Chapter XXV: Part II: Reported by Saunders M'Quhirr of Drumquhat

SKINNER--HALDANE.--On the 25th instant, at the Manse of Kirkmichael, by the Rev. Alexander Haldane, father of the bride, the Rev. Ebenezer Skinner, minister of Townend Church, Cairn Edward, to Elizabeth Catherine Haldane.--_Scotsman_, June 27th.

This was the beginning of it, as some foresaw that it would be. I cut it out of the _Scotsman_ to keep, and my wife has pasted it at the top of my paper. But none of us knew it for certain, though there was Robbie Scott, John Scott's son, that is herd at the Drochills in the head-end of the parish of Kirkmichael--he wrote home to his father in a letter that I saw myself: "I hear you're to get our minister's dochter down by you; she may be trusted to keep you brisk about Cairn Edward."

But we thought that this was just the lad's nonsense, for he was aye at it. However, we had news of that before she had been a month in the place. Mr. Skinner used to preach on the Sabbaths leaning over the pulpit with his nose kittlin' the paper, and near the whole of the congregation watching the green leaves of the trees waving at the windows. But, certes, after he brought the mistress home he just preached once in that fashion. The very next Sabbath morning he stood straight up in the pulpit and pulled at his cuffs as if he was peeling for a "fecht"--and so he was. He spoke that day as he had never spoken since he came to the kirk. And all the while, as my wife said, "The mistress sat as quate as a wee broon moose in the minister's seat by the side wall. She never took her een aff him, an' ye never saw sic a change on ony man."

"She'll do!" said I to my wife as we came out. We were biding for a day or so with my cousin, that is the grocer in Cairn Edward, as I telled you once before. The Sabbath morning following there was no precentor in the desk, and the folk were all sitting wondering what was coming next, for everybody kenned that "Cracky" Carlisle, the post, had given up his precentorship because the list of tunes had come down from the manse to him on the Wednesday, instead of his being allowed to choose what he liked out of the dozen or so that he could sing. "Cracky" Carlisle got his name by upholding the theory that a crack in the high notes sets off a voice wonderfully. He had a fine one himself.

"I'll no' sing what ony woman bids me," said the post, putting the saddle on the right horse at once.

"But hoo do ye ken it was her?" he was asked that night in Dally's smiddy, when the Laigh End folk gathered in to have their crack.

"Ken?" said Cracky; "brawly do I ken that he wad never hae had the presumption himsel'. Na, he kenned better!"

"It was a verra speerited thing to do, at ony rate, to gie up your precentorship," said Fergusson, whose wife kept the wash-house on the Isle, and who lived on his wife's makings.

"Verra," said the post drily, "seein' that I haena a wife to keep me!"

There was a vacancy on the seat next the door, which the shoemaker filled. But, with all this talk, there was a considerable expectation that the minister would go himself to Cracky at the last moment and beseech him to sing for them. The minister, however, did not arrive, and so Cracky did not go to church at all that day.

Within the Laigh Kirk there was a silence as the Reverend Ebenezer Skinner, without a tremor in his voice, gave out that they would sing to the praise of God the second Paraphrase to the tune "St. Paul's." The congregation stood up--a new invention of the last minister's, over which also Cracky had nearly resigned, because it took away from his dignity as precentor and having therefore the sole right to stand during the service of song. The desk was still empty. The minister gave one quick look to the manse seat, and there arose from the dusky corner by the wall such a volume of sweet and solemn sound that the first two lines were sung out before a soul had thought of joining. But as the voice from the manse seat took a new start into the mighty swing of "St. Paul's," one by one the voices which had been singing that best-loved of Scottish tunes at home in "taking the Buik," joined in, till by the end of the verse the very walls were tingling with the joyful noise. There was something ran through the Laigh Kirk that day to which it had long been strange. "It's the gate o' heeven," said old Peter Thomson, the millwright, who had voted for Ebenezer Skinner for minister, and had regretted it ever since. He was glad of his vote now that the minister had got married.

Then followed the prayer, which seemed new also; and Ebenezer Skinner's prayers had for some time been well known to the congregation of the Laigh Kirk. The worst of all prayer-mills is the threadbare liturgy which a lazy or an unspiritual man cobbles up for himself. But there seemed a new spirit in Ebenezer's utterances, and there was a thankful feeling in the kirk of the Townend that day. As they "skailed," some of the young folk went as far as to say that they hoped that desk would never be filled. But this expression of opinion was discouraged, for it was felt to border on irreverence.

