"For a quarter of an hour after this I carried on fine, and was delighted to spy the auld earl's looks, of approval with the corner of my ee, the joy whereof drave me off my guard; for at a well-turned period, when I intended to bring my right hand down thump on the open Bible, I missed it, and smote the new elastic pulpit cushion instead, with such vehemence, that the old brazen-clasped Psalm-book spanged up, and out over into the air. 'Kep!' cried I; whereupon auld Durie Squake, the precentor, upturned his face, and thereby caught such a bash on the nose, that baith the lozens were dang out of his barnacles. 'Oh Lord, my sair nose!' (it had not recovered the blow against the door, as already related), 'oh Lord! my sair nose is clean demolished now--I maun get legs to my specs--for the brig's brak, and flattened in on my face like a pancake!' I tried to get back into my discourse, but I was awfully flurried, and as, not knowing what I did, I let fly another whack on the desk, his lordship, who, I could observe, even in the swelter of my confusion, was laughing to himsell, turned up his gaisened pheesiognomy, and _girned_ out--'I say, my lad, if ye break it, ye'll pay for't.' This put me daft--clean wud a'thegether--and I drave along at so furious a rate, and stamped with my stick-leg on the stool that I stood on with such vehemence, that in my confusion down I slipped; and the bottom of the pulpit being auld and frush, the wooden tram flew crash through, and I vanished, the iron-shod end striking Durie Squake, the devoted precentor, such a crack on the tap of the head, that I thought I had felled him clean. 'Oh dear! oh dear!' roared Squake; 'the callant has first bashed my neb as saft as pap' (he was a wabster to his trade), 'and broken my spectacles, and noo he has fractured my skull with his d--d stick-leg.' I struggled to extricate the tram, but it stuck fast, until Tam Clink, the blacksmith, gave the end of it, as it protruded into Durie Squake's desk, such a bang with his great heavy hand, as if it had been his forehammer, that he shot me up with a jerk like a 'Jack in the box,' into the sight of the astonished congregation again. "I sat down utterly discomfited, and, covering my face with my hands, wept bitterly.