Peter Bruce stood helpless at the Junction next Friday--Drumtochty was celebrating Elspeth--and the achievement established her for life. Probationers who preached in the vacancy had heard rumours, and tried to identify their judge, with the disconcerting result that they addressed their floweriest passages to Mistress Stirton, who was the stupidest woman in the Free Kirk, and had once stuck in the "chief end of man." They never suspected the sonsy motherly woman, two pews behind Donald Menzies, with her face of demure interest and general air of country simplicity. It was as well for the probationers that they had not caught the glint of those black beady eyes. "It's curious," Mrs. Macfadyen remarked to me one day, "hoo the pulpit fashions change, juist like weemen's bonnets. "Noo a' mind when auld Doctor Ferintosh, him 'at wrote 'Judas Iscariot the first Residuary,' would stand twa meenutes facing the fouk, and no sit doon till he hed his snuff. "But thae young birkies gie oot 'at they see naebody comin' in, an' cover their face wi' ae hand sae solemn, that if ye didna catch them keekin' through their fingers tae see what like the kirk is, ye wud think they were prayin'." "There's not much escapes you," I dared to say, and although the excellent woman was not accessible to gross flattery, she seemed pleased. "A'm thankfu' that a' can see withoot lookin'; an' a'll wager nae man ever read his sermon in Drumtochty Kirk, an' a' didna find him oot. Noo, there's the new minister o' Netheraird, he writes his sermon on ae side o' ten sheets o' paper, an' he's that carried awa' at the end o' ilka page that he disna ken what he's daein', an' the sleeve o' his goon slips the sheet across tae the ither side o' the Bible. "But Doctor Ferintosh wes cleverer, sall it near beat me tae detect him," and Elspeth paused to enjoy the pulpit ruse. "It cam tae me sudden ae Sacrament Monday, hoo dis he aye turn up twal texts, naither mair nor less, and that set me thinkin'. Then a' noticed that he left the Bible open at the place till anither text was due, an' I wunnered a'd been sae slow. It wes this wy: he askit the beadle for a gless o' water in the vestry, and slippit his sermon in atween the leaves in sae mony bits. A've wished for a gallery at a time, but there's mair credit in findin' it oot below--ay, an' pleesure tae; a' never wearied in kirk in ma life." Mrs. Macfadyen did not appreciate prodigal quotations of Scriptures, and had her suspicions of this practice. "Tak the minister o' Pitscourie noo; he's fair fozzy wi' trokin' in his gairden an' feedin' pigs, and hesna studied a sermon for thirty year.