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Now, I knew that this would never do for me, because the farmer bodies would certainly arrive before that, drunk or sober. So I told Crophead that he had better go and tell his mistress that there was one come post-haste all the way from the parish of Rowantree, where her property lay, and that the messenger must instantly speak with her.

But Crophead swore at me, and churlishly bade me begone at that hour of the morning. But since he would have slammed the door on me, I set my staff in the crevice and hoised it open again. Ay, and would have made my oak rung acquaint with the side of his ill-favoured head, too, had not a woman’s voice cried down the stair to know the reason of the disturbance.

“It is a great nowt from the country, and he will not go away,” said Crophead.

Then I stepped forward into the hall, sending him that withstood me over on his back against the wall. Speaking high and clear as I do to my first class, I said–

“I am Dominie Grier, parish schoolmaster of the parish of Rowantree, madam, and I have come post-haste from that place to speak to her ladyship.”

Then I heard a further commotion, as of one shifting furniture, and another voice that spoke rapidly from an inner chamber.

In a little while there came one down the stair and called me to follow. So forthwith I was shown into a room where a lady in a flowered dressing-gown was sitting up in bed eating some fine kind of porridge and cream out of a silver platter.

“Dominie Grier!” said the lady pleasantly, affecting the vulgar dialect, “what has brocht ye so far from home? Have the bairns barred ye oot o’ the schule?”

“Na, my lady,” I replied, with my best bow; “I come to you in mickle fear lest the grace of God be barred out of the poor parish of Rowantree.”

So I opened out to her the whole state of the case; and though at first she seemed to be amused rather than edified, she gave me her promise that young William Campbell, who was presently assistant to the great Dr. Shirmers, of St. John’s in the city, should get the kirk of Rowantree. He was not a drop’s blood to me, though him and my wife were far-out friends, so that it was not as if I had been asking anything for myself. Yet I thanked her ladyship warmly for her promise in the name of all the godly in the parish of Rowantree, and warned her at the same time of the regardless clan that were seeking to abuse her good-nature. But I need not have troubled, for I was but at the door and Crophead sulkily showing me out, when whom should I meet fair in the teeth but Bauldy Todd and all his fighting tail!

Never were men more taken aback. They stopped dead where they were, when they saw me; and Bauldy, who had one hand in the air, having been laying down the law, as was usual with him, kept it there stiff as if he had been frozen where he stood.

Now I never let on that I saw any of them, but went by them with my briskest town step and my head in the air, whistling like a lintie–

“The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!
The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!”

“Deil burn me,” cried Bauldy Todd, “but the Dominie has done us!”

“‘Deed, he was like to do that ony gate,” said Mickie Andrew. “We may as weel gang hame, lads. I ken the Dominie. His tongue wad wile the bird aff the tree. We hae come the day after the fair, boys.”

But as for me, I never turned a hair; only keeped my nose in the straight of my face, and went by them down the street as though I had been the strength of a regiment marching with pipers, whistling all the time at my refrain–

“The Campbells are coming to bonnie Loch Leven!
The Campbells are coming, aha! aha!”