Lichts
like claiming heaven on false pretences. In ten minutes the session
alone, with Lang Tammas and Hendry, were on the common. They were
watched by many from afar off, and (when one comes to think of it now)
looked a little curious jumping, like trout at flies, at the damning
papers still fluttering in the air. The minister was never seen in our
parts again, but he is still remembered as "Paper Watts."

Mr. Dishart in the pulpit was the reward of his upbringing. At ten he
had entered the university. Before he was in his teens he was
practising the art of gesticulation in his father's gallery pew. From
distant congregations people came to marvel at him. He was never more
than comparatively young. So long as the pulpit trappings of the kirk
at Thrums lasted he could be seen, once he was fairly under weigh with
his sermon, but dimly in a cloud of dust. He introduced headaches. In
a grand transport of enthusiasm he once flung his arms over the pulpit
and caught Lang Tammas on the forehead. Leaning forward, with his
chest on the cushions, he would pommel the Evil One with both hands,
and then, whirling round to the left, shake his fist at Bell Whamond's
neckerchief. With a sudden jump he would fix Pete Todd's youngest boy
catching flies at the laft window. Stiffening unexpectedly, he would
leap three times in the air, and then gather himself in a corner for a
fearsome spring. When he wept he seemed to be laughing, and he laughed
in a paroxysm of tears. He tried to tear the devil out of the pulpit
rails. When he was not a teetotum he was a windmill. His pump
position was the most appalling. Then he glared motionless at his
admiring listeners, as if he had fallen into a trance with his arm
upraised. The hurricane broke next moment. Nanny Sutie bore up under
the shadow of the windmill--which would have been heavier had Auld
Licht ministers worn gowns--but the pump affected her to tears. She
was stone-deaf.

For the first year or more of his ministry an Auld Licht minister was a
mouse among cats. Both in the pulpit and out of it they watched for
unsound doctrine, and when he strayed they took him by the neck. Mr.
Dishart, however, had been brought up in the true way, and seldom gave
his people a chance. In time, it may be said, they grew despondent,
and settled in their uncomfortable pews with all suspicion of lurking
heresy allayed. It was only on such Sabbaths as Mr. Dishart changed
pulpits with