The Egyptian 4

minister only reaches his new charge in time to
attend a funeral. Though short of stature he cast
a great shadow. He was so full of his duties,
Jean said, that though he pulled to the door
as he left the manse, he had passed the currant-
bushes before it snecked. He darted through
courts, and invented ways into awkward houses.
If you did not look up quickly he was round
the corner. His visiting exhausted him only
less than his zeal in the pulpit, from which,
according to report, he staggered damp with
perspiration to the vestry, where Hendry Munn
wrung him like a wet cloth. A deaf lady, cele-
brated for giving out her washing, compelled him
to hold her trumpet until she had peered into all
his crannies, with the Shorter Catechism for a
lantern. Janet Dundas told him, in answer to
his knock, that she could not abide him, but she
changed her mind when he said her garden was
quite a show. The wives who expected a visit
scrubbed their floors for him, cleaned out their
presses for him, put diamond socks on their
bairns for him, rubbed their hearthstones blue
for him, and even tidied up the garret for
him, and triumphed over the neighbours whose
houses he passed by. For Gavin blundered
occasionally by inadvertence, as when he gave
dear old Betty Davie occasion to say bitterly :

“Qu ay, you can sail by my door and gang to
Easie’s, but I’m thinking you would stop at mine,
too, if I had a brass handle on’t.”

So passed the first four weeks, and then came
the fateful night of the seventeenth of October,
and with it the strange woman. Family worship