"'Hoot, it's but a summer cloud, and ye're a fule; and there--there it's gane, ye see--there, see if it hasna sailed away over the breezy hay field, beyond the dyke there--come and help me ower it, man--come,'--and once more I looked in her bright eyes undoubtingly, and as I lifted her over the grey stones, I pressed her to my heart, in the blessed belief and consciousness that she was my ain Jessy Miller still. "All the summer I officiated as helper to the excellent Mr Bland, our parish minister--his nephew, who was appointed to fill the situation permanently, being still on the continent as tutor in a nobleman's family, nor did he return until the autumn. "Although I never expected to have a kirk of my own, yet preaching was at this time a pleasure to me--for my intellect was strong and clear, health good, and spirits buoyant; my heart being at ease, and Jessy Miller loving and faithful. "And was it not a proud thing for a parritch-fed laddie like me, to get the argument a' to mysell for a hail forenoon, and to lay down the law to all the gentry of the country, and maybe a lord among them; and to gie them their kail through the reek, and cry 'anathema maranatha' against the vices of the rich--the temptations whereto, if the truth maun be told, I never kenned; while nane o' them dared so much as open his mouth to reply to me? "But I had ae redeeming virtue in their eyes, for, although whiles dogmatic, I was never so downright indiscreet as to inflict lang sermons on them--a thing great folk canna thole--a half-hour till the preachment, and a quarter till the prayer, being my maximum; never forgetting, that a good practical sermon should be like a jigot o' wee blackfaced Highland mutton, short in the shank, and pithy, and nutritious, which every body can digest something o', frae the fistling restless callant, wi' a clue in his breeks, till the auld staid elder, wha hears ye oot as steadily--teuch as ben-leather though you may be--as if his tail were Tam Clink's anvil. So, putting the shortness o' the screed against the bitterness o' the flyte, my popularity on the whole greatly increased.--Thus mollified by success, I grew sae bland and gentle in my disposition, that I could never even skelp ony o' my wee scholars without a tear in my eye; so that I verily believe if I could have shoved the dull creatures on by applying the tause to my ain--loof instead of theirs, I would have willingly done so. "But soon a wee bit cloud cam o'er me; for I began about this time to be sair fashed with a great income." [I laid down the manuscript--"sair fashed with an income--I say, Lennox"--I saw the marine in his steward-room at the moment--"Why, Lennox, construe me this, if you please--'sair fashed with an income,'--that is more than ever I have been, if I take you up rightly; but explain, if you please--was your income so _very_ great?" "Indeed, sir, it was large enough to lame me for six months!"