them I hef not wanted, oh no: they
just did."

"'"Janet, you will be forgetting your field that iss lying next the
manse, and the people will be thinking that it iss a glebe; but I am
telling them that it iss Janet Cameron's, who iss a fery experienced
woman, and hass nefer seen the inside of a Moderate Kirk since the
Disruption."

"'Maybe you will be astonished, Mister John, but when Janet's will will
be read that piece of ground wass left to the Free Kirk, which wass
fery kind and mindful of Janet, and I made a sermon about her from the
text of the "elect lady."

"'It wass a good field, but it needed a dyke and some drains, and it
wass not our people that had the money. So I made another sermon on
the text, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast
of the field doth devour it," and went down to the south. It wass not
a dyke and some drains, but enough to build a byre and a stable I came
back with. That wass in '55, and before '60 there will be a new manse
with twelve rooms that iss good for letting to the English people. But
it wass ten years the church needed, and a year for the porch to keep
it warm, for I am not liking stoves, and will not hef one in
Crianshalloch.

"'It iss wonderful how much money the bodies hef in Glasgow, and it iss
good for them to be hearing sound doctrine at a time. There will be no
Arminianism when I am preaching, and no joking; but maybe there will be
some parables, oh yes, about the sheep coming in at the manse door for
want of a fence, and the snow lying in the pulpit.'

"There is a cateran for you, and, mind you, a good fellow too. It's
not greed sends him out, but sheer love of spoil. Would you like to
see MacTavish next time he passes up with the cattle?" for Carmichael
was emboldened by the reception of his sketch.

"Nothing we should like better, for the General and I want to know all
about Scotland; but don't you think that those ministers have injured
the Highlanders? Janet, you know, has such gloomy ideas about
religion."

"There is no doubt, Miss Carnegie, that a load of Saxon theology has
been landed on the Celt, and it has disfigured his religion. Sometimes
I have felt that the Catholic of the west is a truer type of northern
faith than the Presbyterian of Ross-shire."

"I am so glad to hear you say that," said Miss Carnegie, "for we had
one or two west Catholics in the old regiment, and their superstitions
were lovely. You remember, dad