t no committee of
which that man is one. I hate him, sir. I would as lief confer with the
devil as with him."

This staggered me. I knew no cause for an outburst so passionate, nor
any provocation for a resentment so savage and so evidently real. My
attempt to question him concerning either met with an abrupt but final
refusal. Concerning these things I said nothing to Margaret or her
mother, but kept them all and pondered them in my heart.

XVI

_GEORDIE'S OOT-TURN_

It was Geordie Lorimer who first taught me to curl. This I still reckon
a great kindness, for I have gone from strength to strength till I am
now upon the verge of tankard skiphood. Besides, Geordie's besetting sin
still clinging close, I had hoped in this social way the more readily to
win his friendship, with a view to his deliverance.

Some of the old elders looked askance at my frivolity, for Sanderson's
"Mountain Dew" flowed freely at every bonspiel, and it was generally
understood that all bigoted teetotalism was justly suspended till the
ice vanished in the spring. These aforesaid elders had no sympathy with
men who tasted standing up, or who took their "Mountain Dew" unwarmed.

They would gravely quote the scriptural admonition that all things
should be done decently and in order, adding the exposition, logically
deduced, that the more important the transaction, the more imperative
that order and decency should be observed. For which reason they took
their whisky hot, and hallowed by the gentler name of "toddy." At
eventide they took it, within the sacred precincts of their own
firesides, and immediately after family worship. Many a time and oft the
very lips which fervently sang the psalm--

"Like Hermon's dew, the dew that doth,"

were the same that sampled Sanderson's with solemn satisfaction.

The session clerk once presented to the court a letter from a worthy but
wandering temperance orator, craving permission to give his celebrated
"dog talk" in St. Cuthbert's on a Sabbath afternoon.

"I move that the kirk be no' granted," said Archie M'Cormack. "He'll be
revilin' the ways o' men far abune him. Ma faither aye took a drappy
ilka nicht, haudin' his bonnet in his haun' the while. He wad drink the
health o' Her Majesty ('God bless her,' he aye said), and mebbe ane to
the auld kirk in bonnie Scotland, an' mebbe ane to the laddies wha used
to rin wi' him aboot the braes, an' mebbe then he wad hae jist ane mair
to Her Majest