CHAPTER XI.
IN THE GLOAMING.
August is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie.

The softness of the gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the fields--for harvest is earlier down there than with us--and the cattle chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination.

Fancies he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except his mother and his aunt.

There had been times when he and his set declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union.

It was never completed--and therefore never signed--because the brotherhood could not agree about the duration of the vows--the draftsman, who has been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity, while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in the Moderator of Assembly.
This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk, but Carmichael had more of a mind on the matter.