one, and since the action of Mr. Shepstone Oglethorpe on the
occasion of the assault on the house had put _him_ out of the question,
and as the General flatly refused to have anything to do with the
affair, it was obvious that the duty must fall to the Doctor.

Nor could a better choice have been made. Eden Valley has known many
preachers, but never another such pastor--never a shepherd of the sheep
like the Doctor. I can see him yet walking down the manse avenue--it had
been just "the Loaning" in the days before the advent of the second Mrs.
Doctor Gillespie--a silver-headed cane in his hand, everything about him
carefully groomed, and his very port breathing a peculiarly grave and
sober dignity. Grey locks, still plentiful, clustered about his head.
His cocked hat (of the antique pattern which, early in his ministry, he
had imported by the dozen from Versailles) never altered in pattern.
Buckles of unpolished silver shone dully at his knee and bent across his
square-toed shoes.

Above all spread his neckcloth, spotless, enveloping, cumbrous,
reverence-compelling, a cravat worthy of a Moderator. And indeed the
Doctor--our Doctor, parish minister of Eden Valley, had "passed the
Chair" of the General Assembly. We were all proud of the fact, even
top-lofty Cameronians like my grandmother secretly delighting in the
thought of the Doctor in his robes of office.

"There would be few like him away there in Edinburgh," she would say.
"The Doctor's a braw man, and does us credit afore the great of the
land--for a' that he's a Moderate!"

And had he been the chief of all the Moderates, the most volcanic and
aggressive of Moderates, my grandmother would have found some good thing
to say of a fellow-countryman of so noble a presence--"so personable,"
and "such a credit to the neighbourhood."

Wisdom, grave and patient, was in every line of his kindly face.
Something boyish and innocent told that the shades of the prison-house
had never wholly closed about him. It was good to lift the hat to Dr.
Gillespie as he went along--hat a little tip-tilted off the
broadly-furrowed brow. In the city he is very likely to stop and regard
the most various wares--children's dolls or ladies' underpinnings. But
think not that the divine is interested in such things. His mind is
absent--in communion with things very far away. Lift your hat and salute
him. He will not see you, but--it will do _you_ good!

William Gillespie was the son of a good