"'It wass a good field, but it needed a dyke and some drains, and it wass not our people that had the money. So I made another sermon on the text, "The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and the wild beast of the field doth devour it," and went down to the south. It wass not a dyke and some drains, but enough to build a byre and a stable I came back with. That wass in '55, and before '60 there will be a new manse with twelve rooms that iss good for letting to the English people. But it wass ten years the church needed, and a year for the porch to keep it warm, for I am not liking stoves, and will not hef one in Crianshalloch. "'It iss wonderful how much money the bodies hef in Glasgow, and it iss good for them to be hearing sound doctrine at a time. There will be no Arminianism when I am preaching, and no joking; but maybe there will be some parables, oh yes, about the sheep coming in at the manse door for want of a fence, and the snow lying in the pulpit.' "There is a cateran for you, and, mind you, a good fellow too. It's not greed sends him out, but sheer love of spoil. Would you like to see MacTavish next time he passes up with the cattle?" for Carmichael was emboldened by the reception of his sketch. "Nothing we should like better, for the General and I want to know all about Scotland; but don't you think that those ministers have injured the Highlanders? Janet, you know, has such gloomy ideas about religion." "There is no doubt, Miss Carnegie, that a load of Saxon theology has been landed on the Celt, and it has disfigured his religion. Sometimes I have felt that the Catholic of the west is a truer type of northern faith than the Presbyterian of Ross-shire." "I am so glad to hear you say that," said Miss Carnegie, "for we had one or two west Catholics in the old regiment, and their superstitions were lovely. You remember, dad, the MacIvers." "That was all well enough, Kit, but none of them could get the length of corporal; they were fearfully ignorant, and were reported at intervals for not keeping their accoutrements clean." "That only showed how religious they were, did n't it, Mr. Carmichael? Hadn't the early Christians a rooted objection to the bath? I remember our Padre saying that in a lecture." "There are a good many modern Christians of the same mind, Miss Carnegie, and I don't think our poor Highlanders are worse than Lowlanders; but Catholic or Protestant, they are all subject to the gloom. I cannot give the Gaelic word. "What is that? Oh, a southerner would call it depression, and assign it to the liver, for he traces all trouble to that source. But there is no word for this mood in English, because it is not an English experience. My mother fell under it at times, and I saw the effect." "Tell us, please, if all this description does not weary you?" and Kate shone on Carmichael, who would have talked on the Council of Nice or the rotation of crops to prolong his privileges.