Cracky Carlisle was accidentally at his door when Gib Dally passed on his way home. Cracky had an unspoken question in his eye; but Gib did not respond, for the singing had drawn a kind of spell over him too. So Cracky had to speak plain out before Gib would answer.

"Wha sang the day?" he asked anxiously, hoping that there had been some sore mishap, and that the minister, or even Mrs. Skinner herself, might come humbly chapping at his door to fleech with him to return. And he hardened himself even in the moment of imagination.

"We a' sang," said Gib cruelly.

"But wha led?" said the ex-precentor.

"Oh, we had no great miss of you, Cracky," said Gib, who remembered the airs that the post had many a time given himself, and did not incline to let him off easily in the day of his humiliation. "It was the minister's wife that led."

The post lifted his hands, palm outwards, with a gesture of despair.

"Ay, I was jalousing it wad be her," said he sadly, as he turned into his house. He felt that his occupation and craft were gone, and first and last that the new mistress of the manse was the rock on which he had split.

Mrs. Ebenezer Skinner soon made the acquaintance of the Cairn Edward folk. She was a quick and dainty little person.

"Man, Gib, but she's a feat bit craitur!" said the shoemaker, watching her with satisfaction from the smiddy door, and rubbing his grimy hands on his apron as if he had been suddenly called upon to shake hands with her.

"Your son was nane so far wrang," he said to John Scott, the herd, who came in at that moment with a coulter to sharpen.

"Na," said John; "oor Rob's heid is screwed the richt way on his shoothers!"

Now, in her rambles the minister's wife met one and another of the young folk of the congregation, and she invited them in half-dozens at a time to come up to the manse for a cup of tea. Then there was singing in the evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two nights a week for purposes unknown.

At last, on a day that is yet remembered in the Laigh Kirk, the congregation arrived to find that the manse seat and the two before it had been raised six inches, and that they were filled with sedate-looking young people who had so well kept the secret that not even their parents knew what was coming. But at the first hymn the reason was very obvious. The singing was grand.

"It'll be what they call a 'koyer,' nae doot!" said the shoemaker, who tolerated it solely because he admired the minister's wife and she had shaken hands with him when he was in his working things.

Cracky Carlisle went in to look at the new platform pulpit, and it is said that he wept when he saw that the old precentor's desk had departed and all the glory of it. But nobody knows for certain, for the minister's wife met him just as he was going out of the door, and she had a long talk with him. At first Cracky said that he must go home, for he had to be at his work. But, being a minister's daughter, Mrs. Skinner saw by his "blacks" that he was taking a day off for a funeral, and promptly marched him to the manse to tea. Cracky gives out the books in the choir now, and sings bass, again well pleased with himself. The Reverend Ebenezer Skinner is an active and successful minister, and was recently presented with a gown and bands, and his wife with a silver tea-set by the congregation. He has just been elected Clerk of Presbytery, for it was thought that his wife would keep the Records as she used to do in the Presbytery of Kirkmichael, of which her father was Clerk, to the great advantage of the Kirk of Scotland in these parts.

[My wife, Mary M'Quhirr, wishes me to add to all whom it may concern, "Go thou and do likewise."]

V

JOHN

_Shall we, then, make our harvest of the sea
And garner memories, which we surely deem
May light these hearts of ours on darksome days,
When loneliness hath power, and no kind beam
Lightens about our feet the perilous ways?
For of Eternity
This present hour is all we call our own,
And Memory's edge is dull'd, even as it brings
The sunny swathes of unforgotten springs,
And sweeps them to our feet like grass long mown_.

Fergus Morrison was in his old town for a few days. He was staying with the aunt who had brought him up, schooled him, marshalled him to the Burgher Kirk like a decent Renfrewshire callant, and finally had sent him off to Glasgow to get colleged. Colleged he was in due course, and had long been placed in an influential church in the city. On the afternoon of the Saturday he was dreamily soliloquising after the plain midday meal to which his aunt adhered.

