ill the unfortunate man reached
his pew, where his own flesh and blood withdrew themselves from him as
if he had been a leper, and Peter himself wished that he had never been
born.

"Five minutes earlier, Peter, would have prevented this unseemly
interruption--ahem.

"'In counsel of ungodly men,
Nor stands in sinners' way.'"

Before the Sacrament the Doctor gave one of his college sermons on some
disputed point in divinity, and used language that was nothing short of
awful.

"Grant me those premises," he would say, while the silence in the kirk
could be felt, "and I will show to any reasonable and unprejudiced
person that those new theories are nothing but a resuscitated and
unjustifiable Pelagianism." Such passages produced a lasting
impression in the parish, and once goaded Drumsheugh's Saunders into
voluntary speech.

"Yon wes worth ca'in' a sermon. Did you ever hear sic words out o' the
mouth o' a man? Noo that bleatin' cratur Curlew 'at comes frae
Muirtown is jist pittin' by the time. Sall, ae sermon o' the Doctor's
wud last yon body for a year."

After the sermon the people sang,

"'T was on that night when doomed to know,"

and the elders, who had gone out a few minutes before, entered the kirk
in procession, bearing the elements, and set them before the Doctor,
now standing at the table. The people came from their pews and took
their seats, singing as they moved, while the children were left to
their own devices, tempered by the remembrance that their doings could
be seen by the Doctor, and would receive a just recompense of reward
from their own kin in the evening. Domsie went down one side and
Drumsheugh the other, collecting the tokens, whose clink, clink in the
silver dish was the only sound.

"If there be any other person who desires to take the Sacrament at this
the first table" (for the Sacrament was given then to detachments),
"let him come without delay."

"Let us go, dad," whispered Kate. "He is a dear old padre, and . . .
they are good people and our neighbours."

"But they won't kneel, you know, Kit; will you . . . ?"

"We 'll do as they do; it is not our Sacrament." So the father and
daughter went up the kirk and took their places on the Doctor's left
hand. A minute later Lord Hay rose and went up his aisle, and sat down
opposite the Carnegies, looking very nervous, but also most modest and
sincere.

The Doctor gave the cup to the General, who passed it to Kate, a