the fathers without ostentation, and
dropping into a conversation on the weather, continued, as it were,
from last Sabbath, used it skilfully to offer an apology for past
failures in church observance.

"It's keepit up wonderfu' through the week, for a' never like ower
bricht mornin's," old Sandie Ferguson would remark casually, whose
arrival, swallow-like, heralded the approach of the great occasion.
"The roads are graund the noo frae the heich (high glen); we 've hed an
awfu' winter, neeburs, up oor wy--clean blockit up. Them 'at lives
ablow are michty favoured, wi' the kirk at their door."

"It's maist extraordinar' hoo the seasons are changin'"--Jamie Soutar
could never resist Sandie's effrontery--"A' mind when Mairch saw the
end o' the snow, an' noo winter is hangin' aboot in midsummer. A'm
expeckin' tae hear, in another five year, that the drifts last through
the Sacrament in August. It 'll be a sair trial for ye, Sandie, a
wullin' kirkgoer--but ye 'll hae the less responsibility."

"Millhole 's here, at ony rate, the day, an' we 're gled tae see
him"--for Drumsheugh's pride was to have a large Sacrament--and so
Sandie would take his place at an angle to catch the Doctor's eye, and
pay such rapt attention to the sermon that any one not knowing the
circumstances might have supposed that he had just awaked from sleep.

Ploughmen who on other Sabbaths slept in the forenoon and visited their
sweethearts the rest of the day, presented themselves for tokens on the
Fast-day, and made the one elaborate toilette of the year on Saturday
evening, when they shaved in turns before a scrap of glass hung outside
the bothy door, and the foreman, skilled in the clipping of horses, cut
their hair, utilising a porridge bowl with much ingenuity to secure a
round cut. They left early on the Sabbath morning, and formed
themselves into a group against the gable of the kirk,--being reviewed
with much satisfaction by Drumsheugh, who had a keen eye for absentees
from the religious function of the year. At the first sound of the
bell the ploughmen went into kirk a solid mass, distributing themselves
in the servants' pews attached to the farmers' pews, and maintaining an
immovable countenance through every part of the service, any tendency
to somnolence being promptly and effectually checked by the foreman,
who allowed himself some ease when alone on other days, but on
Sacrament Sabbath realised his charge and never closed an eye. T