Old things had been passing before him during these last days, and the coming of the smart church-officer for the psalms and hymns for the morrow awoke in the Reverend Fergus Morrison a desire to know about "John," the wonderful beadle of old times, to whose enlarged duties his late spruce visitor had succeeded. He smiled fitfully as he brooded over old things and old times; and when his aunt came in from washing up the dinner dishes, he asked concerning "John." He was surprised to find that, though frail, bent double with rheumatism, and nearly blind, he was still alive; and living, too, as of yore, in the same old cottage with its gable-end to the street. The Glasgow minister took his staff and went out to visit him. As he passed down the street he noted every change with a start, marvelling chiefly at the lowness of the houses and the shrunken dimensions of the Town Hall, once to him the noblest building on earth.

When he got to John's cottage the bairns were playing at ball against the end of it, just as they had done thirty years ago. One little urchin was making a squeaking noise with a wet finger on the window-pane, inside which were displayed a few crossed pipes and fly-blown sweatmeats. As the city minister stood looking about him, a bent yet awe-inspiring form came hirpling to the door, leaning heavily on a staff. Making out by the noise the whereabouts of the small boy, the old man turned suddenly to him with a great roar like a bull, before the blast of which the boy disappeared, blown away as chaff is blown before the tempest. The minister's first impulse was likewise to turn and flee. Thirty added years had not changed the old instinct, for when John roared at any of the town boys, conscious innocence did not keep any of them still. They ran first, and inquired from a distance whom he was after. For John's justice was not evenhanded. His voice was ever for open war, and everything that wore tattered trousers and a bonnet was his natural enemy.

So the minister nearly turned and ran, as many a time he had done in the years that were past. However, instead he went indoors with the old man, and, having recalled himself to John's clear ecclesiastical memory, the interview proceeded somewhat as follows, the calm flow of the minister's accustomed speech gradually kindling as he went, into the rush of the old Doric of his boyhood.

"Ay, John, I'm glad you remember me; but I have better cause to remember you, for you once nearly knocked out my brains with a rake when I was crawling through the manse beech-hedge to get at the minister's rasps. Oh, yes, you did, John! You hated small boys, you know. And specially, John, you hated me. Nor can I help thinking that, after all, taking a conjunct and dispassionate view of your circumstances, as we say in the Presbytery, your warmth of feeling was entirely unwarranted. 'Thae loons--they're the plague o' my life!' you were wont to remark, after you had vainly engaged in the pleasure of the chase, having surprised us in some specially outrageous ploy.

"Once only, John, did you bring your stout ash 'rung' into close proximity to the squirming body that now sits by your fireside. You have forgotten it, I doubt not, John, among the hosts of other similar applications. But the circumstance dwells longer in the mind of your junior, by reason of the fact that for many days he took an interest in the place where he sat down. He even thought of writing to the parochial authorities to ask why they did not cushion the benches of the parish school.

"You have no manner of doot, you say, John, that I was richly deserving of it? There you are right, and in the expression I trace some of the old John who used to keep us so strictly in our places. You're still in the old house, I rejoice to see, John, and you are likely to be. What! the laird has given it to you for your life, and ten pound a year? And the minister gives you free firing, and with the bit you've laid by you'll juik the puirhoose yet? Why, man, that's good hearing! You are a rich man in these bad times! Na, na, John, us Halmyre lads wad never see you gang there, had your 'rung' been twice as heavy.

"Do ye mind o' that day ye telled the maister on us? There was Joe Craig, that was lost somewhere in the China seas; Sandy Young, that's something in Glasgow; Tam Simpson, that died in the horrors o' drink; and me--and ye got us a' a big licking. It was a frosty morning, and ye waylaid the maister on his way to the school, and the tawse were nippier than ordinar' that mornin'. No, John, it wasna me that was the ringleader. It was Joe Craig, for ye had clooted his lugs the night before for knockin' on your window wi' a pane o' glass, and then letting it jingle in a thousand pieces on the causeway. Ye chased him doon the street and through the lang vennel, and got him in Payne's field. Ye brocht him back by the cuff o' the neck, an' got a polisman to come to see the damage. An' when ye got to the window there wasna a hole in't, nor a bit o' gless to be seen, for Sandy Young had sooped it a' up when ye were awa' after Joe Craig.

"Then the polisman said, 'If I war you, John, I wadna gang sae muckle to the Cross Keys--yer heid's no as strong as it was, an' the minister's sure to hear o't!' This was mair than mortal could stan', so ye telled the polisman yer opinion o' him and his forebears, and attended to Joe Craig's lugs, baith at the same time.

