It pleased these Lowland workers to assert a religious freedom beyond that of the dominie and the shepherd Gael around them.

And if men wish to quarrel, and can give their quarrel a religious basis, they secure a tolerance and a respect which their own characters would not give them.

Tallisker might pooh-pooh sectional or political differences, but he was himself far too scrupulous to regard with indifference the smallest theological hesitation.
One day as he was walking up the clachan pondering these things, he noticed before him a Highland shepherd driving a flock to the hills.
There was a party of colliers sitting around the Change House; they were the night-gang, and having had their sleep and their breakfast, were now smoking and drinking away the few hours left of their rest.
Anything offering the chance of amusement was acceptable, and Jim Armstrong, a saucy, bullying fellow from the Lonsdale mines, who had great confidence in his Cumberland wrestling tricks, thought he saw in the placid indifference of the shepherd a good opportunity for bravado.
"Sawnie, ye needna pass the Change House because we are here.

We'll no hurt you, man." The shepherd was as one who heard not.
Then followed an epithet that no Highlander can hear unmoved, and the man paused and put his hand under his plaid.

Tallisker saw the movement and quickened his steps.