounce the words I was told to learn and to
memorise them was an impossible thing."

"Could not your mother help you?"

"She tried. She wept over me as she tried, and I made an almost
superhuman effort to comprehend and remember. I could not. I was
flogged, I was denied food and even water. I was put in dark rooms. I
was forbid all play and recreation. I went through this martyrdom year
after year and I finally became stubborn and would try no longer. In
the years that followed, until I was sixteen, my daily sufferings were
great, but I remember them mainly for my mother's sake, who suffered
with me in all I suffered. Nor am I without pity for my father. He
honestly believed that in punishing me he was doing all he could to
save me from everlasting punishment. Yes, sir! Do not shake your head!
I have heard him praying, pleading with God, for some token of my
election to His mercy. You see it was John Calvin."

"John Calvin!" ejaculated Ragnor, "how is that?"

"It was his awful tenets I had to learn; and