"Ye dinna mind, do ye, John, what we did that nicht? No? Weel, then, we fetched ye the water that ye were aye compleenin' that ye had naebody to carry for ye. Twa cans fu' we carried--an' we proppit them baith against your door wi' a bit brick ahint them. Ay, just that very door there. Then we gied a great 'rammer' on the panels, an' ye cam' geyan fast to catch us. But as ye opened the door, baith the cans fell into the hoose, an' ye could hae catched bairdies an' young puddocks on the hearthstane. Weel, ye got me in the coachbuilder's entry, an' I've no' forgotten the bit circumstance, gin ye have.

"Ill-wull? Na, John, the verra best of guid-wull, for ye made better boys o' us for the verra fear o' yer stick. As ye say, the ministers are no' what they used to be when you and me were sae pack. A minister was a graun' man then, wi' a presence, an' a necktie that took a guid half-yard o' seeventeen-hunner linen. I'm a minister mysel', ye ken, John, but I'm weel aware I'm an unco declension. Ye wad like to hear me preach? Noo, that's rale kind o' ye, John. But ye'll be snuggest at your ain fireside, an' I'll come in, an' we'll e'en hae a draw o' the pipe atween sermons. Na, I dinna wunner that ye canna thole to think on the new kirk-officer, mairchin' in afore the minister, an 's gouns an' a' sic capers. They wadna hae gotten you to do the like.

"Ye mind, John, hoo ye heartened me up when I was feared to speak for the first time in the auld pulpit? 'Keep yer heid up,' ye said, 'an' speak to the gallery. Never heed the folk on the floor. Dinna be feared; in a time or twa ye'll be nae mair nervish than mysel'. Weel do I mind when I first took up the buiks, I could hardly open the door for shakin', but noo I'm naewise discomposed wi' the hale service.'

"Ay, it is queer to come back to the auld place efter sae mony year in Glesca. You've never been in Glesca, John? No; I'll uphaud that there's no' yer match amang a' the beadles o' that toun--no' in yer best days, when ye handed up yer snuff-box to Maister M'Sneesh o' Balmawhapple in the collectin' ladle, when ye saw that he was sore pitten til't for a snuff. Or when ye said to Jamieson o' Penpoint, wee crowl o' a body--

"'I hae pitten in the fitstool an' drappit the bookboard, to gie ye every advantage. So see an' mak' the best o't.'

"Ay, John, ye war a man! Ye never said that last, ye say, John? They lee'd on ye, did they? Weel, I dootna that there was mony a thing pitten doon to ye that was behadden to the makkar. But they never could mak' ye onything but oor ain kindly, thrawn, obstinate auld John, wi' a hand like a bacon ham and a heart like a bairn's. Guid-day to ye, John. There's something on the mantelpiece to pit in the tea-caddy. I'll look in the morn, an' we'll hae oor smoke."

VI

EUROCLYDON OF THE RED HEAD

_There's a leaf in the book of the damask rose
That glows with a tender red;
From the bud, through the bloom, to the dust it goes,
Into rose dust fragrant and dead_.

_And this word is inscribed on the petals fine
Of that velvety purple page--
"Be true to thy youth while yet it is thine
Ere it sink in the mist of age_,

"_Ere the bursting bud be grown
To a rose nigh overblown,
And the wind of the autumn eves
Comes blowing and scattering all
The damask drift of the dead rose leaves
Under the orchard wall_.

"_Like late-blown roses the joy-days flit,
And soon will the east winds blow;
So the love years now must be lived and writ
In red on a page of snow_.

"_And here the rune of the rose I rede,
'Tis the heart of the rose and me--
O youth, O maid, in your hour of need,
Be true to the sacred three--
Be true to the love that is love indeed,
To thyself, and thy God, these three!_

"_Ere the bursting bud is grown
To a rose nigh overblown,
And the wind of the autumn eves
Comes blowing and scattering all
The damask drift of the dead rose leaves
Under the orchard wall_."

