upon
it. His glance swept the gathering. His eye glowed with a sparkle of
such fiery wrath that not a man of all the seventeen and an elder, was
unafraid. Yet not of his violence, but rather of the lightnings of his
words. And above all, of his power to loose and to bind. It is a
mistaken belief that priestdom died when they spelled it Presbytery.

The comprehensive nature of the anathema that followed--spoken from the
advantage of the doorway, with personal applications to the seventeen
individuals and the elder--cannot now be recalled; but scraps of that
address are circulated to this day, mostly spoken under the breath of
the narrator.

"And you, Portmark," the minister is reported to have said, "with your
face like the moon in harvest and your girth like a tun of Rhenish, gin
ye turn not from your evil ways, within four year ye shall sup with the
devil whom ye serve. Have ye never a word to say, ye scorners of the
halesome word, ye blaspheming despisers of doctrine? Your children shall
yet stand and rebuke you in the gate. Heard ye not my word on the
Sabbath in the kirk? Dumb dogs are ye every one! Have ye not a word to
say? There was a brave gabble of tongues enough when I came in. Are ye
silent before a man? How, then, shall ye stand in That Day?"

The minister paused for a reply. But no answer came.

"And you, Alexander Kippen, puir windlestrae, the Lord shall thresh ye
like ill-grown corn in the day of His wrath. Ye are hardly worth the
word of rebuke; but for mine office I wad let ye slip quick to hell! The
devil takes no care of you, for he is sure of ye!"

The minister advanced, and with the iron-pointed shod of his staff drove
in the bung of the first keg. Then there arose a groan from the
seventeen men who sat about. Some of them stood up on their feet. But
the minister turned on them with such fearsome words, laying the ban of
anathema on them, that their hearts became as water and they sat down.
The good spirit gurgled and ran, and deep within them the seventeen men
groaned for the pity of it.

Thus the minister broke up the black drinkings. And the opinion of the
parish was with him in all, except as to the spilling of the liquor.
Rebuke and threatening were within his right, but to pour out the spirit
was a waste even in a minister.

"It is the destruction of God's good creature!" said the parish of Dour.

But the minister held on his way. The communion followed after, and
Abraham Ligartwood ha