o Alec Saunderson, the dominie's ne'er-do-well son. So to
Glasgow the minister went, and came back in three weeks with an extra
stoop to his shoulders. But with such a still and patient silence on his
face, that no man and (what is more wonderful) no woman durst ask him
any further questions. After that, Elsie was no more named in the manse;
but the report of her beauty and her waywardness was much in the parish
mouth. A year afterwards her sister went from the manse in all the odour
of propriety, to be the mistress of one of the large farms of a
neighbouring glen. Then the minister gathered himself more than ever
close in to his lonely hearth, with only Euphemia Kerr, his wise old
housekeeper, once his children's nurse. He went less frequently abroad,
and looked more patiently than ever out of his absent grey eyes on the
"herds" and small sheep-farmers who made up the bulk of his scanty
flock.

The Cameronian kirk of Cauldshields was a survival of the time when the
uplands of Galloway were the very home and hive of the "Westlan'"
Whigs--of the men who marched to Rullion Green to be slaughtered, sent
Claverhouse scurrying to Glasgow from Drumclog, and abjured all earthly
monarchs at the cross of Sanquhar.

But now the small farms were already being turned into large, the sheep
were dispossessing the plough, and the principle of "led" farms was
depopulating the countryside. That is, instead of sonsy farmers' wives
and their husbands (the order is not accidental) marshalling their hosts
into the family pews on Sabbath, many of the farms were held by wealthy
farmers who lived in an entirely different part of the country. These
gave up the farmhouse, with its feudality of cothouses, to a taciturn
bachelor shepherd or two, who squatted promiscuously in the once voluble
kitchen.

The morning of the first Sabbath of February dawned bitterly over the
scattered clachan of Cauldshields. It had been snowing since four
o'clock on Saturday night, and during those hours no dog had put its
nose outside the door. At seven in the morning, had any one been able to
see across the street for the driving snow, he would have seen David
Grier look out for a moment in his trousers and shirt, take one
comprehensive glance, and vanish within. That glance had settled David's
church attendance for the day. He was an "Auld Kirk," and a very regular
hearer, having been thirty years in the service of the laird; but in the
moment that he looked out