ccupants and the congregation seated itself as it
pleased. The manse seat was full of the Kirkcaple relations of Mr
Murdoch, who had been invited there by my mother to hear him, and it
was not hard to obtain permission to sit with Archie and Tam Dyke in
the cock-loft in the gallery. Word was sent to Tam, and so it happened
that three abandoned lads duly passed the plate and took their seats in
the cock-loft. But when the bell had done jowing, and we heard by the
sounds of their feet that the elders had gone in to the kirk, we
slipped down the stairs and out of the side door. We were through the
churchyard in a twinkling, and hot-foot on the road to the Dyve Burn.
It was the fashion of the genteel in Kirkcaple to put their boys into
what were known as Eton suits--long trousers, cut-away jackets, and
chimney-pot hats. I had been one of the earliest victims, and well I
remember how I fled home from the Sabbath school with the snowballs of
the town roughs rattling off my chimney-pot. Archie had followed, his
family being in all things imitators of mine. We were now clothed in
this wearisome garb, so our first care was to secrete safely our hats
in a marked spot under some whin bushes on the links. Tam was free from
the bondage of fashion, and wore his ordinary best knickerbockers.
From inside his jacket he unfolded his special treasure, which was to
light us on our expedition--an evil-smelling old tin lantern with a
shutter.

Tam was of the Free Kirk persuasion, and as his Communion fell on a
different day from ours, he was spared the bondage of church attendance
from which Archie and I had revolted. But notable events had happened
that day in his church. A black man, the Rev. John
Something-or-other, had been preaching. Tam was full of the portent.
'A nagger,' he said, 'a great black chap as big as your father,
Archie.' He seemed to have banged the bookboard with some effect, and
had kept Tam, for once in his life, awake. He had preached about the
heathen in Africa, and how a black man was as good as a white man in
the sight of God, and he had forecast a day when the negroes would have
something to teach the British in the way of civilization. So at any
rate ran the account of Tam Dyke, who did not share the preacher's
views. 'It's all nonsense, Davie. The Bible says that the children of
Ham were to be our servants. If I were the minister I wouldn't let a
nigger into the pulpit. I wouldn't let him farther