that church with the dirty Duncan at my tails, and finding a
vacant place hard by, sat down.

"Thirteenthly, my brethren, and in parenthesis, the law itself must be
regarded as a means of grace," the minister was saying, in the voice of
one delighting to pursue an argument.

The sermon was in English on account of the assize. The judges were
present with their armed attendants, the halberts glittered in a corner
by the door, and the seats were thronged beyond custom with the array of
lawyers. The text was in Romans 5th and 13th--the minister a skilled
hand; and the whole of that able churchful--from Argyle, and my Lords
Elchies and Kilkerran, down to the halbertmen that came in their
attendance--was sunk with gathered brows in a profound critical
attention. The minister himself and a sprinkling of those about the door
observed our entrance at the moment and immediately forgot the same; the
rest either did not hear or would not heed; and I sat there amongst my
friends and enemies unremarked.

The first that I singled out was Prestongrange. He sat well forward,
like an eager horseman in the saddle, his lips moving with relish, his
eyes glued on the minister: the doctrine was clearly to his mind.
Charles Stewart, on the other hand, was half asleep, and looked harassed
and pale. As for Symon Fraser, he appeared like a blot, and almost a
scandal, in the midst of that attentive congregation, digging his hands
in his pockets, shifting his legs, clearing his throat, rolling up his
bald eyebrows and shooting out his eyes to right and left, now with a
yawn, now with a secret smile. At times too, he would take the Bible in
front of him, run it through, seem to read a bit, run it through again,
and stop and yawn prodigiously: the whole as if for exercise.

In the course of this restlessness his eye alighted on myself. He sat a
second stupefied, than tore a half leaf out of the Bible, scrawled upon
it with a pencil, and passed it with a whispered word to his next
neighbor. The note came to Prestongrange, who gave me but the one look;
thence it voyaged to the hands of Mr. Erskine; thence again to Argyle,
where he sat between the other two lords of session, and his Grace
turned and fixed me with an arrogant eye. The last of those interested
to observe my presence was Charlie Stewart, and he too began to pencil
and hand about despatches, none of which I was able to trace to their
destination in the crowd.

But the passage of these