is days had been filled
with anxiety and fear for his covenant. When the first sharpness of
grief at the loss of his old friend had passed, the Watchman slowly
awakened to the knowledge that he was living among a strange people.
Under Mr. Cameron's wise, loving rule all classes in the congregation
had been unanimous; the elder folk believed him perfect and the younger
respected him too deeply to disagree with him. But when the bond of
union was severed, a new party with alarmingly progressive ideas,
suddenly came to life. They were fain to introduce many improvements
into the church service which the fathers of the sanctuary considered
unsound and irreverent. They wanted a choir and an organ like the
Methodists; they desired to sing hymns as did their sister congregation
over on the Tenth; and, most of all, they considered it imperative that
they should stand to sing and sit to pray, as did all respectable
people.

Andrew Johnstone, who represented the old school and its traditions,
stood at the head of the ancient party as immovable as the church
foundations. Some of the elders might counsel yielding, or at least
compromising, but not Splinterin' Andra. He regarded all these
youthful aspirations as signs of the degeneracy of the times and a
decay of spiritual life and, therefore, to be immediately quenched.

So the two parties stood arrayed against each other and the chief cause
of their dissension was the choice of a new minister. The more
youthful party wanted a young man, or at least one who was "lively,"
while old Glenoro held to its ideal--a man as much as possible like
Hector Cameron, or, if it were not looking for too much on this earth,
a second John McAlpine. But the young people of the congregation had
never heard Mr. McAlpine preach, and, like the Egyptians, who did not
know Joseph, they had not the proper respect for that great leader, and
they also considered Gaelic sermons, two-hour discourses and half-hour
prayers as belonging to a past generation.

All these trials, youthful frivolity, the lack of a Gaelic service and
old Andrew Johnstone's storms, Duncan Polite had borne patiently; but
to-day's sermon had been almost too much for even his optimism, for
that morning a smart probationer had stood up in Mr. Cameron's sacred
pulpit and delivered a twenty-minute address on the Beauties of Nature!
Even the young people had been shocked, and Andrew Johnstone had, for
once, voiced the sentiments of