It was the Lord’s day in Edinburgh town.  The silence in the early morning was something which could be felt—­not a footstep, not a rolling wheel.  Window-blinds were mostly down—­on the windows provided with them.  Even in Bell’s Wynd there was not the noise of the week.  Only a tinker family squabbled over the remains of the deep drinking of the night before.  But then, what could Bell’s Wynd expect—­to harbour such?

It was yet early dawn when John Bairdieson, kirk officer to the little company of the faithful to assemble there later in the day, went up the steps and opened the great door with his key.  He went all round the church with his hat on.  It was a Popish idea to take off the head covering within stone walls, yet John Bairdieson was that morning possessed with the fullest reverence for the house of God and the highest sense of his responsibility as the keeper of it.

He was wont to sing: 

                     “Rather in
  My God’s house would I keep a door
   Than dwell in tents of sin.”

That was the retort which he flung across at Taminas Laidlay, the beadle of the Established Kirk opposite, with all that scorn in the application which was due from one in John Bairdieson’s position to one in that of Tammas Laidlay.

But this morning John had no spirit for the encounter.  He hurried in and sat down by himself in the minister’s vestry.  Here he sat for a long season in deep and solemn thought.

“I’ll do it!” he said at last.

It was near the time when the minister usually came to enter into his vestry, there to prepare himself by meditation and prayer for the services of the sanctuary.  John Bairdieson posted himself on the top step of the stairs which led from the street, to wait for him.  At last, after a good many passers-by, all single and all in black, walking very fast, had hurried by, John’s neck craning after every one, the minister appeared, walking solemnly down the street with his head in the air.  His neckcloth was crumpled and soiled—­a fact which was not lost on John.

The minister came up the steps and made as though he would pass John by without speaking to him; but that guardian of the sanctuary held out his arms as though he were wearing sheep.

“Na, na, minister, ye come na into this Kirk this day as minister till ye be lawfully restored.  There are nae ministers o’ the kirk o’ the Marrow the noo; we’re a body without a heid.  I thocht that the Kirk was at an end, but the Lord has revealed to me that the Marrow Kirk canna end while the world lasts.  In the nicht season he telled me what to do.”

The minister stood transfixed.  If his faithful serving-man of so many years had turned against him, surely the world was at an end.  But it was not so.

John Bairdieson went on, standing with his hat in his hand, and the hairs of his head erect with the excitement of unflinching justice.