nnox looked about him. There was a fire smouldering at no great
distance from him. Something black and square lay upon it. He took three
great strides to the place. Lifting the dark smouldering object up from
off the fire, he cried aloud in horror, and began rubbing with his
hands. It was a fine large-print Bible, with more than half of it burned
away. There were also several little ones upon the fire underneath. I
never saw a man's anger fire up more quickly. For me, I was both amazed
and afraid at the awful and unthinkable blasphemy.

"'John Gib,' cried Anton Lennox, 'stand up before the Lord, and
answer--who has done this?'

"'I, that am the head of the Sweet Singers, and the Lord's anointed!'
said he. 'I have done it!'

"'Then, by the Lord's great name, I will make you sing right sweetly for
this!' cried Anton, taking a vow.

"Then one of the women took up the parable.

"'We heard a voice in the Frost Moss,' she said, 'and a light shone
about us there; and John Gib bade us burn our Bibles, for that the
Psalms in Metre, the chapter headings, and the Table of Contents were
but human inventions.'

"'And I did it out of despite against God!' cried John Gib.

"Then Anton Lennox said not a word more, but cast away his plaid, spat
upon his cudgel-palm, and called over his shoulder to me:

"'Come, Sandy, and help me to wrestle in the Spirit with these Sweet
Singers.'

"As he ran down the brae, David Jamie, the student youth, came at him
with a little spit-stick of a sword, and cried that if he came nearer he
would run him through.

"'The Lord forgie ye for leein', callant,' cried Anton, catching the
poor thin blade on his great oak cudgel, for Anton was a great player
with the single-sticks, and as a lad had been the cock of the
country-side. The steel, being spindle-thin, shivered into twenty
pieces, and the poor lad stood gaping at the sword-hilt left in his
hand, which had grown suddenly light.

"'Bide you there and wrestle with him, Sandy!' Auld Anton cried again
over his shoulder.

"So I took my knee and tripped David up. And so sat up upon him very
comfortable, till his nose was pressed into the moss, and all his
members sprawled and waggled beneath me like a puddock under a stone.

"Then Auld Anton made straight for John Gib himself, who stood back
among his circle of women, conspicuous in his white sark and with a
pistol in his hand. When he saw Auld Anton coming so fiercely at him
across the peat-h