on the
general mercy of God--which, to my thinking, is at the best a dangerous
doctrine, and one that a judicious preacher had best keep his thumb
upon. At last he asked Jamie Todd what he thought of the matter; for he
was an easy examiner, and would put a question a yard long to be
answered with "Yes" and "No"--a fool way of examining, which to me was
clear proof of his incapacity.

But James Todd was well learned and withstood him, so that Mr. Calmsough
grew angry and roared like a bull. I could only sit quiet in my desk,
for upon that day it was not within my right to open my mouth in my own
school, since it was in the hands of the Presbytery. So I sat still,
resting my confidence upon the Lord and the ready answers of James Todd.
And I was not deceived. For though he was but a laddie, the root of the
matter was in him, and not a Socinian among them could move him from my
teaching concerning Justification and Election.

"Ye may explain it away as ye like, sir," said James Todd, "but me and
the Dominie and the Bible has anither way o't!"

"Is it thus that you train your elder scholars to speak to their
spiritual advisers, Dominie Grier?" asked Mr. Calmsough, turning on me.

"Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings," said I meekly, for pride in
James Todd was just boiling within me, and yet I would not let them see
it.

I desired them to depart from the school of Rowantree, thinking that any
of my first class in the Bible could have answered them even as did
James Todd. I was in the fear of my life that they should light upon
mine own son Tam, for he knew no more than how to bait a line and guddle
trout; but nevertheless he has done wonderfully well at the pack among
the ignorant English, and is, (I deny it not to him) the staff of my
declining years. But Tam, though as great a dulbert as there is betwixt
Saterness and the Corse o' Slakes, sat up looking so gleg that they
passed him by and continued to wrestle with James Todd, who only hung
his head and looked stupid, yet had in him, for all that, a very dungeon
of lear.

Now, it came to pass, less than three weeks after the examination of my
bit school at the Rowantree, that our own minister, Mr. Wakerife, took a
chill after heating himself at the hay, and died. He was a canny body,
and sound on the doctrine, but without unction or the fervour of the
Spirit blowing upon him in the pulpit. Still, he was sound, and in a
minister that is aye the main thing.

Now