This answer, which the two elders overheard, was told by them next day
to every body, and remembered along the loch-side for years.

Cairnforth Kirk, like most other Scotch churches of ancient date, is
very plain within and without, and the congregation then consisted
almost entirely of hillside farmers, shepherds, and the like, who
arrived in families--dogs, and all, for the dogs always came to
church, and behaved there as decorously as their masters. Many the
people walked eight, ten, and even twelve miles, from the extreme
boundary of the parish, and waited about in the kirk or kirk-yard on
fine Sundays, and in the Manse kitchen on wet ones--which were much
the most frequent--during the two hours' interval between sermons.

In the whole congregation there was hardly a person above the laboring
class except in the minister's pew and that belonging to the Castle,
which had been newly lined and cushioned, and in a corner of which,
safely deposited by Malcolm, the little earl now sat--sat always,
even during the prayer, at which some of the congregation looked
reprovingly round, but only saw the little figure wrapped in a plaid,
and the sweet, wan, childish, and yet unchild-like face, with the curly
dark hair, and large dark eyes.

Whatever in the earl was "no a'richt," it certainly could not be his
mind, for a brighter, more intelligent countenance was never seen. It
quite startled the minister with the intentness of its gaze from the
moment he ascended the pulpit; and though he tried not to look that way,
and was very nervous, he could not get over the impression it made. It
was to him almost like a face from the grave--this strange, eerie
child's face, so strongly resembling that of the dead countess, who,