At our Communion the pews were emptied of their regular occupants and the congregation seated itself as it pleased.

The manse seat was full of the Kirkcaple relations of Mr Murdoch, who had been invited there by my mother to hear him, and it was not hard to obtain permission to sit with Archie and Tam Dyke in the cock-loft in the gallery.

Word was sent to Tam, and so it happened that three abandoned lads duly passed the plate and took their seats in the cock-loft.

But when the bell had done jowing, and we heard by the sounds of their feet that the elders had gone in to the kirk, we slipped down the stairs and out of the side door.

We were through the churchyard in a twinkling, and hot-foot on the road to the Dyve Burn.
It was the fashion of the genteel in Kirkcaple to put their boys into what were known as Eton suits--long trousers, cut-away jackets, and chimney-pot hats.