“Let that make no difference,” Gavin said grandly, but Jean changed his message to:  “A bowlful apiece to Auld Lichts; all other denominations one cupful.”

“Ay, ay,” said Snecky Hobart, letting down the bucket, “and we’ll include atheists among other denominations.”  The conversation came to Gavin and Margaret through the kitchen doorway.

“Dinna class Jo Cruickshanks wi’ me,” said Sam’l Langlands the U. P.

“Na, na,” said Cruickshanks the atheist, “I’m ower independent to be religious.  I dinna gang to the kirk to cry, ’Oh, Lord, gie, gie, gie.’”

“Take tent o’ yoursel’, my man,” said Lang Tammas sternly, “or you’ll soon be whaur you would neifer the warld for a cup o’ that cauld water.”

“Maybe you’ve ower keen an interest in the devil, Tammas,” retorted the atheist; “but, ony way, if it’s heaven for climate, it’s hell for company.”

“Lads,” said Snecky, sitting down on the bucket, “we’ll send Mr. Dishart to Jo.  He’ll make another Rob Dow o’ him.”

“Speak mair reverently o’ your minister,” said the precentor.  “He has the gift.”

—­I hinna naturally your solemn rasping word, Tammas, but in the heart I speak in all reverence.  Lads, the minister has a word!  I tell you he prays near like one giving orders.”

“At first,” Snecky continued, “I thocht yon lang candidate was the earnestest o’ them a”, and I dinna deny but when I saw him wi’ his head bowed-like in prayer during the singing I says to rnysel’, ‘Thou art the man.’  Ay, but Betsy wraxed up her head, and he wasna praying.  He was combing his hair wi’ his fingers on the sly.”

“You ken fine, Sneck,” said Cruickshanks, “that you said, ’Thou art the man’ to ilka ane o’ them, and just voted for Mr. Dishart because he preached hinmost.”

“I didna say it to—­Mr. Urquhart, the ane that preached second,” Sneck said.  “That was the lad that gaed through ither.”

“Ay,” said Susy Tibbits, nicknamed by Haggart “the Timidest Woman” because she once said she was too young to marry, “but I was fell sorry for him, just being over anxious.  He began bonny, flinging himself, like ane Inspired, at the pulpit door, but after Hendry Munn pointed at it and cried out, ’Be cautious, the sneck’s loose,’ he a’ gaed to bits.  What a coolness Hendry has, though I suppose it was his duty, him being kirk-officer.”

“We didna want a man,” Lang Tammas said, “that could be put out by sic a sma’ thing as that.  Mr. Urquhart was in sic a ravel after it that when he gies out the first line o’ the hunder and nineteenth psalm for singing, says he, ‘And so on to the end.’  Ay, that finished his chance.”

“The noblest o’ them to look at,” said Tibbie Birse, “was that ane frae Aberdeen, him that had sic a saft side to Jacob.”

“Ay,” said Snecky, “and I speired at Dr. McQueen if I should vote for him.  ‘Looks like a genius, does he?’ says the Doctor.  ’Weel, then,’ says he, ’dinna vote for him, for my experience is that there’s no folk sic idiots as them that looks like geniuses.’”