and very little chin. He always looked as if
consciously trying to keep himself together. He wore his
shirt-collar unusually high, yet out of it far shot his long neck,
notwithstanding the smallness of which, his words always seemed to
come from a throat much too big for them. He had greatly the look
of a hen, proud of her maternal experiences, and silent from conceit
of what she could say if she would. So much better would he have
done as an underling than as a ruler--as a journeyman even, than a
master, that to know him was almost to disbelieve in the good of
what is generally called education. His learning seemed to have
taken the wrong fermentation, and turned to folly instead of wisdom.
But he did not do much harm, for he had a great respect for his
respectability. Perhaps if he had been a craftsman, he might even
have done more harm--making rickety wheelbarrows, asthmatic pumps,
ill-fitting window-frames, or boots with a lurking divorce in each
welt. He had no turn for farming, and therefore let all his land,
yet liked to interfere, and as much as possible kept a personal
jurisdiction.

There was one thing, however, which, if it did not throw the laird
into a passion--nothing, as I have said, did that--brought him
nearer to the outer verge of displeasure than any other, and that
was, anything whatever to which he could affix the name of
superstition. The indignation of better men than the laird with
even a confessedly harmless superstition, is sometimes very amusing;
and it was a point of Mr. Galbraith's poverty-stricken religion to
denounce all superstitions, however diverse in character, with equal
severity. To believe in the second sight, for instance, or in any
form of life as having the slightest relation to this world, except
that of men, that of animals, and that of vegetables, was with him
wicked, antagonistic to the Church of Scotland, and inconsistent
with her perfect doctrine. The very word ghost would bring upon his
face an expression he meant for withering scorn, and indeed it
withered his face, rendering it yet more unpleasant to behold.
Coming to the benighted country, then, with all the gathered wisdom
of Edinburgh in his gallinaceous cranium, and what he counted a vast
experience of worldly affairs besides, he brought with him also the
firm resolve to be the death of superstition, at least upon his own
property. He was not only unaware, but incapable of becoming aware,
that he profess