d never spoken
since he came to the kirk. And all the while, as my wife said, "The
mistress sat as quate as a wee broon moose in the minister's seat by the
side wall. She never took her een aff him, an' ye never saw sic a change
on ony man."

"She'll do!" said I to my wife as we came out. We were biding for a day
or so with my cousin, that is the grocer in Cairn Edward, as I telled
you once before. The Sabbath morning following there was no precentor in
the desk, and the folk were all sitting wondering what was coming next,
for everybody kenned that "Cracky" Carlisle, the post, had given up his
precentorship because the list of tunes had come down from the manse to
him on the Wednesday, instead of his being allowed to choose what he
liked out of the dozen or so that he could sing. "Cracky" Carlisle got
his name by upholding the theory that a crack in the high notes sets off
a voice wonderfully. He had a fine one himself.

"I'll no' sing what ony woman bids me," said the post, putting the
saddle on the right horse at once.

"But hoo do ye ken it was her?" he was asked that night in Dally's
smiddy, when the Laigh End folk gathered in to have their crack.

"Ken?" said Cracky; "brawly do I ken that he wad never hae had the
presumption himsel'. Na, he kenned better!"

"It was a verra speerited thing to do, at ony rate, to gie up your
precentorship," said Fergusson, whose wife kept the wash-house on the
Isle, and who lived on his wife's makings.

"Verra," said the post drily, "seein' that I haena a wife to keep me!"

There was a vacancy on the seat next the door, which the shoemaker
filled. But, with all this talk, there was a considerable expectation
that the minister would go himself to Cracky at the last moment and
beseech him to sing for them. The minister, however, did not arrive, and
so Cracky did not go to church at all that day.

Within the Laigh Kirk there was a silence as the Reverend Ebenezer
Skinner, without a tremor in his voice, gave out that they would sing to
the praise of God the second Paraphrase to the tune "St. Paul's." The
congregation stood up--a new invention of the last minister's, over
which also Cracky had nearly resigned, because it took away from his
dignity as precentor and having therefore the sole right to stand during
the service of song. The desk was still empty. The minister gave one
quick look to the manse seat, and there arose from the dusky corner by
the wall such a volume of swee