able in a man whose eyesight
was so good. The women-folk in the cart generally put the proceeds of
these forays under the straw or else dropped them quietly overboard
before entering Cairn Edward.

The old Cameronian kirk sits on a hill, and is surrounded by trees, a
place both bieldy and heartsome. The only thing that the Cameronians
seriously felt the want of was a burying-ground round about it. A kirk
is never quite commodious and cheery without monuments to read and
"thruchs" to sit upon and "ca' the crack." Now, however, they have made
a modern church of it, and a steeple has been set down before it, for
all the world as if Cleopatra's needle had been added to the front wall
of a barn.

But Cairn Edward Cameronian kirk has long been a gate of heaven. To many
who in their youth have entered it the words heard there have brought
the beginning of a new life and another world. Of old, as the morning
psalm went upward in a grand slow surge, there was a sense of hallowed
days in the very air. And to this day Walter has a general idea that the
mansions of the New Jerusalem are of the barn class of architecture and
whitewashed inside, which will not show so much upon the white robes
when it rubs off, as it used to do on plain earthly "blacks."

III. A CAMERONIAN DIET OF WORSHIP

There were not many distractions for a boy of active habits and restless
tendencies during the long double service of two hours and a bittock in
the Cameronian kirk of Cairn Edward. The minister was the Reverend
Richard Cameron, the youngest scion of a famous Covenanting family.

He had come to Cairn Edward as a stripling, and he was now looked upon
as the future high priest of the sect in succession to his father, at
that time minister of the metropolitan temple of the denomination. Tall,
erect, with flowing black hair that swept his shoulders, and the
exquisitely chiselled face of some marble Apollo, Richard Cameron was,
as his name-sake had been, an ideal minister of the Hill Folk. His
splendid eyes glowed with still and chastened fire, as he walked with
his hands behind him and his head thrown back, up the long aisle from
the vestry.

His successor was a much smaller man, well set and dapper, who wore
black gloves when preaching, and who seemed to dance a minuet under his
spectacles as he walked. Alas! to him also came in due time the sore
heart and the bitter draught. They say in Cairn Edward that no man ever
left that white church on