justly held that no man would take refuge in such obvious devices for
filling up the time unless he was short of sermon material. One
unfortunate, indeed, ruined his chances at once by a long petition for
those in danger on the sea--availing himself with some eloquence of the
sympathetic imagery of the one hundred and seventh Psalm--for this effort
was regarded as not only the most barefaced padding, but also as evidence
of an almost incredible blindness to circumstances. "Did he think
Kilbogie wes a fishing-village?" Mains inquired of the elders afterwards,
with pointed sarcasm. Kilbogie was not indifferent to a well-ordered
prayer--although its palate was coarser in the appreciation of felicitous
terms and allusions than that of Drumtochty--and would have been
scandalised if the Queen had been omitted; but it was by the sermon the
young man must stand or fall, and Kilbogie despised a man who postponed
the ordeal.

Saunderson gave double pledges of capacity and fulness before he opened
his mouth in the sermon, for he read no Scripture at all that day, and
had only one prayer, which was mainly a statement of the Divine Decrees
and a careful confession of the sins of Kilbogie; and then, having given
out his text from the prophecy of Joel, he reverently closed the Bible
and placed it on the seat behind him. His own reason for this proceeding
was a desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject, and a
painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church when he
landed a Bible--with clasps--on the head of the precentor in the heat of
a discourse defending the rejection of Esau. Our best and simplest
actions--and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe--can be misconstrued, and
the only dissentient from Saunderson's election insisted that the Bible
had been deposited on the floor, and asserted that the object of this
profanity was to give the preacher a higher standing in the pulpit. This
malignant reading of circumstances might have wrought mischief--for
Saunderson's gaunt figure did seem to grow in the pulpit--had it not been
for the bold line of defence taken up by Mains.

"Gin he wanted tae stand high, wes it no tae preach the word? an' gin he
wanted a soond foundation for his feet, what better could he get than the
twa Testaments? Answer me that."

It was seen at once that no one could answer that, and the captious
objector never quite recovered his position in the parish; while it is
not the least