kind of moss-hag of dry peat, wide and deep, yet level
along the bottom. Down upon the black coom was a large company of women
all standing close together and joining their hands. A little way apart
on a mound of peat in the midst, stood a great hulk of a fellow, with a
gown upon him, like a woman's smock, of white linen felled with purple
at the edges. But whenever it blew aside with the wind, one saw
underneath the sailor's jerkin of rough cloth with the bare tanned skin
of the neck showing through.

"'Certes, Master Anton,' said I, 'but yon is a braw chiel, him wi' the
broad hat and the white cock ontill the bob o't!'

"And indeed a brave, braw, blythesome-like man he was, for all the
trashery of his attire. He kept good order among the men and women that
companied with him in the Deer-Slunk. There were thirty of
them--twenty-six being women--many of them very respectable of family,
that had been led away from their duty by the dangerous, persuading
tongue of John Gib. But Auld Anton looked very grim as he stood a moment
on the knowe-top and watched them, and he took a shorter grip of the
cudgel he carried in his hand. It was of black crabtree, knotted and
grievous.

"'John Gib!' cried Anton Lennox from the hilltop suddenly in a loud
voice:

"The great sea slug of a man in the white petticoat turned slowly round,
and looked at us standing on the parched brae-face with no friendly eye.

"'Begone--ye are the children of the devil--begone to your father!' he
cried back.

"'Belike--John Gib--belike, but bide a wee--I am coming down to have a
word or two with you as to that!' replied Auld Anton, and his look had a
smile in it, that was sour as the crab-apples which his cudgel would
have borne had it bidden in the hedge-root.

"'I have come,' he said slowly and tartly, 'that I might converse
seriously with you, John Gib, and that concerning the way that you have
treated Mr. Donald Cargill, an honoured servant of the Lord!'

"'Poof!' cried John Gib, standing up to look at us, while the women drew
themselves together angrily to whisper, 'speak not to us of ministers.
We deny them every one. We have had more comfort to our souls since we
had done with ministers and elders, with week-days and fast-days, and
Bibles and Sabbaths, and came our ways out here by ourselves to the
deeps of the Deer-Slunk!'

"'Nay,' said Old Anton, 'ministers indeed are not all they might be. But
without them, ye have proved yourself but a