reason till we should stand upon the spot associated with his crime.  Nor did he pursue the subject; but he walked beside me with a firmer step.  The call that I had made upon his mind acted like a stimulant, and I could see that he had forgotten his search for worthless jetsam, in a profound, gloomy, and yet stirring train of thought.  In three or four minutes we had topped the brae and begun to go down upon Sandag.  The wreck had been roughly handled by the sea; the stem had been spun round and dragged a little lower down; and perhaps the stern had been forced a little higher, for the two parts now lay entirely separate on the beach.  When we came to the grave I stopped, uncovered my head in the thick rain, and, looking my kinsman in the face, addressed him.

‘A man,’ said I, ‘was in God’s providence suffered to escape from mortal dangers; he was poor, he was naked, he was wet, he was weary, he was a stranger; he had every claim upon the bowels of your compassion; it may be that he was the salt of the earth, holy, helpful, and kind; it may be he was a man laden with iniquities to whom death was the beginning of torment.  I ask you in the sight of heaven: Gordon Darnaway, where is the man for whom Christ died?’

He started visibly at the last words; but there came no answer, and his face expressed no feeling but a vague alarm.

‘You were my father’s brother,’ I continued; ‘You, have taught me to count your house as if it were my father’s house; and we are both sinful men walking before the Lord among the sins and dangers of this life.  It is by our evil that God leads us into good; we sin, I dare not say by His temptation, but I must say with His consent; and to any but the brutish man his sins are the beginning of wisdom.  God has warned you by this crime; He warns you still by the bloody grave between our feet; and if there sha