Still it must be acknowledged that Tallisker looked on the situation as a difficult one.  The new workers to a man disapproved of the Established Church of Scotland.  Perhaps of all classes of laborers Scotch colliers are the most theoretically democratic and the most practically indifferent in matters of religion.  Every one of them had relief and secession arguments ready for use, and they used them chiefly as an excuse for not attending Tallisker’s ministry.  When conscience is used as an excuse, or as a weapon for wounding, it is amazing how tender it becomes.  It pleased these Lowland workers to assert a religious freedom beyond that of the dominie and the shepherd Gael around them.  And if men wish to quarrel, and can give their quarrel a religious basis, they secure a tolerance and a respect which their own characters would not give them.  Tallisker might pooh-pooh sectional or political differences, but he was himself far too scrupulous to regard with indifference the smallest theological hesitation.

One day as he was walking up the clachan pondering these things, he noticed before him a Highland shepherd driving a flock to the hills.  There was a party of colliers sitting around the Change House; they were the night-gang, and having had their sleep and their breakfast, were now smoking and drinking away the few hours left of their rest.  Anything offering the chance of amusement was acceptable, and Jim Armstrong, a saucy, bullying fellow from the Lonsdale mines, who had great confidence in his Cumberland wrestling tricks, thought he saw in the placid indifference of the shepherd a good opportunity for bravado.

“Sawnie, ye needna pass the Change House because we are here.  We’ll no hurt you, man.”

The shepherd was as one who heard not.

Then followed an epithet that no Highlander can hear unmoved, and the man paused and put his hand under his plaid.  Tallisker saw the movement and quickened his steps.  The word was repeated, with the scornful laugh of the group to enforce it.  The shepherd called his dog—­

“Keeper, you tak the sheep to the Cruchan corrie, and dinna let are o’ them stray.”

The dumb creature looked in his face assentingly, and with a sharp bark took the flock charge.  Then the shepherd walked up to the group, and Jim Armstrong rose to meet him.

“Nae dirks,” said an old man quietly; “tak your hands like men.”

Before the speech was over they were clinched in a grasp which meant gigantic strength on one side, and a good deal of practical bruising science on the other.  But before there was an opportunity of testing the quality of either the dominie was between the men.  He threw them apart like children, and held each of them at arm’s length, almost as a father might separate two fighting schoolboys.  The group watching could not refrain a shout of enthusiasm, and old Tony Musgrave jumped to his feet and threw his pipe and his cap in the air.