s of vantage he counted easiest and safest,
giving warnings also of unsuspected danger in the shape of restless
books that might either yield beneath one's feet or descend on one's
head. Carmichael, however, needed no such guidance, for he knew his
way about in the marvellous place, and at once made for what the boys
called the throne of the fathers. This was a lordly seat, laid as to
its foundation in mediaeval divines of ponderous content, but
excellently finished with the Benedictine edition of St. Augustine,
softened by two cushions, one for a seat and another for a back. Here
Carmichael used to sit in great content, smoking and listening while
the Rabbi hunted an idea through Scripture with many authorities, or
defended the wildest Calvinism with strange, learned arguments; from
this place he would watch the Rabbi searching for a lost note on some
passage of Holy Writ amid a pile of papers two feet deep, through which
he burrowed on all-fours, or climbing for a book on the sky-line, to
forget his errand and to expound some point of doctrine from the top of
the ladder.

[Illustration: SEARCHING FOR A LOST NOTE]

"You're comfortable, John, and you do not want to put off your boots
after all that travelling to and fro? Then I will search for Barbara,
and secure some refreshment for our bodies"; and Carmichael watched the
Rabbi depart with pity, for he was going on a troublous errand.

Housekeepers are, after beadles, the most wonderful functionaries in
the ecclesiastical life of Scotland, and every species could be found
within a day's journey of Drumtochty. Jenkins, indeed, suggested that
a series of papers on Church institutions read at the clerical club
should include one on housekeepers, and offered to supply the want,
which was the reason why Dr. Dowbiggin refused to certify him to a
vacancy, speaking of him as "frivolous and irresponsible." The class
ranged from Sarah of Drumtochty, who could cook and knew nothing about
ecclesiastical affairs, to that austere damsel, Margaret Meiklewham of
Pitscowrie, who had never prepared an appetising meal in her life, but
might have sat as an elder in the Presbytery.

Among all her class, Barbara MacCluckie stood an easy worst, being the
most incapable, unsightly, evil-tempered, vexatious woman into whose
hands an unmarried man had ever been delivered. MacWheep had his own
trials, but his ruler saw that he had sufficient food and some comfort,
but Barbara laid her