Touseler, finding his scratching-post withdrawn, stretched himself on the ground to sleep out the sermon, and Mrs. Sangster resumed her chair. Her tranquility was of short duration. First would come a tug at her parasol, accompanied by a strangled yelp, as a puppy having swallowed the tassel would struggle to escape, like a trout on a fish-hook; and next it would be her shawl. A dirty little finger would be found tracing the flowing lines of its elegant embroidery, or the corner would be pulled down, that the critics squatting on the sward might more conveniently scrutinize the elaborate design. When Sophia's chair was removed it had left an open spot in the crowd, to Mrs. Sangster's left, and as nature abhors a vacuum, the unplaced material of her party had flowed in to fill it. She looked down on a confused knot of dog and child life, heads and tails, legs and arms swaying and kicking to and fro in silent happiness. Had a quadruped or a biped given tongue in the 'House of God,' there would have been whipping behind the first big boulder-stone on the home-going, and they had all felt the weight of Stephen's hand at sometime, so were wary; but so long as silence was kept, and they remained beside the shepherd and his wife, they might kick, roll, and be happy as they pleased. Poor Mrs. Sangster's attention was fully occupied in protecting her dress from the busy fingers of the little boys and girls, and in seeing that the dogs did not make a coverlet of her skirts; and she vowed never again to 'take notice' of people from the 'lower orders,' who so little appreciated the honour she did them, and made themselves so utterly abominable with their ill-reared dogs and children. She lost all the good of their sermons as she told the reverend orators that evening at supper, and was far too concerned for what might befall her own draperies, to give much heed to the Rev. Æmelius Geddie's description of the curtains of fine linen and badger skins, blue and scarlet, prepared for the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and his tender appeal to the women of Glen Effick to go and do likewise. Mr. Dowlas described the building of Solomon's Temple, its joists of cedar covered with plates of pure gold, the chapiters, the pomegranates, and the wreathen-work, the brazen pillars and the vessels of pure gold. He interspersed these with spiritual interpretations and mystical images drawn from the Prophets, till the hearers were brought under a general vague impression of splendour and solemnity, they could not have explained wherefore; but they all agreed that it was a 'graund discoorse,' and 'very refreshing,' and that they had entered on a high, noble and arduous work, in proposing to build themselves a little meeting house; and that, though propriety forbade their saying so, the Divine Head of the Church was greatly beholden to them, and that they might look, as their certain due, for large amounts of blessing, spiritual and temporal, to requite their