First Sermon Against Women ey

“JTt’s easy kent whaur he got his knowledge
of women,” Birse explained, “it’s a’ in the orig-
inal Hebrew. You can howk ony mortal thing
out o’ the original Hebrew, the which all minis-
ters hae at their finger ends. What else makes
them ken to jump a verse now and then when
giving out a psalm?”

“Tt wasna women like me he denounced,”
Eispeth insisted, “but young lassies that leads
men astray wi’ their abominable wheedling ways.”

“Tod,” said her husband, “if they try their
hands on Mr. Dishart theyll meet their match.”

“ They will,” chuckled the post. “The He-
brew’s a grand thing, though teuch, I’m telled,
michty teuch.”

“ Fis sublimest burst,” Waster Lunny came
back to tell me, “was about the beauty o’ the
soul being everything and the beauty o’ the face
no worth a snuff. Whata scorn he has for bonny
faces and toom souls! I dinna deny but what a
bonny face fell takes me, but Mr. Dishart wouldna
gie a blade o’ grass for’t. Ay,and I used to think
that in their foolishness about women there was
dagont little differ atween the unlearned and the
highly edicated.”

The gossip about Gavin brought hitherto to
the schoolhouse had been as bread to me, but
this I did not like. For a minister to behave
thus was as unsettling to us as a change of Gov-
ernment to Londoners, and I decided to give my
scholars a holiday on the morrow and tramp into
the town for fuller news. But all through the
night it snowed, and next day, and then inter-
mittently for many days, and every fall took the