Euroclydon of the Red Head was the other name of the Reverend Sylvanus Septimus Cobb during his student days--nothing more piratical than that. Sylvanus obtained the most valuable part of his training in the Canadian backwoods. During his student days he combined the theory of theology with the practice of "logging," in proportions which were mutually beneficial, and which greatly aided his success as a minister on his return to the old country. Sylvanus Cobb studied in Edinburgh, lodging with his brother in the story next the sky at the corner of Simon Square, supported by red herrings, oatmeal, and the reminiscence that Carlyle had done the same within eyeshot of his front window fifty years before.

"And look at him now!" said Sylvanus Cobb pertinently.

Sylvanus had attained the cognomen of Euroclydon of the Red Head in that breezy collegiate republic whose only order is the Prussian "For Merit." He was always in a hurry, and his red head, with its fiery, untamed shock of bristle, usually shot into the class-room a yard or so before his broad shoulders. At least, this was the general impression produced. Also, he always brought with him a draught of caller air, like one coming into a close and fire-warmed room out of the still and frost-bound night.

But Edinburgh, its bare "lands" and barren class-rooms, in time waxed wearisome to Sylvanus. He grew to loathe the drone of the classes, the snuffy prelections of professors long settled on the lees of their intellects, who still moused about among the dusty speculations which had done duty for thought when their lectures were new, thirty years ago. "A West Indian nigger," said Sylvanus quaintly, "ain't in it with a genuine lazy Scotch professor. Wish I had him out to lumber with me on the Ottawa! He'd have to hump himself or git! I'd learn him to keep hag-hagging at trees that had been dead stumps for half a century!"

At this time of life we generally spent a part of each evening in going round to inform our next neighbours that we had just discovered the solution of the problem of the universe. True, we had been round at the same friend's the week before with two equally infallible discoveries. Most unfortunately, however, on Sunday we had gone to hear the Great Grim Man of St. Christopher's preach in his own church, and he had pitilessly knocked the bottom out of both of these. Sometimes our friends called with their own latest solutions; and then there was such a pother of discussion, and so great a noise, that the old lady beneath foolishly knocked up a telephonic message to stop--foolishly, for that was business much more in our line than in hers. With one mind we thundered back a responsive request to that respectable householder to go to Jericho for her health, an it liked her. Our landlady, being long-suffering and humorously appreciative of the follies of academic youth (O rare paragon of landladies!), wondered meekly why she was sent to Coventry by every one of her neighbours on the stair during the winter months; and why during the summer they asked her to tea and inquired with unaffected interest if she was quite sure that that part of the town agreed with her health, and if she thought of stopping over this Whitsunday term.

When Sylvanus Cobb came up our stairs it was as though a bag of coals on the back of an intoxicated carter had tumbled against our door.

"That's yon red-headed lunatic, I'll be bound; open the door to him yersel'!" cried the landlady, remembering one occasion when Euroclydon had entered with such fervour as almost to pancake her bodily between wall and door.

Sylvanus came in as usual with a militant rush, which caused us to lift the kitchen poker so as to be ready to poke the fire or for any other emergency.

"I'll stop no more in this hole!" shouted Euroclydon of the Red Head, "smothered with easter haar on the streets and auld wife's blethers inby. I'm off to Canada to drive the axe on the banks of the Ottawa. And ye can bide here till your brains turn to mud--and they'll not have far to turn either!"

"Go home to your bed, Euroclydon--you'll feel better in the morning!" we advised with a calmness born of having been through this experience as many as ten times before. But, as it chanced, Sylvanus was in earnest this time, and we heard of him next in Canada, logging during the week and preaching on Sundays, both with equal acceptance.

One night Sylvanus had a "tough" in his audience--an ill-bred ruffian who scoffed when he gave out his text, called "Three cheers for Ingersoll!" when he was half through with his discourse, and interjected imitations of the fife and big drum at the end of each paragraph. It may be said on his behalf that he had just come to camp, had never seen Sylvanus bring down a six-foot pine, and knew not that he was named Euroclydon--or why.

The ruddy crest of the speaker gradually bristled till it stood on end like the comb of Chanticleer. He paused and looked loweringly at the interrupter under his shaggy brows, pulling his under lip into his mouth in a moment of grim resolve.

"I'll attend to you at the close of this divine service!" said Euroclydon.

And he did, while his latest convert held his coat.

"An almighty convincing exhorter!" said Abram Sugg from Maine, when Sylvanus had put the Ingersollian to bed in his own bunk, and was feeding him on potted turkey.

