e, "No that
it maitters for men sae muckle," she made haste to add, "but there's
naebody can deny that it's unwomanly. Long hair is the ornament o' woman
ony way; we've good warrandise for that--it's in the Bible--and wha can
doubt that the Apostle had some gowden-haired lassie in his
mind--Apostle and all, for what was he but just a man like yersel'?"

CHAPTER VI

A LEAF FROM CHRISTINA'S PSALM-BOOK

Archie was sedulous at church. Sunday after Sunday he sat down and stood
up with that small company, heard the voice of Mr. Torrance leaping like
an ill-played clarionet from key to key, and had an opportunity to study
his moth-eaten gown and the black thread mittens that he joined together
in prayer, and lifted up with a reverent solemnity in the act of
benediction. Hermiston pew was a little square box, dwarfish in
proportion with the kirk itself, and enclosing a table not much bigger
than a footstool. There sat Archie, an apparent prince, the only
undeniable gentleman and the only great heritor in the parish, taking
his ease in the only pew, for no other in the kirk had doors. Thence he
might command an undisturbed view of that congregation of solid plaided
men, strapping wives and daughters, oppressed children, and uneasy
sheep-dogs. It was strange how Archie missed the look of race; except
the dogs, with their refined foxy faces and inimitably curling tails,
there was no one present with the least claim to gentility. The
Cauldstaneslap party was scarcely an exception; Dandie perhaps, as he
amused himself making verses through the interminable burden of the
service, stood out a little by the glow in his eye and a certain
superior animation of face and alertness of body; but even Dandie
slouched like a rustic. The rest of the congregation, like so many
sheep, oppressed him with a sense of hob-nailed routine, day following
day--of physical labour in the open air, oatmeal porridge, peas bannock,
the somnolent fireside in the evening, and the night-long nasal slumbers
in a box-bed. Yet he knew many of them to be shrewd and humorous, men
of character, notable women, making a bustle in the world and radiating
an influence from their low-browed doors. He knew besides they were like
other men; below the crust of custom, rapture found a way; he had heard
them beat the timbrel before Bacchus--had heard them shout and carouse
over their whisky-toddy; and not the most Dutch-bottomed and severe
faces among them all, not e