Such treatment would scarcely be appreciated in these days, but perhaps the reason is that we are less endowed with humility than our fathers in the Faith.

Bell had other anecdotes of a like kind.

“If ony o’ the bairns wes restless or trifling-kind, during the preachin’, Mr. McGillivray would stop his discoorse an’ ca’ them up to the rail an’ reprove them severely.  I mind him summoning a grown man from the choir aince, and mak’ him own his fault.  Hey!  He wer a graund priest, an’ nae mistak’—­wer Mr. McGillivray!”

On stormy days, when it was difficult for the aged pastor to wade through the deep snow down to the chapel, Mass was said in his own house.  The people crowded in at the door of his little living-room, and would fill the kitchen.  When he grew old and infirm it was impossible for the greater number to hear anything of the sermon; yet he never omitted to preach.

“An’ I mind,” naively added Bell, “that there wes aye a collection made.”

People went to Confession in the house at such times; otherwise the priest heard them in the chapel on Saturdays or Sundays, and on the eves of feasts.

It can not be denied that Mr. McGillivray was a militant churchman, whenever the interests of his flock or of the Catholic Church were at stake.  Bell had more than one anecdote to prove it.

A poor woman who was at the point of death had been induced by two good old Catholic spinsters who lived near her to send for the priest to reconcile her to the Church.  She was the offspring of a mixed marriage; her mother—­the Catholic party—­had died when the child was quite young, and the father had at once taken the girl to kirk with him.  She had once been to Confession, but had received no other Sacrament except Baptism.  When she had grown to womanhood, she married a Presbyterian, and all her family had been brought up in that religion.  Yet the grace of her Baptism seemed to cling to her.  After her husband’s death she would now and again attend at Mass, driven the six miles by her Protestant son; but she was not known to the priest, and so she remained outside the pale.  Her intimacy with Jeannie and Katie Ann McGruer was the means of keeping her in touch with Catholic matters, and eventually resulted in her reconciliation.

This was not accomplished, however, without a stiff skirmish between the old priest and the members of her family—­not to mention the minister of their particular kirk.

In compliance with the summons conveyed by one of the McGruers (Bell spoke of them as “guid Catholic lassies,” but in answer to my query explained that Katie Ann, the younger sister, would be “risin’ sixty"!), Mr. McGillivray betook himself to the house of the invalid.  The door was opened by her eldest son, Adam Fordyce—­a burly, black-browed, bearded man of forty.  He had charge of the roads in the district, so that he and the priest were on speaking terms, at least.