"It's keepit up wonderfu' through the week, for a' never like ower bricht mornin's," old Sandie Ferguson would remark casually, whose arrival, swallow-like, heralded the approach of the great occasion. "The roads are graund the noo frae the heich (high glen); we 've hed an awfu' winter, neeburs, up oor wy--clean blockit up. Them 'at lives ablow are michty favoured, wi' the kirk at their door." "It's maist extraordinar' hoo the seasons are changin'"--Jamie Soutar could never resist Sandie's effrontery--"A' mind when Mairch saw the end o' the snow, an' noo winter is hangin' aboot in midsummer. A'm expeckin' tae hear, in another five year, that the drifts last through the Sacrament in August. It 'll be a sair trial for ye, Sandie, a wullin' kirkgoer--but ye 'll hae the less responsibility." "Millhole 's here, at ony rate, the day, an' we 're gled tae see him"--for Drumsheugh's pride was to have a large Sacrament--and so Sandie would take his place at an angle to catch the Doctor's eye, and pay such rapt attention to the sermon that any one not knowing the circumstances might have supposed that he had just awaked from sleep. Ploughmen who on other Sabbaths slept in the forenoon and visited their sweethearts the rest of the day, presented themselves for tokens on the Fast-day, and made the one elaborate toilette of the year on Saturday evening, when they shaved in turns before a scrap of glass hung outside the bothy door, and the foreman, skilled in the clipping of horses, cut their hair, utilising a porridge bowl with much ingenuity to secure a round cut. They left early on the Sabbath morning, and formed themselves into a group against the gable of the kirk,--being reviewed with much satisfaction by Drumsheugh, who had a keen eye for absentees from the religious function of the year. At the first sound of the bell the ploughmen went into kirk a solid mass, distributing themselves in the servants' pews attached to the farmers' pews, and maintaining an immovable countenance through every part of the service, any tendency to somnolence being promptly and effectually checked by the foreman, who allowed himself some ease when alone on other days, but on Sacrament Sabbath realised his charge and never closed an eye. The women and children proceeded to their places on arrival, and the fathers followed them as the bell gave signs of ceasing. Drumsheugh and Domsie then came in from the plate and the administration of discipline, and the parish waited as one man for the appearance of John with the Bible, the Doctor following, and envied those whose seat commanded the walk from the manse down which the procession came every Sabbath with dignity, but once a year with an altogether peculiar majesty.