,
damned every bandaged person present, individually and collectively;
and Lang Tammas, in the precentor's box with a plaster on his cheek,
included any one the minister might have by chance omitted, and the
congregation, with most of their eyes bunged up, burst into psalms of
praise.

Twice a year the Auld Lichts went demented. The occasion was the Fast
Day at Tilliedrum; when its inhabitants, instead of crowding reverently
to the kirk, swooped profanely down in their scores and tens of scores
on our God-fearing town, intent on making a day of it. Then did the
weavers rise as one man, and go forth to show the ribald crew the
errors of their way. All denominations were represented, but Auld
Lichts led. An Auld Licht would have taken no man's blood without the
conviction that he would be the better morally for the bleeding; and if
Tammas Lunan's case gave an impetus to the blows, it can only have been
because it opened wider Auld Licht eyes to Tilliedrum's desperate
condition. Mr. Dishart's predecessor more than once remarked, that at
the Creation the devil put forward a claim for Thrums, but said he
would take his chance of Tilliedrum; and the statement was generally
understood to be made on the authority of the original Hebrew.

The mustard-seed of a feud between the two parishes shot into a tall
tree in a single night, when Davit Lunan's father went to a tattie roup
at Tilliedrum and thoughtlessly died there. Twenty-four hours
afterwards a small party of staid Auld Lichts, carrying long white
poles, stepped out of various wynds and closes and picked their solemn
way to the house of mourning. Nanny Low, the widow, received them
dejectedly, as one oppressed by the knowledge that her man's death at
such an inopportune place did not fulfil the promise of his youth; and
her guests admitted bluntly that they were disappointed in Tammas.
Snecky Hobart's father's unusually long and impressive prayer was an
official intimation that the deceased, in the opinion of the session,
sorely needed everything of the kind he could get; and then the silent
driblet of Auld Lichts in black stalked off in the direction of
Tilliedrum. Women left their spinning-wheels and pirns to follow them
with their eyes along the Tenements, and the minister was known to be
holding an extra service at the manse. When the little procession
reached the boundary-line between the two parishes, they sat down on a
dyke and waited.

By and by half a