him
deprecatingly, and the Professor of Dogmatics openly consulted him on
obscure writers. He had wooed twenty-three congregations in vain, from
churches in the black country where the colliers rose in squares of
twenty and went out without ceremony, to suburban places of worship
where the beadle, after due consideration of the sermon, would take up
the afternoon notices and ask that they be read at once for purposes of
utility, which that unflinching functionary stated to the minister with
accuracy and much faithfulness. Vacant congregations desiring a list
of candidates made one exception, and prayed that Jeremiah should not
be let loose upon them, till at last it came home to the unfortunate
scholar himself that he was an offence and a byeword. He began to
dread the ordeal of giving his name, and, as is still told, declared to
a household, living in the fat wheat lands and without any imagination,
that he was called Magor Missabib. When a stranger makes a statement
of this kind with a sad seriousness, no one judges it expedient to
offer any remark, but it was skilfully arranged that Missabib's door
should be locked from the outside, and one member of the household sat
up all night. The sermon next day did not tend to confidence--having
seven quotations in unknown tongues--and the attitude of the
congregation was one of alert vigilance; but no one gave any outward
sign of uneasiness, and six able-bodied men collected in a pew below
the pulpit knew their duty in an emergency.

Saunderson's election to the Free Church of Kilbogie was therefore an
event in the ecclesiastical world, and a consistent tradition in the
parish explained its inwardness on certain grounds, complimentary both
to the judgment of Kilbogie and the gifts of Mr. Saunderson. On
Saturday evening he was removed from the train by the merest accident,
and left the railway station in such a maze of meditation that he
ignored the road to Kilbogie altogether, although its sign post was
staring him in the face, and continued his way to Drumtochty. It was
half-past nine when Jamie Soutar met him on the high road through our
Glen, still travelling steadily west, and being arrested by his
appearance, beguiled him into conversation, till he elicited that
Saunderson was minded to reach Kilbogie. For an hour did the wanderer
rest in Jamie's kitchen, during which he put Jamie's ecclesiastical
history into a state of thorough repair--making seven distinct
pa