But Cairn Edward Cameronian kirk has long been a gate of heaven.  To many who in their youth have entered it the words heard there have brought the beginning of a new life and another world.  Of old, as the morning psalm went upward in a grand slow surge, there was a sense of hallowed days in the very air.  And to this day Walter has a general idea that the mansions of the New Jerusalem are of the barn class of architecture and whitewashed inside, which will not show so much upon the white robes when it rubs off, as it used to do on plain earthly “blacks.”

III.  A CAMERONIAN DIET OF WORSHIP

There were not many distractions for a boy of active habits and restless tendencies during the long double service of two hours and a bittock in the Cameronian kirk of Cairn Edward.  The minister was the Reverend Richard Cameron, the youngest scion of a famous Covenanting family.

He had come to Cairn Edward as a stripling, and he was now looked upon as the future high priest of the sect in succession to his father, at that time minister of the metropolitan temple of the denomination.  Tall, erect, with flowing black hair that swept his shoulders, and the exquisitely chiselled face of some marble Apollo, Richard Cameron was, as his name-sake had been, an ideal minister of the Hill Folk.  His splendid eyes glowed with still and chastened fire, as he walked with his hands behind him and his head thrown back, up the long aisle from the vestry.

His successor was a much smaller man, well set and dapper, who wore black gloves when preaching, and who seemed to dance a minuet under his spectacles as he walked.  Alas! to him also came in due time the sore heart and the bitter draught.  They say in Cairn Edward that no man ever left that white church on the wooded knoll south of the town and was happier for the change.  The leafy garden where many ministers have written their sermons, has seemed to them a very paradise in after years, and their cry has been, “O why left I my hame?”

But these were happy days for Richard Cameron when he brought his books and his violin to the manse that nestled at the foot of the hill.  He came among men strict with a certain staid severity concerning things that they counted material, but yet far more kindly-hearted and charitable than of recent years they have gotten credit for.

Saunders did not object to the minister’s violin, being himself partial to a game at the ice, and willing that another man should also have his chosen relaxation.  Then, again, when the young man began to realise himself, and lay about him in the pulpit, there were many who would tell how they remembered his father—­preaching on one occasion the sermon that “fenced the tables,” on the Fast Day before the communion, when the partitions were out and the church crowded to the door.  Being oppressed with the heat, he craved the indulgence of the congregation to be allowed