connection, for they did not understand--who stood beside
him on occasion at the Holy Table, and gave him advice in his
perplexities, and would bury him with honest regret when he died, and
fight like wild cats that his widow and children should have their due.
His toilsome journey was forgotten when Doctor Dowbiggin, in an
interstice of motions, came across the floor and sat down beside him,
and whispered confidentially, "Well, how are things going on at
Kincairney?"--Dowbiggin really deserved his leadership--or when the
clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, would pass his snuff-box
across to him without a word, for the clerk had a way of handing his
box, which, being interpreted, ran as follows:--"You suppose that I am
lifted above all ordinary affairs in my clerkly isolation, and that I
do not know what a solid work you are doing for God and man in the
obscure parish of Kincairney, but you are wrong. You have a very warm
corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box." And the said
minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn
of the road by his wife--sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter
of a century's toiling and preaching--would enlarge on Doctor
Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when
they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him--incredible to
our cynic--and say, "You see, Tom, more people than I know what a good
work you are doing," and Tom would start his twenty-first lecture on
the Ephesians next morning with new spirit. Such is the power of
comradeship, such is the thirst for sympathy; and indeed there is no
dog either so big or so little that it does not appreciate a pat, and
go down the street afterwards with better heart.

The Presbytery had always a tender regard for the Free Kirk of
Drumtochty, and happened to treat Carmichael with much favour. When
the "call" to him was signed at once by every member of the
congregation, the clerk--who had been obliged to summon Donald Menzies
from Gaelic by the intimation that Drumtochty was by the law of the
Church "uni-lingual, and that all proceedings must be conducted in the
English language"--arose and declared that "such unanimous attention to
their ecclesiastical duties was unexampled in his experience;" and when
at Carmichael's ordination a certain certificate was wanting, the
clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the
court should anticipate its