ae whigmaleeries i' the pairish o'
Blawrinnie. Tak' my word for it, they dinna gie a last year's nest-egg
for a' the results of creeticism. I was yince helper there mysel', ye
maun mind, an' I ken Blawrinnie."

There is no manner of doubt that Dr. Drumly was right. Since he married
the professor's sister, he did not speak much himself, except in his
sermons, which were inordinately long; but he was a man very much
respected, for, as one of his elders said, "Gin he does little guid in
the pairish, he is a quate, ceevil man, an' does just as little ill."
And this, after all, is chiefly what is expected of a settled and
official minister with a manse and glebe in that part of the country.
Too much zeal is not thought to become him. It is well enough in a mere
U.P.

But the Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan had not so settled on his lees as
to accept such a negative view of his duties. He must try to help his
people singly and individually, and this he certainly did to the best of
his ability. For he neither spent all his time running after Dissenters,
as the manner of some is; nor yet did he occupy all his pastoral visits
with conversations on the iniquity of Disestablishment, as is others'
use and wont. He went in a better way about the matter, in order to
prove himself a worthy minister of the parish, taking such a vital
interest in all that appertained to it, that no man could take his
bishopric from him.

Among other things, he had a Bible-class for the young, in which the
hope of the parish of Blawrinnie was instructed as to the number of
hands that had had the making of the different prophecies, and upon the
allusions to primitive customs in the book of Genesis (which the
minister called a "historical synopsis"). There were three lassies
attending the class, and three young men who came to walk home with the
lassies. Unfortunately, two of the young men wanted to walk home with
the same young lass, so that the minister's Bible-class could not always
be said to make for peace. As, indeed, the Reverend Doctor Drumly
foretold when the thing was started. He had met the professor's sister
first at a Bible-class, and was sore upon the subject.

But it was the minister's Bible-class that procured Mr. Ford Buchanan
the honour of a visit that night of storm and stress. First of all there
was an unwonted stir in the kitchen, audible even in the minister's
study, where he stood on one leg, with a foot on a chair, consulting
aut