o' him."

"Not orthodox, I suppose."

"A puir body, sir, a puir body at a sermon. I like a gun and a minister to
shoot close. Dr. MacDonald is an awfu' scattering man. He'll be frae
Genesis to Revelations in the same discourse, sir."

They were passing between plantations of young larch; the great hills rose
behind them, the songs of a multitude of birds filled the warm, sweet air.
The horses tossed their heads, and lifted proudly their prancing feet.
Allan had a keen sense of the easy, swift motion through the balmy
atmosphere. As he leaned back against the comfortably cushioned vehicle,
he could not help contrasting the circumstances with the hoary
sea-shattering rocks of Fife, the tossing ocean, the tugging oars, and
the fisherman's open boat. He did not try to decide upon the merits of the
different situations; he simply realized the present, and enjoyed it.

The great doors of Meriton House stood open, and a soft-treading footman
met him with bows and smiles, and lifted his cloak and luggage, and made
him understand that he had again entered a life in which he was expected
to be unable to wait upon himself. It gave him no trouble to accept the
conditions; he fell at once into the lofty leisurely way of a man
accustomed to being served. He had dismissed his valet in Edinburgh, when
he determined to go to Pittenloch, but he watched his father's servant
brushing his dinner suit, and preparing his bath and toilet, without one
dissenting feeling as to the absolute fitness of the attention. The lofty
rooms, the splendor and repose, the unobtrusive but perfect service, were
the very antipodes of the life he had just left. He smiled to himself as
he lazily made contrasts of them. But Fife and the ways of Fife seemed far