The suggestion that the Reverend Hugh Finlay preached from the pulpit of Knox Church "better sermons" than its permanent occupant, would have been justly considered absurd, and nobody pronounced it.

The church was full, as Mrs Forsyth observed, on these occasions; but there were many other ways of accounting for that.

The Murchisons, as a family, would have been the last to make such an admission.

The regular attendance might have been, as much as anything, out of deference to the wishes of the Doctor himself, who invariably and sternly hoped, in his last sermon, that no stranger occupying his place would have to preach to empty pews.

He was thinking, of course, of old Mr Jamieson with whom he occasionally exchanged and whose effect on the attendance had not failed to reach him.