“Your son was nane so far wrang,” he said to John Scott, the herd, who came in at that moment with a coulter to sharpen.

“Na,” said John; “oor Rob’s heid is screwed the richt way on his shoothers!”

Now, in her rambles the minister’s wife met one and another of the young folk of the congregation, and she invited them in half-dozens at a time to come up to the manse for a cup of tea.  Then there was singing in the evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two nights a week for purposes unknown.

At last, on a day that is yet remembered in the Laigh Kirk, the congregation arrived to find that the manse seat and the two before it had been raised six inches, and that they were filled with sedate-looking young people who had so well kept the secret that not even their parents knew what was coming.  But at the first hymn the reason was very obvious.  The singing was grand.

“It’ll be what they call a ‘koyer,’ nae doot!” said the shoemaker, who tolerated it solely because he admired the minister’s wife and she had shaken hands with him when he was in his working things.

Cracky Carlisle went in to look at the new platform pulpit, and it is said that he wept when he saw that the old precentor’s desk had departed and all the glory of it.  But nobody knows for certain, for the minister’s wife met him just as he was going out of the door, and she had a long talk with him.  At first Cracky said that he must go home, for he had to be at his work.  But, being a minister’s daughter, Mrs. Skinner saw by his “blacks” that he was taking a day off for a funeral, and promptly marched him to the manse to tea.  Cracky gives out the books in the choir now, and sings bass, again well pleased with himself.  The Reverend Ebenezer Skinner is an active and successful minister, and was recently presented with a gown and bands, and his wife with a silver tea-set by the congregation.  He has just been elected Clerk of Presbytery, for it was thought that his wife would keep the Records as she used to do in the Presbytery of Kirkmichael, of which her father was Clerk, to the great advantage of the Kirk of Scotland in these parts.

[My wife, Mary M’Quhirr, wishes me to add to all whom it may concern, “Go thou and do likewise.”]

V

JOHN

  Shall we, then, make our harvest of the sea
    And garner memories, which we surely deem
      May light these hearts of ours on darksome days,
    When loneliness hath power, and no kind beam
      Lightens about our feet the perilous ways? 
                For of Eternity
    This present hour is all we call our own,
      And Memory’s edge is dull’d, even as it brings
      The sunny swathes of unforgotten springs,
    And sweeps them to our feet like grass long mown.