inking of her last interview with him, when she
descanted at length on that superfluity of naughtiness and Biblical
pedantry which, she asserted, made Scottish ministers preach from
out-of-the-way texts.

"I have never been able to find my place in the Bible since I arrived,"
she complained to Salemina, when she was quite sure that Mr. Macdonald
was listening to her; and this he generally was, in my opinion, no
matter who chanced to be talking. "What with their skipping and hopping
about from Haggai to Philemon, Habakkuk to Jude, and Micah to Titus, in
their readings, and then settling on seventh Nahum, sixth Zephaniah,
or second Calathumpians for the sermon, I do nothing but search the
Scriptures in the Edinburgh churches,--search, search, search, until
some Christian by my side or in the pew behind me notices my hapless
plight, and hands me a Bible opened at the text. Last Sunday it was
Obadiah first, fifteenth, 'For the day of the Lord is near upon all the
heathen.' It chanced to be a returned missionary who was preaching on
that occasion; but the Bible is full of heathen, and why need he have
chosen a text from Obadiah, poor little Obadiah one page long, slipped
in between Amos and Jonah, where nobody but an elder could find him?"
If Francesca had not seen with wicked delight the Reverend Ronald's
expression of anxiety, she would never have spoken of second
Calathumpians; but of course he has no means of knowing how unlike
herself she is when in his company.

To go back to our first Sunday worship in Edinburgh. The church officer
closed the door of the pulpit on the Reverend Ronald, and I thought I
heard the clicking of a lock; at all events, he returned at the close of
the services to liberate him and escort him back to the vestry; for the
entrances and exits of this beadle, or 'minister's man,' as the church
officer is called in the country districts, form an impressive part
of the ceremonies. If he did lock the minister into the pulpit, it is
probably only another national custom, like the occasional locking in
of the passengers in a railway train, and may be positively necessary in
the case of such magnetic and popular preachers as Mr. Macdonald, or the
Friar.

I have never seen such attention, such concentration, as in these great
congregations of the Edinburgh churches. As nearly as I can judge, it
is intellectual rather than emotional; but it is not a tribute paid to
eloquence alone, it is habitual and u