snuffle was increased to a perfect whimper of distress, the whole congregation showed in their faces evident symptoms of everything but the demureness proper to a place of worship. Sometimes, when in a sitting mood, Jock takes a modest seat on the pulpit stairs, where there likewise usually roost a number of deaf old women, who cannot hear in any other part of the church. These old ladies, whom the reader will remember as the unfortunate persons that Dominie Sampson sprawled over, in his premature descent from the pulpit, when he _stickit_ his first preaching, our waggish friend would endeavour to torment by every means which his knavish humour could invent. He would tread upon their corns, lean amorously upon their laps, purloin their _specks_ (spectacles), set them on a false scent after the psalm, and, sometimes getting behind them, plant his longest and most serious face over their black cathedral-looking bonnets, like an owl looking over an ivied wall, while few of the audience could contain their gravity at the extreme humour of the scene. The fun was sometimes, as we ourselves have witnessed, not a little enhanced by the old lady upon whom Jock was practising, turning round, in holy dudgeon, and dealing the unlucky wag a vengeful thwack across the face with her heavy _octavo_ Bible. We have also seen a very ludicrous scene take place, when, on the occasion of a baptism, he refused to come down from his citadel, and defied all the efforts which James Kerr, the kirk-officer, made to dislodge him; while the father of the child, waiting below to present it, stood in the most awkward predicament imaginable, not daring to venture upon the stairs while Jock kept possession of them. It is not probable, however, that he would have been so obstinate on that occasion, if he had not had an ill-will at the preserver of the peace, for his interrupting him that day in his laudable endeavours to break the slumbers of certain persons, whose peace (or _rest_) it was the peculiar interest of that official to preserve.