opportunities of enlarging to the Collector on the solid and edifying qualities of Dr. Pittendriegh's ministry, and the unfortunate defects in the preaching and pastoral gifts of neighbouring ministers, in the intervals of business, when the two of them were not investigating into the delinquencies of some officer of excise, who had levied a tax on the produce of Dunleith Distillery not only in money but also in kind; or concocting cunning plans for the detection of certain shepherds who were supposed to be running an entirely unlicensed still in the recesses of Glen Urtach. It was at least through this official, himself an elder, that the Collector's decision was intimated to the Doctor and the other authorities of the North Kirk, and they lost no time in giving it proper and irrevocable effect The Supervisor set an example of patriotic sacrifice by surrendering his pew in the centre of the church and retiring to the modest obscurity of the side seats, so that the Collector could be properly housed; for it was not to be thought of for a moment that he should sit anywhere except in the eye of the public, or that ordinary persons--imagine for instance young children--should be put in the same pew with him. So he sat there alone, for he had neither wife nor child, from January to December, except when on his official leave--which he took not for pleasure but from a sense of duty--and he gave a calm, judicial attention to all the statements put before him by the preacher. Very soon after this arrangement the Doctor discovered that the Deacons' Court required strengthening, and, as a man of affairs, the Collector was added at the head of the list; and when a year later a happy necessity compelled an election of elders, the Collector was raised to this higher degree, and thereafter was “thirled” to the North Free, and the history of that kirk and of the Collector became one.