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The morning of the first Sabbath of February dawned bitterly over the scattered clachan of Cauldshields. It had been snowing since four o’clock on Saturday night, and during those hours no dog had put its nose outside the door. At seven in the morning, had any one been able to see across the street for the driving snow, he would have seen David Grier look out for a moment in his trousers and shirt, take one comprehensive glance, and vanish within. That glance had settled David’s church attendance for the day. He was an “Auld Kirk,” and a very regular hearer, having been thirty years in the service of the laird; but in the moment that he looked out into the dim white chaos of whirling snow, David had settled it that there would be no carriage down from the “Big House” that day. “The drifts will be sax fit in the howes o’ the muir-road,” he said, as he settled himself to sleep till midday, with a solid consciousness that he had that day done all that the most exacting could require of him. As his thoughts composed themselves to a continuation of his doze, while remaining deliciously conscious of the wild turmoil outside, David Grier remembered the wayfarer who had got a lift in his cart to Cauldshields the night before. “It was weel for the bit bairn that I fell in wi’ her at the Cross Roads,” said he, as he stirred his wife in the ribs with his elbow, to tell her it was time to get up and make the fire.

* * * * *

In the manse of Cauldshields the Reverend Eli M’Diarmid’s housekeeper was getting him ready for church.

“There’ll no’ be mony fowk at the kirk the day, gin there be ony ava’; but that’s nae raison that ye shouldna gang oot snod,” she said, as she brushed him faitly down. “Ye mind hoo Miss Elsie used to say that ye wad gang oot a verra ragman gin she didna look efter ye!” The minister turned his back, and the housekeeper continued, like the wise woman of Tekoa, “Eh, but she was a heartsome bairn, Miss Elsie; an’ a bonny–nane like till her in a’ the pairish!”

“Oh, woman, can ye not hold your tongue?” said the minister, knocking his hands angrily together.

“Haud my tongue or no haud my tongue, ye’re no’ gaun withoot yer sermon an’ yer plaid, minister,” said his helper. So with that she brought the first from the study table and placed it in the leather case which held his bands, and reached the plaid from its nail in the hall. It was not for nothing that she had watched the genesis and growth of that sermon which she placed in the case. Some folk declare that she suggested the text. Nor is this so wholly impossible as it looks, for Cauldshields’ housekeeper was a very wise woman indeed.

It was but a step to the kirk door from the manse, but it took the minister nearly twenty minutes to overcome the drifts and get the key turned in the lock–for in these hard times it was no uncommon thing for the minister to be also the doorkeeper of the tabernacle. Then he took hold of the bell-rope, and high above him the notes swung out into the air; for though the storm had now settled, vast drifts remained to tell of the blast of the night. But the gale had engineered well, and as the minister looked over the half mile that separated the kirk from the nearest house of the clachan he knew that not a soul would be able to come to the kirk that day. Yet it never occurred to him to put off the service of the sanctuary. He was quite willing to preach to Euphemia Kerr alone, even so precious a discourse as he carried in his band-case that day.