that day's sermon was long
remembered among the Cameronians. It redd up their position so clearly,
and settled their precedence with such finality, that Walter, hearing
that the Frees had done far wrong in not joining the Church of the
Protests and Declarations in the year 1843, resolved to have his
school-bag full of good road-metal on the following morning, in order to
impress the Copland boys, who were Frees, with a sense of their
position.

But as the sermon proceeded on its conclusive way, the bowed ranks of
the attentive Hill Folk bent further and further forward, during the
long periods of the preacher; and when, at the close of each, they drew
in a long, united breath like the sighing of the wind, and leaned back
in their seats, Walter's head began to nod over the chapters of First
Samuel, which he was spelling out.

David's wars were a great comfort to him during long sermons. Gradually
he dropped asleep, and wakened occasionally with a start when his granny
nudged him when Saunders happened to look his way.

As the little fellow's mind thus came time and again to the surface, he
heard snatches of fiery oratory concerning the Sanquhar Declarations and
the Covenants, National and Solemn League, till it seemed to him as
though the trump of doom would crash before the minister had finished.
And he wished it would! But at last, in sheer desperation, having slept
apparently about a week, he rose with his feet upon the seat, and in his
clear, childish treble he said, being still dazed with sleep--

"Will that man no' soon be dune?"

It was thus that the movement for short services began in the Cameronian
kirk of Cairn Edward. They are an hour and twenty minutes now--a sore
declension, as all will admit.

IV. THE THREE M'HAFFIES

Again the red farm-cart rattled out of the town into the silence of the
hedges. For the first mile or two, the church-folk returning to the
moor-farm might possibly meet and, if they did so, frankly reprove with
word or look the "Sunday walkers," who bit shamefacedly, as well they
might, the ends of hawthorn twigs, and communed together apparently
without saying a word to each other. There were not many pairs of
sweethearts among them--any that were, being set down as "regardless
Englishry," the spawn of the strange, uncannylike building by the
lochside, which the "General" had been intending to finish any time
these half-dozen years.

For the most part the walkers were young men