On the hillsides, with their roots deep in the crevices of the rocks, grew the pines. One by one they fell all through that winter. The strokes of the men's axes rang clear in the frosty air as chisel rings on steel. Whenever Sylvanus Cobb came out of the door of the warm log-hut where the men slept, the cold air met him like a wall. He walked light-headed in the moistureless chill of the rare sub-Arctic air. He heard the thunder of the logs down the _chute_. The crash of a falling giant far away made him turn his head. It was a life to lead, and he rubbed his hands as he thought of Edinburgh class-rooms.

Soon he became boss of the gang, and could contract for men of his own. There was larger life in the land of resin and pine-logs. No tune in all broad Scotland was so merry as the whirr of the sawmill, when the little flashing ribbon of light runs before the swift-cutting edge of the saw. It made Sylvanus remember the pale sunshine his feet used to make on the tan-coloured sands of North Berwick, when he walked two summers before with May Chisholm, when it was low-water at the spring-tides. But most of all he loved the mills, where he saw huge logs lifted out of the water, slid along the runners, and made to fall apart in clean-cut fragrant planks in a few seconds of time.

"That tree took some hundreds of years to grow, but the buzz-saw turns her into plain deal-boards before you can wink. All flesh is grass," soliloquised the logger preacher.

A winter in a lumber camp is a time when a man can put in loads of thinking. Dried fish and boiled tea do not atrophy a man's brain. Loggers do not say much except on Sundays, when they wash their shirts. Even then it was Sylvanus who did most of the talking.

Sometimes during the week a comrade would trudge alongside of him as he went out in the uncomfortable morning.

"That was the frozen truth you gave us on Sunday, I guess!" said one who answered placably to the name of Bob Ridley--or, indeed, to any other name if he thought it was meant for him. "I've swore off, parson, and I wrote that afternoon to my old mother."

Such were the preacher's triumphs.

Thus Sylvanus Cobb learned his lesson in the College of the Silences, to the accompaniment of the hard clang of the logs roaring down the mountain-side, or the sweeter and more continuous ring of his men's axes. At night he walked about a long time, silent under the thick-spangled roofing of stars. For in that land the black midnight sky is not thin-sprinkled with glistening pointlets as at home, but wears a very cloth of gold. The frost shrewdly nipped his ears, and he heard the musical sound of the water running somewhere under the ice. A poor hare ran to his feet, pursued by a fox which drew off at sight of him, showing an ugly flash of white teeth.

But all the while, among his quietness of thought, and even in the hours when he went indoors to read to the men as they sat on their rugs with their feet to the fire, he thought oftenest of the walks on the North Berwick sands, and of the important fact that May Chisholm had to stop three times to push a rebellious wisp of ringlets under her hat-brim. Strange are the workings of the heart of a man, and there is generally a woman somewhere who pulls the strings.

Euroclydon laid his axe-handle on the leaves of his Hebrew Bible to keep them from turning in the brisk airs which the late Canadian spring brought into the long log-hut, loosening the moss in its crevices. The scent of seaweed on a far-away beach came to him, and a longing to go back possessed him. He queried within himself if it were possible that he could ever settle down to the common quiet of a Scottish parish, and decided that, under certain conditions, the quiet might be far from commonplace. So he threw his bundle over his shoulder, when the camp broke up in the beginning of May, and took the first steamer home.

His first visit was to North Berwick, and there on the sands between the East Terrace and the island promontory which looks towards the Bass, where the salt water lies in the pools and the sea-pinks grow between them, he found May Chisholm walking with a young man. Sylvanus Cobb looked the young man over. He had a pretty moustache but a weak mouth.

"I can best that fellow, if I have a red head!" said Sylvanus, with some of the old Euroclydon fervour.

And he did. Whether it was the red head, of which each individual hair stood up automatically, the clear blue eyes, which were the first thing and sometimes the only thing that most women saw in his face, or the shoulders squared with the axe, that did it, May Chisholm only knows. You can ask her, if you like. But most likely it was his plain, determined way of asking for what he wanted--an excellent thing with women. But, any way, it is a fact that, before eighteen months had gone by, Sylvanus Cobb was settled in the western midlands of Scotland, with the wife whose tangles of hair were only a trifle less distracting than they used to be between the East Cliff and Tantallon. And this is a true tale.

