Inevitably, the day came when I fell in love—with Eve. That was no novelty for Eve; for she and her elder sister, Diana, had most of us on a string in those days. Baronrigg was the lodestone of every young spark in the county, except during those dismal months in summer when our twin divinities were spirited away to London for the season. Some were able to follow them there; but I was not. Neither was Eric Bethune. Regimental duty forbade, though we did what we could with the generous leave available in the early nineties. Ultimately, I was taken and Eric was left. Why Eve took me I have never known. I was only an infantry subaltern, and a younger son into the bargain. But she picked me out from the crowd, and waited for me, bless her! for seven years. My theory was, and is, that a woman only marries a man for one of two reasons—either because he gives her "a thrill," or because she thinks he requires taking care of. There was no doubting Eve’s reason for marrying me. She took care of me for one rapturous year; and then she left me, and took her baby with her. To-day both lie in the private burial-ground of Baronrigg. That is why I always accept Tom’s annual invitation to stay there at Easter, rather than go to my brother Walter’s cheery but distracting establishment at The Heughs. That is enough about me. Now let us get back to the congregation. It was a representative throng, yet not entirely representative. For one thing, our chief territorial and social luminary, Lord Eskerley, is a member of the Church of England; and when he goes to church at all—which is usually just after a heart-attack, or just before a General Election—he goes to Fiddrie. For another, no Scottish assemblage can be counted truly representative which takes no account of the adherents of Holy Church—as a peep into Father Kirkpatrick’s tightly-packed conventicle on the other side of the glen would tell us. But when all is said, the parish church is still the focus of Scottish rural life, and I was well content with the selection of friends who filled the pews below me. There was old General Bothwell, of Springburn, a Mutiny and Crimean veteran—altogether quite a celebrity among a generation which knows nothing of actual warfare. (After all, the South African affair touched our civil community very lightly.) Beside the General sits his son Jack, home on leave from India. He commands a company in a Pathan regiment. The General is trying hard not to look proud of Jack.