Over the moor, down a brae, across a burn and up another slope. Moorland again, past a peat hag with the new cut turf drying in the sun. Straggling groups dotted the outlook, the dwellers in many a distant shieling, all converging towards the common goal--the preaching tent. Old men and women, mothers with their children, shepherds with their dogs, lads and lasses, the latter carrying their heavy shoes and stockings in their hands, till they should come to the last burn before reaching the kirk, there, after a preliminary footbath, to put them on and appear before the congregation decently clad. Joseph Smiley, ever on the alert, produced his chairs as the Lady of Auchlippie and her suite entered the assembly and took her place in the front with a condescending smile, and Mr. Dowlas disappeared from view behind the curtains of the tent. Roderick not being as yet an ordained minister, was not authorized to celebrate the sacraments of the church, which necessitated the occasional intervention of some one who was, as on the present occasion, when Mr. Dowlas was to perform the rite of baptism, as might be guessed from frequent thin small wails which issued intermittingly from the neighbouring covert. Immediately in front of the tent were the elders and deacons seated on the uncomfortable benches which Joseph had constructed, and near them the older and more devout of the people sat on their folded plaids, on stools or bunches of bracken. These were the more earnest church members, denominated the 'far ben christians' by their neighbours. Behind, reclining at their ease on the elastic heather, where it sloped upward from the grassy level, were the general company, who felt diffident about including themselves with the 'professors,'--men, women, children and collie dogs, basking in the sun and fanned by breezes sweet with the heather and the wild thyme.