THE WRAITH OF PATRICK KERR


This is a tale they tell at the darkening, and you who are Rulewater
folk probably know it well. But however well you may know it, you have
to own that it is an eerie thing to listen to when the fire is dying
down, and there are queer-shaped shadows playing on the walls, and
outside in the wood the owls are beginning to hoot, or, from the far
moor, there comes a curlew's cry.

Not long after Prince Charlie's day there lived at Abbotrule, in
Rulewater, a laird named Patrick Kerr. Patrick Kerr was a Writer to His
Majesty's Signet, a dour man, with a mischancy temper. The kirk and
kirkyard of Abbotrule, as still may be seen, lay near the laird's
house--too near for the pleasure of one who had no love for the kirk and
who could not thole ministers. Most unfortunately, too, the laird took a
scunner at the minister of the parish of Abbotrule. It may be that he
and the minister saw too much of each other, and only saw each other's
faults, but of that no one now can tell. But, about the year 1770,
Patrick Kerr set about to put an end to Abbotrule Parish and Abbotrule
Kirk, that had seen many an open-air Sacrament on summer Sabbaths long
ago. For four years the laird laboured to attain his end, and a blithe
man was he when, in 1774, he got Eliott of Stobs and Douglas of Douglas
to side with him and wipe out for evermore the kirk and parish of
Abbotrule. The parish was joined to the parishes of Hobkirk and
Southdean, and the glebe--twenty-five acres of good land--which should