But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing to be outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such an out-of-the-way and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not set themselves up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, to teach them by example that the notion of Sunday which obtained two hundred years ago in Scotland had been modified, and that the sacredness of it had pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantness of it. They rather lent themselves to the humor of the hour, and probably by their demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on Cape Breton Island. Neither by birth nor education were the travelers fishermen on Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authorities to lock them up for dropping here a line and there a line on the Lord's day. In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, my companion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of the kirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as I could without breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, I could not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of white wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants; that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling off into farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the sloping curve of the bay. There were a few country-looking stores and shops, and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves ran into the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and the usual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks. A peaceful and perhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place. As I walked down the road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappeared round the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows. It had a small pleasure party on board. None of them were drowned that day, and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics from Whykokornagh. The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows a pretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New England meeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the service had begun. There was something familiar in the bareness and uncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews had high backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,--a sort of theological fortification,--approached by wide, curving flights of stairs on either side. Those who occupied the near seats to the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blank board partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister, though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars. The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New England congregation of say twenty years ago. The clothes they wore had been Sunday clothes for at least that length of time.