mosaic, is still quoted by those who
heard it, terror-stricken where they sat.

"Sin," replied the wide-gleaning man, "is an act of God's free grace,
infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in its full purpose of and endeavour
after new obedience."

This terrible and miscellaneous eruption was the more lamentable from
the fact that his poor wife heard this blare of discordant dogmas with
unbelieving ears, while even little Kirsty gasped, exclaiming above her
breath, "Ye're sair muddled, faither."

Archie looked vacantly from wife to daughter, like one who has let
something drop. Then gazing despondently at the minister's struggling
face, he said, "I'm feart that's no' jist richt in a' its parteeklars."
The epilogue was worse than the tragedy. A grim Presbyterian smile went
round, more vocal than the echoing laughter of less silent sects, and it
smote on Archie's ears like the scorners' bray. Forward went the
catechism, a penitential gloom succeeding the sinful indulgence. The
Scottish sun dips suddenly.

Sober enough now are the faces from which all merriment has fled,
forgetting the precentor's discomfiture, and looking only to their own
deliverance from the guns now turned against themselves. But Archie did
not forget--into a secret Scottish place he had retreated, his hot,
burning heart forging some weapon of revenge. It was ready in due time.
An hour after, just before the armistice which the benediction alone
made sure, he turned upon the honest rustics with a look of belated
triumph in his face, and slew them with the retort which long travail
had brought forth.

"A'm no' sae gleg on the subject o' sin as some fowk I ken."

The minister, by aid of special grace, said nothing. Archie, although he
held solemnly on his way through the benediction, as became a precentor,
yet chuckled exultantly all the homeward road. At evening worship he
selected the Twenty-seventh Psalm and sang the second verse with
rejoicing unction--

"Whereas mine enemies and foes,
Most wicked persons all,
To eat my flesh against me rose,
They stumbled and did fall,"

and the honest rustics, as they sought the cover of their homes with
emancipated feet, pronounced one to the other that most Scotch of all
Scottish verdicts, half of eulogy and half of condemnation: "He's a lad,
is Airchie. Ay, Airchie's a lad to be sure."

* * * * *

What sleuth-hounds women are in matters of the heart