The “ringing in” was finished, and the congregation had passed into the kirk. As Sergeant Robbie, carrying the big pulpit Bible, strode up the aisle in front of the minister, it seemed to me that I had never seen him carrying so high that old white head of his, with the cicatrix of the Waterloo bullet in the gnarled forehead. Every eye was on the old fellow, and he knew it, and bore himself with a quiet courage in which somehow there came to be felt an element of pathos. It was curious again how all eyes centred upon him when in his extempore prayer the minister besought “consolation for those who were in sore trouble and mourning over the falling away of one near and dear to them.” Robbie stood straight and square, his face fixed--only his lean brown throat swelled for a moment as if he were resolutely forcing down a spasm of emotion. Tibbie his wife stood by his side, and when the old soldier laid his hand on her shoulder she quelled with a strong effort her rising sobs. The simple service ended, the people streamed out through the door that Robbie had thrown open; we of the manse party were the last to emerge. It was part of Robbie’s duty, as kirk officer, to “cry” to the dispersing congregation all notices placed in his hands for purposes of publicity, the duplicates of which he had previously nailed on the kirk door. The kirk officer in those primitive regions was the chief medium for giving good advertisement. As we came out Robbie was standing in the centre of a large circle, calling out in his high falsetto the particulars of a “displenish sale.” “Fower good stots, three milk kye, a pair of workhorses, farm implements, household furniture,” and so on. This finished, there was a pause. Sergeant Robbie folded up the sale advertisement; as he did this his hand was trembling so that it fell to the ground. He stooped, picked the paper up and put it in the rear pocket of his coat; then from out his breast-pocket he pulled a folded blue document. He braced himself firmly, came to rigid “attention” as if he were in the presence of his commanding officer, and slowly opened out the blue paper. “Dinna read it, Robbie!” “Dinna read it, sergeant!” came from a dozen voices in the sympathising circle around him. “It’s no necessar’--ye needna, ye maunna read it,” cried the senior elder, James Cameron, of the Gauldwell, with a sob in his thin old voice. It was as if the sergeant heard no word of dissuasion. He had opened out the paper and was holding it between his hands, standing there braced at “attention” and fighting down the working in his throat that momentarily was staying his voice. Behind him, as he thus struggled, broke out the piteous wail “Oh, my laddie, my laddie!” from the very depths of poor Tibbie’s heart, followed by a burst of loud sobs. The sergeant did not turn to his wife--boy as I was, I remember it struck me that he dared not.