clerk, suddenly wheeling round in his seat, would pass his snuff-box across to him without a word, for the clerk had a way of handing his box, which, being interpreted, ran as follows:--"You suppose that I am lifted above all ordinary affairs in my clerkly isolation, and that I do not know what a solid work you are doing for God and man in the obscure parish of Kincairney, but you are wrong. You have a very warm corner in my memory, and in sign thereof accept my box." And the said minister, trudging home that evening, and being met at a certain turn of the road by his wife--sentimental at fifty, you see, after a quarter of a century's toiling and preaching--would enlarge on Doctor Dowbiggin's cordiality, and the marked courtesy of the clerk, and when they were alone in the manse, his wife would kiss him--incredible to our cynic--and say, "You see, Tom, more people than I know what a good work you are doing," and Tom would start his twenty-first lecture on the Ephesians next morning with new spirit. Such is the power of comradeship, such is the thirst for sympathy; and indeed there is no dog either so big or so little that it does not appreciate a pat, and go down the street afterwards with better heart. The Presbytery had always a tender regard for the Free Kirk of Drumtochty, and happened to treat Carmichael with much favour. When the "call" to him was signed at once by every member of the congregation, the clerk--who had been obliged to summon Donald Menzies from Gaelic by the intimation that Drumtochty was by the law of the Church "uni-lingual, and that all proceedings must be conducted in the English language"--arose and declared that "such unanimous attention to their ecclesiastical duties was unexampled in his experience;" and when at Carmichael's ordination a certain certificate was wanting, the clerk, whose intervention was regarded with awe, proposed that the court should anticipate its arrival, dealing with the matter "proleptically," and the court saw in the very word another proof of the clerk's masterly official genius. It was he also--expressing the mind of the Presbytery--who proposed that the Court should send Carmichael as a commissioner to the General Assembly in the first year of his ministry, and took occasion to remark that Mr. Carmichael, according to "reliable information at his disposal," was rendering important service to the Free Church in his sphere at Drumtochty. Carmichael was very happy in those days, and was so petted by his ecclesiastical superiors that he never missed a meeting of court, where he either sat in a demure silence, which commended him greatly to the old men, or conversed with his friends on a back bench about general affairs.