"
"Surprised?" said the younger man confusedly. "Why should
anyone be surprised?"
"I know her well. I've watched her grow up. I remember
her mother's trouble because she would scratch the paint
on the pew in front of her with the nails in her little
boots. John Murchison sang in the choir in those days.
He had a fine bass voice; he has it still. And Mrs
Murchison had to keep the family in order by herself. It
was sometimes as much as she could do, poor woman. They
sat near the front, and many a good hard look I used to
give them while I was preaching. Knox Church was a
different place then. The choir sat in the back gallery,
and we had a precentor, a fine fellow--he lost an arm at
Ridgway in the Fenian raid. Well I mind him and the frown
he would put on when he took up the fork. But, for that
matter, every man Jack in the choir had a frown on in
the singing, though the bass fellows would be the fiercest.
We've been twice enlarged since, and the organist has
long been a salaried professional. But I doubt whether
the praise of God is any heartier than it was when it
followed Peter Craig's tuning-fork. Aye. You'd always
hear John Murchison's note in the finish."
Finlay was listening with the look of a charmed animal.
Dr Drummond's voice was never more vibrant, more moving,
more compelling than when he called up the past; and here
to Finlay the past was itself enchanted.
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