To such a congregation, after the decease of John Curtis, my friend of the umbrella made a proposition to have a chapel erected. And I question much if a proposal to go to mass would have excited a stronger commotion--particularly among those whom the measure meant to protect--the old and infirm. He of the umbrella offered to subscribe largely himself, and promote the subscription among others, hinting that many of the members of the kirk favoured the cause, and would be glad of an opportunity to display it. The motion was well timed too, namely, at the close of one of those four-hours benedictions from a thunder cloud, which had urged its way through the broad bonnets and thick plaids of the most obstinate believers. I cannot enumerate to you all the bitter and brief exclamations of dismay and indignation which this proposal excited. The decided wrath of one old moorland dame I shall long remember, "Foul fall ye," said she, starting up and hurling her heavy clasped black print Bible at the proposer's head, "foul fall ye, ye deserve to be brained with the word ye hae abused;" and had he of the umbrella not caught this religious missile, as the Curtal fryar's dogs caught the outlaw's arrows, namely, as it flew, he might have been numbered with the martyrs. "Shall _we_," said she, "who were hounded like deer to the mountains, there to worship God in fear of evil men, shall _we_, whom he marvellously protected there, doubt his providence, and descend to keep yer coupled timber--yer covered cushions--and yer canopied, fringed, and painted prelatical pulpits--and yer walls of hewn stane--far frae me--fit places are they, not for the word, but for ye ken what;"--and so she sat down. The more sensible part reflecting, however, that the showers of spring were cold--that the winds of autumn were not always gentle--and that winter indulged them with various and dubious blessings, under the resemblance of snows and sleets, and sudden thaws, resolved, that the erection of a house of worship was a justifiable measure; and a house was accordingly built. But the eloquent dame of the moorlands introduced a salvo, by which the sacrament was directed to be administered in the open air, and so it still continues. The religious festival of the sacrament is commenced after due private preparation by prayers of unwonted length, and the lonely broomy hollow where it is held, exhibits on Sabbath morn to a stranger a grand and solemn spectacle.