Seventeen years after the doing away with Abbotrule Parish there took place at the manse of Southdean, after the Sacrament had been dispensed, one of these gatherings of sanctified conviviality. It was dusk before the party broke up, and it was probably due to the kindly forethought of the minister that he and his guests strolled in little companies of two's and three's out into the caller air before their final parting. Their gait was solemn--if a trifle uncertain--as they slowly daundered up the road between the trees. It was a still Sabbath evening, when one can hear the very whispers of the fir branches, the murmur of a burn far away--when suddenly the stillness was broken by the thud of a horse's hoofs. Beat--beat--beat--on the turf by the side of the road they came, and each man of the party cocked his ears and strained his eyes into the darkness to see who might be the horseman who profaned the Sabbath by riding in such hot haste. There was an elder there who, had the party been held at any time but on the Sacrament Sabbath and anywhere but in the manse dining-room, might have been said to have a trifle exceeded. So when, cantering on the turf between the two fir woods, they saw a white horse appear, he looked byordinar grave. "I mind," said he, "a passage in the Revelations, '_Behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death_.'" With that the horse was upon them, and one and all looked up at the rider's face. Fearsome and gash was the countenance they looked upon. Hatred and scorn was in the burning eyes--anger, and the hatred that does not die. And there was not one man of them but ran like hunted sheep back into the manse, and there, in the light, faced each other, forfeuchen and well-nigh greeting like terrified bairns, that did not know the face for that of Patrick Kerr, the laird of Abbotrule. Next day they all had the news that Patrick Kerr, who hated the kirk and all ministers, and had done away with the parish of Abbotrule, had died in the darkening of that Sabbath evening and gone to his last account. THE LAIDLEY WORM OF SPINDLESTON-HEUGH In a land where fairy tales die hard, it is sometimes no easy task to discriminate between what is solid historical fact, what is fact, moss-grown and flower-covered, like an old, old tomb, and what is mere fantasy, the innocent fancy of a nation in its childhood, turned at last into stone--a lasting stalactite--from the countless droppings of belief bestowed upon it by countless generations. Scientists nowadays crushingly hold prehistoric beasts, or still existent marsh gas, accountable for dragons and serpents and other fauna of legendary history; but in certain country districts there are some animals that no amount of Board School information, nor countless Science Siftings from penny papers can ever destroy, and to this invulnerable class belongs the Laidley Worm of Spindleston-Heugh.