“I hadna noticed the minister was lang in coming,” Waster Lunny told me afterward, “but Elspeth noticed it, and with a quickness that baffles me she saw I was thinking o’ other things.  So she let out her foot at me.  I gae a low cough to let her ken I wasna sleeping, but in a minute out goes her foot again.  Ay, syne I thocht I micht hae dropped my hanky into Snecky Hobart’s pew, but no, it was in my tails.  Yet her hand was on the board, and she was working her fingers in a way that I kent meant she would like to shake me.  Next I looked to see if I was sitting on her frock, the which tries a woman sair, but I wasna, ’Does she want to change Bibles wi’ me?’ I wondered; ’or is she sliding yont a peppermint to me?’ It was neither, so I edged as far frae her as I could gang.  Weel, would you credit it, I saw her body coming nearer me inch by inch, though she was looking straucht afore her, till she was within kick o’ me, and then out again goes her foot.  At that, dominie, I lost patience, and I whispered, fierce-like, ’Keep your foot to yoursel’, you limmer!’ Ay, her intent, you see, was to waken me to what was gaen on, but I couldna be expected to ken that.”

In the vestry Hendry Munn was now holding counsel with three elders, of whom the chief was Lang Tammas.

“The laddie I sent to the manse,” Hendry said, “canna be back this five minutes, and the question is how we’re to fill up that time.  I’ll ring no langer, for the bell has been in a passion ever since a quarter-past eight.  It’s as sweer to clang past the quarter as a horse to gallop by its stable.”

“You could gang to your box and gie out a psalm, Tammas,” suggested John Spens.

“And would a psalm sung wi’ sic an object,” retorted the precentor, “mount higher, think you, than a bairn’s kite?  I’ll insult the Almighty to screen no minister.”

“You’re screening him better by standing whaur you are,” said the imperturbable Hendry; “for as lang as you dinna show your face they’ll think it may be you that’s missing instead o’ Mr. Dishart.”

Indeed, Gavin’s appearance in church without the precentor would have been as surprising as Tammas’s without the minister.  As certainly as the shutting of a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a toll of the bell in front of the minister.  Tammas’s halfpenny rang in the plate as Gavin passed T’nowhead’s pew, and Gavin’s sixpence with the snapping-to of the precentor’s door.  The two men might have been connected by a string that tightened at ten yards.

“The congregation ken me ower weel,” Tammas said, “to believe I would keep the Lord waiting.”

“And they are as sure o’ Mr. Dishart,” rejoined Spens, with spirit, though he feared the precentor on Sabbaths and at prayer-meetings.  “You’re a hard man.”

“I speak the blunt truth,” Whamond answered.

“Ay,” said Spens, “and to tak’ credit for that may be like blawing that you’re ower honest to wear claethes.”