“But he canna preach, mother,” said Colin, breaking silence almost for the first time; “the red head is only an excuse.” “I dinna like excuses,” said his mother, “and I never kent before that you were a judge o’ preaching. You may come to ken better about it yoursel before a’ ’s done. I canna but think there’s something wrang when the like o’ that can be,” said Mrs. Campbell; “he’s studied, and he’s learned Latin and Greek, and found out a’ the ill that can be said about Scripture, and a’ the lies that ever have been invented against the truth; and he’s been brought up to be a minister a’ his days, and knows what’s expected. But as soon as word gangs about that the Earl has promised him our kirk, there’s opposition raised. No’ that onybody kens ony ill of him; but there’s the smith, and the wright, and Thomas Scott o’ Lintwearie, maun lay their heads thegether--and first they say he canna preach, and then that he’ll no’ visit, and at least, if a’thing else fails, that he has a red head. If it was a new doctor that was coming, wha would be heeding about the colour o’ his hair? but it’s the minister that’s to stand by our deathbeds, and baptize our bairns, and guide us in the right way: and we’re no to let him come in peace, or sit down in comfort. If we canna keep him from getting the kirk, we can make him miserable when he does get it. Eh, bairns; I think shame! and I’m no’ so sure as I am in maist things,” said the farmer’s wife, looking up with a consciousness of her husband’s presence, “that the maister himsel--” “Weel, I’m aye for popular rights,” said Colin of Ramore. He had just come in, and had been standing behind taking off his big coat, on which the rain glistened, and listening to all that his wife said. “But if Colin was a man and a minister,” said the farmer with a gleam of humour, as he drew his chair towards the fire, “and had to fight his way to a kirk like a’ the young men now-a-days, I wouldna say I would like it. They might object to his big mouth; and you’ve ower muckle a mouth yoursel’, Jeanie,” continued big Colin, looking admiringly at the comely mother of his boys. “I might tell them wha he took it from, and that if he had as grand a flow of language as his mother, there would be nae fear o’ him. As for the red head, the Earl himsel’s a grand example, and if red hair’s right in an earl it canna be immoral in a minister; but Jeanie, though you’re an awfu’ revolutionary, ye maunna meddle with the kirk, nor take away popular rights.”