side and
then on the other, that in a trice it came tumbling down.

As he was picking it up and tucking it beneath his arm, the gamekeeper
on the watch in some hidden sentry-box among the leaves came hurrying
down.

"Oh, Mr. Grant, Mr. Grant!" he exclaimed in horror, "what are you doing
with that board?"--his professional indignation grievously at war with
his racial respect for the clerical office.

"'Deed, Dugald, I'm just taking this bit spale boardie hame below my
arm. It will make not that ill firewood, and it has no business whatever
to be cockin' up there on the corner of my glebe."

The end of the Great Glen Conquhar Right-of-Way Case.

VI

DOMINIE GRIER

_A grey, grey world and a grey belief,
True as iron and grey as grief;
Worse worlds there are, worse faiths, in truth,
Than the grey, grey world and the grey belief_.

"_The Grey Land_."

What want ye so late with Dominie Grier? To tell you the tale of my
going on foot to the town of Edinburgh that I might preserve pure the
doctrine and precept of the parish of Rowantree? Ay, to tell of it I am
ready, and with right goodwill. Never a day do I sit under godly Mr.
Campbell but I think on my errand, and the sore stroke that the deil and
Bauldy Todd gat that day when I first won speech with the Lady
Lochwinnoch.

It was langsyne in the black Moderate days, and the Socinians were great
in the land. 'Deed ay, it was weary work in these times; let me learn
the bairns what I liked in the school, it was never in me to please the
Presbytery. But whiles I outmarched them when they came to examine; as,
indeed, to the knowledge and admiration of all the parish, I did in the
matter of Effectual Calling. It was Maister Calmsough of Clauchaneasy
that was putting the question, and rendering the meaning into his own
sense as he went along. But he chanced upon James Todd of Todston, a
well-learned boy; and, if I may say so, a favourite of mine, with whom I
had been at great pains that he should grow up in the faith and
wholesome discipline. Thereto I had fed him upon precious Thomas Boston
of Ettrick and the works of godly Mr. Erskine, desiring with great
desire that one day he might, by my learning and the blessing of
Almighty God, even come to wag his head in a pulpit--a thing which,
because of the sins of a hot youth, it had never been in my power,
though much in my heart, to do.

But concerning the examination. Mr. Calmsough was insisting up