Gavin found Dow at New Zealand, a hamlet of mud houses, whose tenants could be seen on any Sabbath morning washing themselves in the burn that trickled hard by.  Rob’s son, Micah, was asleep at the door, but he brightened when he saw who was shaking him.

“My father put me out,” he explained, “because he’s daft for the drink, and was fleid he would curse me.  He hasna cursed me,” Micah added, proudly, “for an aught days come Sabbath.  Hearken to him at his loom.  He daurna take his feet off the treadles for fear o’ running straucht to the drink.”

Gavin went in.  The loom, and two stools, the one four-footed and the other a buffet, were Rob’s most conspicuous furniture.  A shaving-strap hung on the wall.  The fire was out, but the trunk of a tree, charred at one end, showed how he heated his house.  He made a fire of peat, and on it placed one end of a tree trunk that might be six feet long.  As the tree burned away it was pushed further into the fireplace, and a roaring fire could always be got by kicking pieces of the smouldering wood and blowing them into flame with the bellows.  When Rob saw the minister he groaned relief and left his loom.  He had been weaving, his teeth clenched, his eyes on fire, for seven hours.

“I wasna fleid,” little Micah said to the neighbours afterwards, “to gang in wi’ the minister.  He’s a fine man that.  He didna ca’ my father names.  Na, he said, ‘You’re a brave fellow, Rob,’ and he took my father’s hand, he did.  My father was shaking after his fecht wi’ the drink, and, says he.  ‘Mr. Dishart,’ he says, ’if you’ll let me break out nows and nans, I could, bide straucht atween times, but I canna keep sober if I hinna a drink to look forrit to.’  Ay, my father prigged sair to get one fou day in the month, and he said, ’Syne if I die sudden, there’s thirty chances to one that I gang to heaven, so it’s worth risking.’  But Mr. Dishart wouldna hear o’t, and he cries, ‘No, by God,’ he cries, ‘we’ll wrestle wi’ the devil till we throttle him,’ and down him and my father gaed on their knees.

“The minister prayed a lang time till my father said his hunger for the drink was gone, ‘but’, he says, ‘it swells up in me o’ a sudden aye, and it may be back afore you’re hame.’  ’Then come to me at once,’ says Mr. Dishart; but my father says, ’Na, for it would haul me into the public-house as if it had me at the end o’ a rope, but I’ll send the laddie.”

“You saw my father crying the minister back?  It was to gie him twa pound, and, says my father, ‘God helping me,’ he says, ’I’ll droon mysel in the dam rather than let the drink master me, but in case it should get haud o’ me and I should die drunk, it would be a michty gratification to me to ken that you had the siller to bury me respectable without ony help frae the poor’s rates.’  The minister wasna for taking it at first, but he took it when he saw how earnest my father was.  Ay, he’s a noble man.  After he gaed awa my father made me learn the names o’ the apostles frae Luke sixth, and he says to me, ‘Miss out Bartholomew,’ he says, ’for he did little, and put Gavin Dishart in his place.’”