He took the opportunity, however, of showing that only one deliverance could be given by long quotations from Church law, supported by references which extended back to the seventeenth century. Every one knew that, unlike his distinguished colleague in Muirtown Dr. Dowbiggin, the minister of the Free North was more at home in Romans than in Canon Law; but, like every true Scot, he loved a legal point, and he not only announced at next Session meeting that the Collector was quite right, but expressed his satisfaction that they had such a valuable addition to their number in the Collector. His position from that evening was assured beyond dispute; and when the Clerk of Session resigned on the ground of long service, but really through terror that there might be a weak place in his minutes, the Collector succeeded, and made the proceedings of the Free North Session to be a wonder unto many. It was a disappointment to some that, when the Collector was sent to the Presbytery, he took no part for several meetings; but others boldly declared that even in that high place he was only biding his time, which came when the Presbytery debated for one hour and ten minutes whether a certain meeting had been _pro re nata_ or _in hunc effectum_, while the learned Clerk listened with delight as one watches the young people at play. “Moderator,” said the Collector, “I have given the most careful attention to the arguments on both sides, and I venture to suggest that the meeting was neither _pro re nata_ nor _in hunc effectum_, but was a meeting _per saltum_”; and, after referring to Pardovan's Institutes, he sat down amid a silence which might be felt Several ministers openly confessed their ignorance one to another with manifest chagrin, and one young minister laughed aloud: “_Per saltum_, I declare--what next?” as if it were a subject for jesting. “The Collector is quite right, Moderator,” said the Clerk with his unspeakable air of authority; “the meeting referred to was undoubtedly _per saltum_, but I did not wish to interfere prematurely with the debate”; and from that date the Clerk, who used to address his more recondite deliverances to Dr. Dowbiggin as the only competent audience, was careful to include the Collector in a very marked and flattering fashion.