his
trick, was sauntering along the kirk-wynd with his hat on the side of
his head. Fortunately he did not meet the minister.

The courting of T'nowhead's Bell reached its crisis one Sabbath about a
month after the events above recorded. The minister was in great force
that day, but it is no part of mine to tell how he bore himself. I was
there, and am not likely to forget the scene. It was a fateful Sabbath
for T'nowhead's Bell and her swains, and destined to be remembered for
the painful scandal which they perpetrated in their passion.

Bell was not in the kirk. There being an infant of six months in the
house, it was a question of either Lisbeth or the lassie's staying at
home with him, and though Lisbeth was unselfish in a general way, she
could not resist the delight of going to church. She had nine children
besides the baby, and being but a woman, it was the pride of her life to
march them into the T'nowhead pew, so well watched that they dared not
disbehave, and so tightly packed that they could not fall. The
congregation looked at that pew, the mothers enviously, when they sung
the lines:--

"Jerusalem like a city is
Compactly built together."

The first half of the service had been gone through on this particular
Sunday without anything remarkable happening. It was at the end of the
psalm which preceded the sermon that Sanders Elshioner, who sat near the
door, lowered his head until it was no higher than the pews, and in that
attitude, looking almost like a four-footed animal, slipped out of the
church. In their eagerness to be at the sermon, many of the congregation
did not notice him, and those who did, put the matter by in their minds
for future investigation. Sam'l, however, could not take it so coolly.
From his seat in the gallery he saw Sanders disappear and his mind
misgave him. With the true lover's instinct, he understood it all.
Sanders had been struck by the fine turn-out in the T'nowhead pew. Bell
was alone at the farm. What an opportunity to work one's way up to a
proposal. T'nowhead was so overrun with children that such a chance
seldom occurred, except on a Sabbath. Sanders, doubtless, was off to
propose, and he, Sam'l, was left behind.

The suspense was terrible. Sam'l and Sanders had both known all along
that Bell would take the first of the two who asked her. Even those who
thought her proud admitted that she was modest. Bitterly the weaver
repented having waited so long. Now