VII

THE CAIRN EDWARD KIRK MILITANT

_Out of the clinging valley mists I stray
Into the summer midnight clear and still,
And which the brighter is no man may say--
Whether the gold beyond the western hill_

_Where late the sun went down, or the faint tinge
Of lucent green, like sea wave's inner curve
Just ere it breaks, that gleams behind the fringe
Of eastern coast. So which doth most preserve_

_My wistful soul in hope and steadfastness
I know not--all that golden-memoried past
So sudden wonderful, when new life ran_

_First in my veins; or that clear hope, no less
Orient within me, for whose sake I cast
All meaner ends into these ground mists wan_.

"We've gotten a new kind o' minister the noo at Cairn Edward," said my cousin, Andrew M'Quhirr, to me last Monday. I was down at the Mart, and had done some little business on the Hill. My cousin is a draper in the High Street. He could be a draper nowhere else in Cairn Edward, indeed; for nobody buys anything but in the High Street.

"Look, Saunders, there he is, gaun up the far side o' the causeway."

I looked out and saw a long-legged man in grey clothes going very fast, but no minister. I said to my cousin that the minister had surely gone into the "Blue Bell," which was not well becoming in a minister.

"Man, Saunders, where's yer een?--you that pretends to read Tammas Carlyle. D' ye think that the black coat mak's a minister? I micht hae a minister in the window gin it did!" said he, glancing at the disjaskit-looking wood figure he had bought at a sale of bankrupt stock in Glasgow, with "THIS STYLE OF SUIT, £2, 10s." printed on the breast of it. The lay figure was a new thing in Cairn Edward, and hardly counted to be in keeping with the respect for the second commandment which a deacon in the Kirk of the Martyrs ought to cultivate. The laddies used to send greenhorns into the shop for a "penny peep o' Deacon M'Quhirr's idol!" But I always maintained that, whatever command the image might break, it certainly did not break the second; for it was like nothing in the heavens above nor in the earth beneath, nor (so far as I kenned) in the waters under the earth. But my cousin said--

"Maybes no'; but it cost me three pound, and in my shop it'll stand till it has payed itsel'!" Which gives it a long lifetime in the little shop-window in the High Street.

This was my first sight of Angus Stark, the new minister of Martyrs' Kirk in Cairn Edward.

"He carries things wi' a high hand," said Andrew M'Quhirr, my cousin.

"That's the man ye need at the Martyrs' Kirk," said I; "ye've been spoiled owre lang wi' unstable Reubens that could in nowise excel."

"Weel, we're fixed noo, rarely. I may say that I mentioned his wearin' knickerbockers to him when he first cam', thinkin' that as a young man he micht no' ken the prejudices o' the pairish."

"And what said he, Andrew?" I asked. "Was he pitten aboot?"

"Wha? Him! Na, no' a hair. He juist said, in his heartsome, joky way, 'I'm no' in the habit o' consulting my congregation how I shall dress myself; but if you, Mr. M'Quhirr, will supply me with a black broadcloth suit free of charge, I'll see aboot wearin' it!' says he. So I said nae mair.

"But did you hear what Jess Loan, the scaffie's wife, said to him when he gaed in to bapteeze her bairn when he wasna in his blacks? She hummered a while, an' then she says, 'Maister Stark, I ken ye're an ordeened man, for I was there whan a' the ministers pat their han's on yer heid, an' you hunkerin' on the cushion--but I hae my feelin's!"

"'Your feelings, Mrs. Loan?' says the minister, thinking it was some interestin' case o' personal experience he was to hear.

"'Ay,' says Jess; 'if it was only as muckle as a white tie I wadna mind, but even a scaffie's wean wad be the better o' that muckle!'

"So Maister Stark said never a word, but he gaed his ways hame, pat on his blacks, brocht his goun an' bands aneath his airm, and there never was sic a christenin' in Cairn Edward as Jess Loan's bairn gat!"

"How does he draw wi' his fowk, Andra?" I asked, for the "Martyrs" were far from being used to work of this kind.

"Oh, verra weel," said the draper; "but he stoppit Tammas Affleck and John Peartree frae prayin' twenty meenits a-piece at the prayer-meetin'. 'The publican's prayer didna last twa ticks o' the clock, an' you're not likely to better that even in twenty meenits!' says he. It was thocht that they wad leave, but weel do they ken that nae ither kirk wad elect them elders, an' they're baith fell fond o' airin' their waistcoats at the plate.

