"He will call on the way down, and, if he can, coming back," Sarah said to herself, as she watched him go, "but it's a pity he should go in such a coat; it might have been put together with a pitchfork. It only makes the difference greater, and 't is wider than he knows already. And yet a woman can marry beneath her without loss; but for a man it is ruin." She went up to his room and made it neat, which was ever in disorder on his leaving, and then she went to a western window and looked into the far distance. CHAPTER VIII. A WOMAN OF THE OLD DISPENSATION. Every Sabbath at eleven o'clock, or as soon thereafter as the people were seated--consideration was always shown to distant figures coming down from the high glen--Carmichael held what might be called High Mass in the Free Kirk. Nothing was used in praise but the Psalms of David, with an occasional Paraphrase sanctioned by usage and sound teaching. The prayers were expected to be elaborate in expression and careful in statement, and it was then that they prayed for the Queen and Houses of Parliament. And the sermon was the event to which the efforts of the minister and the thoughts of the people had been moving for the whole week. No person was absent except through sore sickness or urgent farm duty; nor did rain or snow reduce the congregation by more than ten people, very old or very young. Carmichael is now minister of a West End kirk, and, it is freely rumoured in Drumtochty, has preached before Lords of Session; but he has never been more nervous than facing that handful of quiet, impenetrable, critical faces in his first kirk. When the service was over, the people broke into little bands that disappeared along the west road, and over the moor, and across the Tochty. Carmichael knew each one was reviewing his sermon head by head, and, pacing his garden, he remembered the missing points with dismay. It was the custom of the Free Kirk minister to go far afield of a summer evening, and to hold informal services in distant parts of the parish. This was the joy of the day to him, who was really very young and hated all conventionalities even unto affectation. He was never weary of complaining that he had to wear a gown, which was continually falling back and being hitched over with impatient motions, and the bands, which he could never tie, and were, he explained to a horrified beadle in Muirtown, an invention of Satan to disturb the preacher's soul before his work. Once, indeed, he dared to appear without his trappings, on the plea of heat, but the visible dismay and sorrow of the people was so great--some failing to find the Psalm till the first verse had been sung--that he perspired freely and forgot the middle head of his discourse.