lear of the room and slammed the door behind him in the face of the
pursuing curate. The next Lord's day the curate was ill, and the kirk
closed, but for all his ill words, Mr. M'Brair abode unmolested in the
house of Montroymont.

CHAPTER III

THE HILL-END OF DRUMLOWE

This was a bit of a steep broken hill that overlooked upon the west a
moorish valley, full of ink-black pools. These presently drained into a
burn that made off, with little noise and no celerity of pace, about the
corner of the hill. On the far side the ground swelled into a bare
heath, black with junipers, and spotted with the presence of the
standing stones for which the place was famous. They were many in that
part, shapeless, white with lichen--you would have said with age: and
had made their abode there for untold centuries, since first the
heathens shouted for their installation. The ancients had hallowed them
to some ill religion, and their neighbourhood had long been avoided by
the prudent before the fall of day; but of late, on the up-springing of
new requirements, these lonely stones on the moor had again become a
place of assembly. A watchful picket on the Hill-end commanded all the
northern and eastern approaches; and such was the disposition of the
ground, that by certain cunningly posted sentries the west also could be
made secure against surprise: there was no place in the country where a
conventicle could meet with more quiet of mind or a more certain retreat
open, in the case of interference from the dragoons. The minister spoke
from a knowe close to the edge of the ring, and poured out the words God
gave him on the very threshold of the devils of yore. When they pitched
a tent (which was often in wet weather, upon a communion occasion) it
was rigged over the huge isolated pillar that had the name of
Anes-Errand, none knew why. And the congregation sat partly clustered
on the slope below, and partly among the idolatrous monoliths and on the
turfy soil of the Ring itself. In truth the situation was well qualified
to give a zest to Christian doctrines, had there been any wanted. But
these congregations assembled under conditions at once so formidable and
romantic as made a zealot of the most cold. They were the last of the
faithful; God, who had averted His face from all other countries of the
world, still leaned from heaven to observe, with swelling sympathy, the
doings of His moorland remnant; Christ was by them with His etern