"Some o' them was sore against him ridin' on a bicycle, till John Peartree's grandson coupit oot o' the cart on the day o' the Sabbath-schule trip, an' the minister had the doctor up in seventeen minutes by the clock. There was a great cry in the pairish because he rade doon on 't to assist Maister Forbes at the Pits wi' his communion ae Sabbath nicht. But, says the minister, when some o' the Session took it on them to tairge him for it, 'Gin I had driven, eyther man or beast wad hae lost their Sabbath rest. I tired nocht but my own legs,' says he. 'It helps me to get to the hoose of God, just like your Sunday boots. Come barefit to the kirk, and I'll consider the maitter again.'"

"That minister preaches the feck o' his best sermons _oot_ o' the pulpit," said I, as I bade Andrew good-day and went back into the High Street, from which the folk were beginning to scatter. The farmers were yoking their gigs and mounting into them in varying degrees and angles of sobriety. So I took my way to the King's Arms, and got my beast into the shafts. Half a mile up the Dullarg road, who should I fall in with but "Drucken" Bourtree, the quarryman. He was walking as steady as the Cairn Edward policeman when the inspector is in the town. I took him up.

"Bourtree," says I, "I am prood to see ye."

"'Deed, Drumquhat, an' I'm prood to see mysel'. For thirty year I was drunk every Monday nicht, and that often atweenwhiles that it fair bate me to tell when ae spree feenished and the next began! But it's three month since I've seen the thick end o' a tumbler. It's fac' as death!"

"And what began a' this, Bourtree?" said I.

"Juist a fecht wi' M'Kelvie, the sweep, that ca's himsel' a _pugilist_!"

"A fecht made ye a sober man, Bourtree!--hoo in the creation was that?"

"It was this way, Drumquhat. M'Kelvie, a rank Tipperairy Micky, wi' a nose on him like a danger-signal"--here Bourtree glanced down at his own, which had hardly yet had time to bleach--"me an' M'Kelvie had been drinkin' verra britherly in the Blue Bell till M'Kelvie got fechtin' drunk, an' misca'ed me for a hungry Gallowa' Scot, an' nae doot I gaed into the particulars o' his ain birth an' yeddication. In twa or three minutes we had oor coats aff and were fechtin' wi' the bluid rinnin' on to the verra street.

"The fowk made a ring, but nane dared bid us to stop. Some cried, 'Fetch the polis!' But little we cared for that, for we kenned brawly that the polisman had gane awa' to Whunnyliggate to summon auld John Grey for pasturing his coo on the roadside, as soon as ever he heard that M'Kelvie an' me war drinkin' in the toon. Oh, he's a fine polisman! He's aye great for peace. Weel, I was thinkin' that the next time I got in my left, it wad settle M'Kelvie. An' what M'Kelvie was thinkin' I do not ken, for M'Kelvie is nocht but an Irishman. But oot o' the grund there raise a great muckle man in grey claes, and took fechtin' M'Kelvie an' me by the cuff o' the neck, and dauded oor heids thegither till we saw a guano-bagfu' o' stars.

"'Noo, wull ye shake hands or come to the lock-up?' says he.

"We thocht he maun be the chief o' a' the chief constables, an' we didna want to gang to nae lock-ups, so we just shook haun's freendly-like. Then he sent a' them that was lookin' on awa' wi' a flee in their lugs.

"'Forty men,' says he, 'an' feared to stop twa men fechtin'--cowards or brutes, eyther o' the twa!' says he.

"There was a bailie amang them he spoke to, so we thocht he was bound to be a prince o' the bluid, at the least. This is what I thocht, but I canna tell what M'Kelvie thocht, for he was but an Irishman. So it does not matter what M'Kelvie thocht.

"But the big man in grey says, 'Noo, lads, I've done ye a good turn. You come and hear me preach the morn in the kirk at the fit o' the hill.' 'A minister!' cried M'Kelvie an' me. A wastril whalp could hae dung us owre with its tail. We war that surprised like."

So that is the way "Drucken" Bourtree became a God-fearing quarryman. And as for M'Kelvie, he got three months for assaulting and battering the policeman that very night; but then, M'Kelvie was only an Irishman!