he minister took
hold of him by the arm, and they walked together into the fields, where,
when they were at some distance from the house, Mr Sundrum stopped, and
began to discourse in a very earnest and lively manner, frequently
touching the palm of his left hand with the fingers of his right, as he
spoke to my father, and sometimes lifting both his hands as one in
amaze, ejaculating to the heavens.

While they were thus reasoning together, worthy Ebenezer Muir came
towards the house, but, observing where they were, he turned off and
joined them, and they continued all three in vehement deliberation, in
so much that I was drawn by the thirst of curiosity to slip so near
towards them that I could hear what passed; and my young heart was
pierced at the severe terms in which the minister was condemning the
ringleaders of the riot, as he called the adversaries of popedom in
Edinburgh, and in a manner rebuking my honest father as a sower of
sedition.

My father, however, said stiffly, for he was not a man to controvert
with a minister, that in all temporal things he was a true and leil
subject, and in what pertained to the King as king, he would stand as
stoutly up for as any man in the three kingdoms; but against a
usurpation of the Lord's rights, his hand, his heart, and his father's
sword, that had been used in the Reformation, were all alike ready.

Old Ebenezer Muir tried to pacify him, and reasoned in great gentleness
with both, expressing his concern that a presbyterian minister could
think that the attempt to bring in prelacy, and the reading of
court-contrived prayers, was not a meddling with things sacred and
rights natural, which neither prince nor potentate had authority to do.
But Mr Sundrum was one of those that longed for the flesh-pots of Egypt,
and the fat things of a lordly hierarchy; and the pacific remonstrances
of the pious old man made him wax more and more wroth at what he
hatefully pronounced their rebellious inclinations; at which bitter
words both my father and Ebenezer Muir turned from him, and went
together to the house with sadness in their faces, leaving him to return
the way he had come alone--a thing which filled me with consternation,
he having ever before been treated and reverenced as a pastor ought
always to be.

What comment my father and the old man made on his conduct when they
were by themselves I know not; but on the Sabbath morning the kirk was
filled to overflowing, and my fath