cing of the tables, serious
and longfaced enough were ministers and elders as the bread and wine
were handed round, but the minister's wife, poor body, found it took her
all her time to preserve an earnest spirituality and to search her soul
as the roasts and pies and puddings spread out on the manse dining-table
haunted her anxious mind. Harder still, too, it was for a tired minister
and elders to abstain from all appearance of casuality as the
hospitality of the manse went on far into the afternoon, and the whisky
toddy had more than once gone the round of the table.

Seventeen years after the doing away with Abbotrule Parish there took
place at the manse of Southdean, after the Sacrament had been dispensed,
one of these gatherings of sanctified conviviality. It was dusk before
the party broke up, and it was probably due to the kindly forethought of
the minister that he and his guests strolled in little companies of
two's and three's out into the caller air before their final parting.
Their gait was solemn--if a trifle uncertain--as they slowly daundered
up the road between the trees. It was a still Sabbath evening, when one
can hear the very whispers of the fir branches, the murmur of a burn far
away--when suddenly the stillness was broken by the thud of a horse's
hoofs. Beat--beat--beat--on the turf by the side of the road they came,
and each man of the party cocked his ears and strained his eyes into the
darkness to see who might be the horseman who profaned the Sabbath by
riding in such hot haste. There was an elder there who, had the party
been held at any time but on the Sacrament Sabbath and anywhere but in
the manse dining-room, might have been said to have a trifle exceeded.
So when, cantering on the turf between the two fir woods, they saw a
white horse appear, he looked byordinar grave.

"I mind," said he, "a passage in the Revelations, '_Behold a pale
horse; and his name that sat on him was Death_.'" With that the horse
was upon them, and one and all looked up at the rider's face. Fearsome
and gash was the countenance they looked upon. Hatred and scorn was in
the burning eyes--anger, and the hatred that does not die. And there was
not one man of them but ran like hunted sheep back into the manse, and
there, in the light, faced each other, forfeuchen and well-nigh greeting
like terrified bairns, that did not know the face for that of Patrick
Kerr, the laird of Abbotrule.

Next day they all had the news th