f
the seats in the parish church. The scene was the kirk itself, and the
seats being put up to auction were knocked down to the highest bidder.
This sometimes led to the breaking of the peace. Every person was
present who was at all particular as to where he sat, and an auctioneer
was engaged for the day. He rouped the kirk-seats like potato-drills,
beginning by asking for a bid. Every seat was put up to auction
separately; for some were much more run after than others, and the men
were instructed by their wives what to bid for. Often the women joined
in, and as they bid excitedly against each other the church rang with
opprobrious epithets. A man would come to the roup late, and learn
that the seat he wanted had been knocked down. He maintained that he
had been unfairly treated, or denounced the local laird to whom the
seat-rents went. If he did not get the seat he would leave the kirk.
Then the woman who had forestalled him wanted to know what he meant by
glaring at her so, and the auction was interrupted. Another member
would "thrip down the throat" of the auctioneer that he had a right to
his former seat if he continued to pay the same price for it. The
auctioneer was screamed at for favouring his friends, and at times the
roup became so noisy that men and women had to be forcibly ejected.
Then was Pete's chance. Hovering at the gate, he caught the angry
people on their way home and took them into his workshop by an outside
stair. There he assisted them in denouncing the parish kirk, with the
view of getting them to forswear it. Pete made a good many Auld Lichts
in his time out of unpromising material.

Sights were to be witnessed in the parish church at times that could
not have been made more impressive by the Auld Lichts themselves. Here
sinful women were grimly taken to task by the minister, who, having
thundered for a time against adultery in general, called upon one
sinner in particular to stand forth. She had to step forward into a
pew near the pulpit, where, alone and friendless, and stared at by the
congregation, she cowered in tears beneath his denunciations. In that
seat she had to remain during the forenoon service. She returned home
alone, and had to come back alone to her solitary seat in the
afternoon. All day no one dared speak to her. She was as much an
object of contumely as the thieves and smugglers whom, in the end of
last century, it was the privilege of Feudal Bailie Wood (as