small family went out at the door, in tears.

Some curious trials followed, and the making of quaint bylaws; for now
that his lordship, ever a restraining influence on his clans, was bound
for new wars elsewhere, a firmer hand was wanted on the people he left
behind, and Master Gordon pressed for stricter canons. Notification was
made discharging the people of the burgh from holding lyke-wakes in
the smaller houses, from unnecessary travel on the Sabbath, from public
flyting and abusing, and from harbouring ne'er-do-weels from other
parishes; and seeing it had become a practice of the women attending
kirk to keep their plaids upon their heads and faces in time of sermon
as occasion of sleeping, as also that they who slept could not be
distinguished from those who slept not, that they might be wakened, it
was ordained that such be not allowed hereafter, under pain of taking
the plaids from them.

With these enactments too came evidence of the Kirk's paternity.
It settled the salary (200 pounds Scots) of a new master for the
grammar-school, agreed to pay the fees of divers poor scholars,
instructed the administering of the funds in the poor's-box, fixed a
levy on the town for the following week to help the poorer wives who
would be left by their fencible husbands, and paid ten marks to an
elderly widow woman who desired, like a good Gael, to have her burial
clothes ready, but had not the wherewithal for linen.

"We are," said Master Gordon, sharpening a pen in a pause ere the
MacNicolls came forward, "the fathers and guardians of this parish
people high and low. Too long has Loch Finne side been ruled childishly.
I have no complaint about its civil rule--his lordship here might well
be trusted to that; but its religion was a thing of rags. They tell me
old Campbell in the Gaelic end of the church (peace with him!) used
to come to the pulpit with a broadsword belted below his Geneva gown.
Savagery, savagery, rank and stinking! I'll say it to his face in
another world, and a poor evangel and ensample truly for the quarrelsome
landward folk of this parish, that even now, in the more unctuous times
of God's grace, doff steel weapons so reluctantly. I found a man with a
dirk at his hip sitting before the Lord's table last Lammas!"

"Please God," said the Marquis, "the world shall come to its sight
some day. My people are of an unruly race, I ken, good at the heart,
hospitable, valorous, even with some Latin chivalry; but, m