made the acquaintance of the Cairn Edward
folk. She was a quick and dainty little person.

"Man, Gib, but she's a feat bit craitur!" said the shoemaker, watching
her with satisfaction from the smiddy door, and rubbing his grimy hands
on his apron as if he had been suddenly called upon to shake hands with
her.

"Your son was nane so far wrang," he said to John Scott, the herd, who
came in at that moment with a coulter to sharpen.

"Na," said John; "oor Rob's heid is screwed the richt way on his
shoothers!"

Now, in her rambles the minister's wife met one and another of the young
folk of the congregation, and she invited them in half-dozens at a time
to come up to the manse for a cup of tea. Then there was singing in the
evening, till by some unkenned wile on her part fifteen or sixteen of
the better singers got into the habit of dropping in at the manse two
nights a week for purposes unknown.

At last, on a day that is yet remembered in the Laigh Kirk, the
congregation arrived to find that the manse seat and the two before it
had been raised six inches, and that they were filled with
sedate-looking young people who had so well kept the secret that not
even their parents knew what was coming. But at the first hymn the
reason was very obvious. The singing was grand.

"It'll be what they call a 'koyer,' nae doot!" said the shoemaker, who
tolerated it solely because he admired the minister's wife and she had
shaken hands with him when he was in his working things.

Cracky Carlisle went in to look at the new platform pulpit, and it is
said that he wept when he saw that the old precentor's desk had departed
and all the glory of it. But nobody knows for certain, for the
minister's wife met him just as he was going out of the door, and she
had a long talk with him. At first Cracky said that he must go home, for
he had to be at his work. But, being a minister's daughter, Mrs. Skinner
saw by his "blacks" that he was taking a day off for a funeral, and
promptly marched him to the manse to tea. Cracky gives out the books in
the choir now, and sings bass, again well pleased with himself. The
Reverend Ebenezer Skinner is an active and successful minister, and was
recently presented with a gown and bands, and his wife with a silver
tea-set by the congregation. He has just been elected Clerk of
Presbytery, for it was thought that his wife would keep the Records as
she used to do in the Presbytery of Kirkmichael, of which her fat