argued together, they were hurrying along
by the edge of the tarn on their way to service at the kirk, for this
was Sunday morning, the fifth day after their arrival at the Glen.

Ron, as usual, had been late in starting, and before the village was
reached his watch showed that it was already five minutes past the time
when service began. They had been sternly directed by Mrs McNab to go
to the kirk at the far end of the village, and inquire for the inn pew,
but as it would take several minutes longer to traverse the length of
the straggling street, Margot suggested that it would be wise to attend
the nearer of the two churches.

"There can be no difference. They are both Presbyterian," quoth she, in
her ignorance; so in they went, to be met in the doorway by an elder in
his Sabbath "blacks," his solemn face surrounded by a fringe of sandy
whisker. The pews were very narrow and very high, shut in a box-like
seclusion by wooden doors; the minister, in his pulpit, was just giving
out the number of the psalm, and the precentor, after tapping his
tuning-fork and holding it to his ear, burst forth into wailing notes of
surprising strength and volume. Margot rose automatically to her feet,
to subside in confusion, as the seated congregation gazed at her in
stolid rebuke. In this kirk it was the custom to sit while singing, and
stand during prayers--a seemly and decorous habit which benighted
Southerners had difficulty in understanding.

The singing of the metrical psalm sounded strangely in unaccustomed
ears. Of melody there seemed little or none. The notes ascended and
fell, and quavered into odd, unexpected trills and shakes, but it was
sung with an earnestness and an intensity which could not fail to be
impressive. The women, clean and tidy in their Sabbath bravery, sat
with eyes fixed unwaveringly on their books; the children piped lustily
by their sides; at the door of the pews the heads of the different
families peered over their spectacles at the printed words, their
solemn, whiskered faces drawn out to abnormal length.

In a corner by himself sat a weather-beaten old shepherd, singing with
closed eyes, his shaggy head waving to and fro in time with the strain.
Up in this lonesome glen those words had been his stay and comfort
during a life of hardship. Like David of old, he had sung them on the
mountainside, and they had been as a guide unto his feet, a lamp unto
his eyes. He needed no book and no specta