of pedestrians
behind wound its slow way in the waning light to the kirkyard, showing
startlingly black against the dazzling snow; and it was not until the
earth rattled on the coffin-lid that Little Rathie's nearest male
relative seemed to remember his last mournful duty to the dead.
Sidling up to the favoured mourners, he remarked casually and in the
most emotionless tone he could assume: "They're expec'in ye to stap
doon the length o' Little Rathie noo. Aye, aye, he's gone. Na, na,
nae refoosal, Da-avit; ye was aye a guid friend till him, an' it's
onything a body can do for him noo."

Though the uninvited slunk away sorrowfully, the entertainment provided
at Auld Licht houses of mourning was characteristic of a stern and
sober sect. They got to eat and to drink to the extent, as a rule, of
a "lippy" of shortbread and a "brew" of toddy; but open Bibles lay on
the table, and the eyes of each were on his neighbours to catch them
transgressing, and offer up a prayer for them on the spot. Ay me!
there is no Bowie nowadays to fill an absent minister's shoes.

CHAPTER XII

A LITERARY CLUB

The ministers in the town did not hold with literature. When the most
notorious of the clubs met in the town-house under the presidentship of
Gavin Ogilvy, who was no better than a poacher, and was troubled in his
mind because writers called Pope a poet, there was frequently a wrangle
over the question, Is literature necessarily immoral? It was a
fighting club, and on Friday nights the few respectable, god-fearing
members dandered to the town-house, as if merely curious to have
another look at the building. If Lang Tammas, who was dead against
letters, was in sight they wandered off, but when there were no spies
abroad they slunk up the stair. The attendance was greatest on dark
nights, though Gavin himself and some other characters would have
marched straight to the meeting in broad daylight. Tammas Haggart, who
did not think much of Milton's devil, had married a gypsy woman for an
experiment, and the Coat of Many Colours did not know where his wife
was. As a rule, however, the members were wild bachelors. When they
married they had to settle down.

Gavin's essay on Will'um Pitt, the Father of the Taxes, led to the
club's being bundled out of the town-house, where people said it should
never have been allowed to meet. There was a terrible town when Tammas
Haggart then disclosed the secret of Mr. Byars's supposed a