The Night -Watchers 21

pit) that by having a seat in two churches he
could lie in bed on Sabbath and get the credit of
being at one or other. (Gavin made short work
of him.) To the right-minded the Auld Licht
manse was as a family Bible, ever lying open
before them, but Beattie spoke for more than
himself when he said, “ Dagone that manse! |
never gie a swear but there it is glowering at me.”

The manse looks down on the town from the
northeast, and is reached from the road that
leaves Thrums behind it in another moment by
a wide, straight path, so rough that to carry a
fraught of water to the manse without spilling
was to be superlatively good at one thing. Pack-
ages in a cart it set leaping like trout in a fishing-
creel. Opposite the opening of the garden wall
in the manse, where for many years there had
been an intention of putting up a gate, were two
big stones a yard apart, standing ready for the
winter, when the path was often a rush of yellow
water, and this the only bridge to the glebe dyke,
down which the minister walked to church.

When Margaret entered the manse on Gavin’s
“arm, it was a whitewashed house of five rooms,
with a garret in which the minister could sleep
if he had guests, as during the Fast week. It
stood with its garden within high walls, and the
roof facing southward was carpeted with moss
that shone in the sun in a dozen shades of green
and yellow. ‘Three firs guarded the house from
west winds, but blasts from the north often tore
down the steep fields and skirled through the
manse, banging all its doors at once. A beech,
growing on the east side, leant over the roof as