The Night -Watchers a5

which I have not had a marriage or prayed over
a coffin. Ah, sir, these are the scenes that make
the minister more than all his sermons. You
must join the family, Mr. Dishart, or you are
only a minister once a week. And remember
this, if your call is from above, it is a call to
stay. Many such partings in a lifetime as I
have had to-day. would be too heartrending.”

“And yet,’ Gavin said, hesitatingly, “they
told me in Glasgow that I had received a call
from the mouth of hell.”

“Those were cruel words, but they only mean
that people who are seldom more than a day’s
work in advance of want sometimes rise in arms
for food. Our weavers are passionately religious,
and so independent that they dare any one to
help them, but if their wages were lessened they
could not live. And so at talk of reduction they
catch fire. Change of any kind alarms them, and
though they call themselves Whigs, they rose a
few years ago over the paving of the streets and
stoned the workmen, who were strangers, out of
the town.”

“And though you may have thought the
place quiet to-day, Mr. Dishart, there was an
ugly outbreak only two months ago, when the
weavers turned on the manufacturers for reducing
the price of the web, made a bonfire of some of
their doors, and terrified one of them into leaving
Thrums. Under the command of some Chart-
ists, the people next paraded the streets to the
music of fife and drum, and six policemen who
drove up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were
sent back tied to the seats.”