the manse doorstep.

'The Lord's no' in a' his thochts. I'll gang wi' the lad mysel',' said
the precentor.

Now, Galloway is so much out of the world that the Almighty has not
there lifted His hand from reward and punishment, from guiding and
restraining, as He has done in big towns where everything goes by
machinery. Man may say that there is no God when he only sees a
handbreadth of smoky heaven between the chimney-pots; but out on the
fields of oats and bear, and up on the screes of the hillsides, where
the mother granite sticks her bleaching ribs through the heather, men
have reached great assurance on this and other matters.

The burns were running red with the mighty July rain when Douglas
Maclellan started over the meadows and moors to preach his sermon at
the farmtown of Cauldshaws. He had thanked the Lord that morning in
his opening prayer for 'the bounteous rain wherewith He had seen meet
to refresh His weary heritage.'

His congregation silently acquiesced, 'for what,' said they, 'could a
man from the Machars be expected to ken about meadow hay?'

When the minister and the precentor got to the foot of the manse
loaning, they came upon the parish ne'er-do-weel, Ebie Kirgan, who kept
himself in employment by constantly scratching his head, trying to
think of something to do, and whose clothes were constructed on the
latest sanitary principles of ventilation. The ruins of Ebie's hat
were usually tipped over one eye for enlarged facilities of scratching
in the rear.

'If it's yer wull, minister, I'll come to hear ye the nicht. It's
drawing to mair rain, I'm thinkin'!' said the Scarecrow.

'I hope the discourse may be profitable to you, Ebenezer, for, as I
intimated this morning, I am to preach from the text, "Whatsoever thy
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."'

'Ay, minister,' said Ebie, relieving his right hand, and tipping his
hat over the other eye to give his left free play. So the three struck
over the fields, making for the thorn tree at the corner, where Robert
Kirk's dyke dipped into the standing water of the meadow.

'Do you think ye can manage it, Maister Maclellan?' said the precentor.
'Ye're wat half-way up the leg already.'

'An' there's sax feet o' black moss water in the Laneburn as sure as
I'm a leevin' sowl,' added Ebie Kirgan.

'I'm to preach at Cauldshaws, and my text is, "Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy might!"' said the minister, stubbornly
gloomin