started to his feet and ran barking round
the apartment like a crazed beast. My father was so much amused with
this, that he would never suffer me to correct him for it, and I
scarcely ever saw the old man rise from the prayer without his
endeavouring to suppress a smile at the extravagance of Hector. None
of us ever could find out how he knew that the prayer was near done,
for my father was not formal in his prayers; but certes he did
know,--and of that we had nightly evidence. There never was anything
for which I was so puzzled to discover a motive as this, but from
accident I did discover it; and, however ludicrous it may appear, I am
certain I was correct. It was much in character with many of Hector's
feats, and rather, I think, the most _outre_ of any principle he ever
acted on. As I said, his great daily occupation was pointing the cat.
Now, when he saw us kneel all down in a circle, with our faces couched
on our paws, in the same posture with himself, it struck his absurd
head that we were all engaged in pointing the cat. He lay on tenters
all the while, but the acuteness of his ear enabling him, through
time, to ascertain the very moment when we would all spring to our
feet, he thought to himself, 'I shall be first after her, for you
all.'

"He inherited his dad's unfortunate ear for music, not perhaps in so
extravagant a degree, but he ever took care to exhibit it on the most
untimely and ill-judged occasions. Owing to some misunderstanding
between the minister of the parish and the session-clerk, the
precenting in church devolved on my father, who was the senior elder.
Now, my father could have sung several of the old church-tunes
middling well in his own family-circle; but it so happened that, when
mounted in the desk, he never could command the starting notes of any
but one (St. Paul's), which were always in undue readiness at the root
of his tongue, to the exclusion of every other semibreve in the whole
range of sacred melody. The minister gave out psalms four times in the
course of every day's service; consequently the congregation were
treated with St. Paul's in the morning at great length, twice in the
course of the service, and then once again at the close. Nothing but
St. Paul's. And it being itself a monotonous tune, nothing could
exceed the monotony that prevailed in the primitive church of Ettrick.
Out of pure sympathy for my father alone, I was compelled to take the
precentorship in hand; and ha