a permanent Court of Justice, taking
cognisance of minor matters of morality, and enforcing its decisions by
religious sanctions. To be barred from participating in the communion
rites might not seem a very alarming punishment to the easy-going
Lowlander; but to a Shetland peasant, being _keepit off_, as it is
technically called, is a terrible and humiliating penalty. A crofter
came to the manse to complain about his wife's unruly and satirical
tongue. "But what can I do to her?" said the minister, "she's your wife,
and you must assert your authority." "I've tried everything," said the
man, "but she still continues to be a troubler in Israel." The minister
professed his inability to interfere. "I can do nothing at all," he
said. "Yes you can," said the crofter, with a wink and a fearful
whisper, "_You can keep her off!_"

THE INDIGNANT ELDER.

Since the Reformation the people have lived and thriven under the
jurisdiction of the Session. In the records of the Session one finds a
chronicle of the sins, eccentricities, and merriments of the people for
the last two or three centuries. Several incidents based on these
minutes will make what I say abundantly clear. The Quarrel of the Elder
and the Minister's Housekeeper, for example, convulsed a still remoter
parish in much the same overmastering way as the Dreyfus Trial agitated
Paris. Herodotus is the only author I can think of who could have done
justice to this northern _affaire_. Let me briefly summarise it. Between
the minister's garden and that of one of his elders ran what was termed
a hedge. The shrubs which formed the base of this hedge were so
ill-grown that the minister's fowls could easily go, clucking and
scraping, from one garden into the other. Evidence was given to prove
that the cabbages and pot-herbs in the elder's plot were torn and
spoiled in parts. Every morning he stood at a gap in the hedge and sang
aloud like a skipper in a storm or Achilles at the trench of the Greeks:
"I am being ruined and brought to poverty by the minister's hens." This
cry grated upon the ears of the manse housekeeper, who by and by thought
it her duty to go out and reason with the elder. "It's no' the
minister's hens ava that's to blame, it's the craws o' the firmament."
"It's the hens." "No, the craws." "Hens I declare!" "You're a _deceitful
impostor_!" said the housekeeper. Now, no self-respecting elder could
stand that. Boiling with wrath as he was, he remembered his
ecc