The Night-Watchers oF

Gavin spoke with feeling, for the precentor
had already put him through his catechism, and
it was a stiff ordeal.

“The precentor!” said Mr. Carfrae. “ Why,
he was one of them.”

The old minister, once so brave a figure,
tottered as he rose to go, and reeled in a diz-
ziness until he had walked a few paces. Gavin
went with him to the foot of the manse road;
without his hat, as all Thrums knew before
bedtime.

“TI begin,” Gavin said, as they were parting,
“where you leave off, and my prayer is that I
may walk in your ways.”

“Ah, Mr. Dishart,” the white-haired minister
said, with a sigh, “the world does not progress
so quickly as a man grows old. You only begin
where I began.”

He left Gavin, and then, as if the little minis-
ter’s last words had hurt him, turned and sol-
emnly pointed his staff upward. Such men are
the strong nails that keep the world together.

The twenty-one-years-old minister returned to
the manse somewhat sadly, but when he saw his
mother at the window of her bedroom, his heart
leapt at the thought that she was with him and he
had eighty pounds a year. Gaily he waved both
his hands to her, and she answered with a smile,
and then, in his boyishness, he jumped over a
gooseberry bush. Immediately afterwards he
reddened and tried to look venerable, for while
in the air he had caught sight of two women and
a man watching him from the dyke. He walked
severely to the door, and, again forgetting