the season of the
Holy Communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon on
1st Peter v. and 8th, "The devil as a roaring lion," on the Sunday after
every seventeenth of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself
upon that text both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror
of his bearing in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits,
and the old looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day,
full of those hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it
stood by the water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw
overhanging it on the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish
hill-tops rising towards the sky, had begun, at a very early period of
Mr. Soulis's ministry, to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued
themselves upon their prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan
alehouse shook their heads together at the thought of passing late by
that uncanny neighbourhood. There was one spot, to be more particular,
which was regarded with especial awe. The manse stood between the
high-road and the water of Dule, with a gable to each; its back was
towards the kirktown of Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of
it, a bare garden, hedged with thorn, occupied the land between the
river and the road. The house was two stories high, with two large rooms
on each. It opened not directly on the garden, but on a causewayed path,
or passage, giving on the road on the one hand, and closed on the other
by the tall willows and elders that bordered on the stream. And it was
this strip of causeway that enjoyed among the young parishioners of
Balweary so infamous a reputation. The minister walked there often after
dark, sometimes groaning aloud in the instancy of his unspoken prayers;
and when he was from home, and the manse door was locked, the more
daring schoolboys ventured, with beating hearts, to "follow my leader"
across that legendary spot.

This atmosphere of terror, surrounding, as it did, a man of God of
spotless character and orthodoxy, was a common cause of wonder and
subject of inquiry among the few strangers who were led by chance or
business into that unknown, outlying country. But many even of the
people of the parish were ignorant of the strange events which had
marked the first year of Mr. Soulis's ministrations; and among those who
were better informed, some were naturally reticent, and others shy of
that particular topic. Now and again,