If dogs detest doctors, they do not often extend their dislike to clergymen. Skatta was not only on perfectly civil terms with the “minister” of her master’s kirk, she herself knew the Sunday, and was disposed to respect its observance like a true-blue Presbyterian. She did not, to be sure, go to the kirk like the dog of one of the ministers in the village,[D] but she consented to stay at home without any protest, and only burst out and greeted her family rather uproariously on their return in the ranks of their fellow-worshippers. On other occasions, to stay at home when her friends were going abroad, or to submit to confinement, was so severe a trial of Skatta’s philosophy, that it was the one decree which found and left her rebellious. It was no easy task to detain a dog that, when shut into a room on the second floor of the house, with the windows closed, broke through a pane of glass, and precipitated herself twelve or fifteen feet to the ground; and with such rapidity did she clear the glass in taking the leap, that she was not punished for her defiant temerity by more than a few inconsiderable scratches and bruises. She once walked a distance of fifteen miles with her master, and at the end of the journey was tied up in a stable, since he was going where she could not conveniently accompany him. I need not say that she gnawed through the string, seized an opportunity, when the stable-door was open, to make her escape, and, not being able to trace her master, ran the whole way home again, and arrived in the course of two more hours, very travel-stained, tired, and hungry, but content. This is nothing of a feat compared to that performed by an Argyleshire terrier, which, having been conveyed in a carriage through one of the passes into an entirely different district, set off at the first available moment, and crossed a great solitary mountain range—taking a week to do it—arriving at last, a gaunt but happy skeleton, at what it persisted in regarding as its own door. How the poor animal subsisted in the meantime was only known to Him who feedeth the young ravens when they cry. I remember Skatta’s being lent to a sportsman, who was very desirous of availing himself of her powers; but no bribe of game or sport would detain her from her friends. So soon as she was let loose, she broke away and rushed back to them, the quick pattering of her feet sounding in every room of the house, her gleaming eyes and vibrating tail appealing to each member of the family in turn with a “Here I am, you see; I could not and I would not stay away.”