Not long after Prince Charlie's day there lived at Abbotrule, in Rulewater, a laird named Patrick Kerr. Patrick Kerr was a Writer to His Majesty's Signet, a dour man, with a mischancy temper. The kirk and kirkyard of Abbotrule, as still may be seen, lay near the laird's house--too near for the pleasure of one who had no love for the kirk and who could not thole ministers. Most unfortunately, too, the laird took a scunner at the minister of the parish of Abbotrule. It may be that he and the minister saw too much of each other, and only saw each other's faults, but of that no one now can tell. But, about the year 1770, Patrick Kerr set about to put an end to Abbotrule Parish and Abbotrule Kirk, that had seen many an open-air Sacrament on summer Sabbaths long ago. For four years the laird laboured to attain his end, and a blithe man was he when, in 1774, he got Eliott of Stobs and Douglas of Douglas to side with him and wipe out for evermore the kirk and parish of Abbotrule. The parish was joined to the parishes of Hobkirk and Southdean, and the glebe--twenty-five acres of good land--which should have been shared between the Southdean and Hobkirk ministers, was taken by Patrick Kerr for his own use. Fifty acres of poor soil lying between Doorpool and Chesters he certainly gave them in its stead, and must have had pleasure in his bargain, for he had gained a rich glebe and had for ever freed himself from his clerical neighbours. Speedily he pulled down the manse and unroofed the kirk. He would willingly have ploughed up the kirkyard, but this could not be. For a hundred years after he was gone, the Rulewater folk still buried there. Now, in Patrick Kerr's day, a Sacrament Sabbath was not quite what it is now. They were solemn enough about the fencing of the tables, serious and longfaced enough were ministers and elders as the bread and wine were handed round, but the minister's wife, poor body, found it took her all her time to preserve an earnest spirituality and to search her soul as the roasts and pies and puddings spread out on the manse dining-table haunted her anxious mind. Harder still, too, it was for a tired minister and elders to abstain from all appearance of casuality as the hospitality of the manse went on far into the afternoon, and the whisky toddy had more than once gone the round of the table.