Balwhidder’s interment, had run out. [Picture: Sabbath Morning] In this the hand of Providence was very visible, and lucky for me it was that I had sent for Mr. Auld when I did send, as the very week following, a sound began to spread in the parish, that one of my lassies had got herself with bairn, which was an awful thing to think had happened in the house of her master, and that master a minister of the gospel. Some there were, for backbiting appertaineth to all conditions, that jealoused and wondered if I had not a finger in the pie; which, when Mr. Auld heard, he bestirred himself in such a manful and godly way in my defence, as silenced the clash, telling that I was utterly incapable of any such thing, being a man of a guileless heart, and a spiritual simplicity, that would be ornamental in a child. We then had the latheron summoned before the session, and was not long of making her confess that the father was Nichol Snipe, Lord Glencairn’s gamekeeper; and both her and Nichol were obligated to stand in the kirk: but Nichol was a graceless reprobate, for he came with two coats, one buttoned behind him, and another buttoned before him, and two wigs of my lord’s, lent him by the valet-de-chamer; the one over his face, and the other in the right way; and he stood with his face to the church-wall. When I saw him from the poopit, I said to him—“Nichol, you must turn your face towards me!” At the which, he turned round to be sure, but there he presented the same show as his back. I was confounded, and did not know what to say, but cried out with a voice of anger—“Nichol, Nichol! if ye had been a’ back, ye wouldna hae been there this day;” which had such an effect on the whole congregation, that the poor fellow suffered afterwards more derision, than if I had rebuked him in the manner prescribed by the session.