"How does he open the gates?" queried the minister. "He lifts the bars wi' his nose, but he canna sneck them ahint him when he comes back." "And you think that he has a soul?" said the minister, to draw the boy out. "What think ye yersel', sir?" said Walter, who at bottom was a true Scot, and could always answer one question by asking another. "Well," answered the minister, making a great concession, "the Bible tells us nothing of the future of the beasts that perish--" "Who knoweth," said Walter, "the soul of the beast, whether it goeth upward or whether it goeth downward to the ground?" The minister took his way over the moor, crossing the wide peat-hags and the deep trenches from which the neighbouring farmers of bygone generations had cut the peat for their winter fires. He went with a long swinging step very light and swift, springing from _tussock_ to _tussock_ of dried brown bent in the marshy places. At the great barn-door he came upon Saunders M'Quhirr, master of the farm of Drumquhat, whose welcome to his minister it was worth coming a hundred miles to receive. "Come awa', Maister Cameron, and the mistress will get you a drink o' milk, an' ye'll hae a bite o' denner wi' us gin ye can bide half an hour!" The minister went in and surprised the goodwife in the midst of the clean and comely mysteries of the dairy. From her, likewise, he received the warmest of welcomes. The relation of minister and people in Galloway, specially among the poorer congregations who have to work hard to support their minister, is a very beautiful one. He is their superior in every respect, their oracle, their model, their favourite subject of conversation; yet also in a special measure he is their property. Saunders and Mary M'Quhirr would as soon have contradicted the Confession of Faith as questioned any opinion of the minister's when he spoke on his own subjects. On rotation of crops, and specially on "nowt" beasts, his opinion was "no worth a preen." It would not have been becoming in him to have a good judgment on these secularities. The family and dependants were all gathered together in the wide, cool kitchen of Drumquhat, for it was the time for the minister's catechising. Saunders sat with his wife beside him. The three sons--Alec, James, and Rob--sat on straight-backed chairs; Walter near by, his hand on his grandmother's lap.