CHAPTER XIII.
PREPARING FOR THE SACRAMENT.
English folk have various festivals in the religious year, as becometh a generous country, but in our austere and thrifty Glen there was only one high day, and that was Sacrament Sabbath.

It is rumoured--but one prefers not to believe scandals--that the Scottish Kirk nowadays is encouraging a monthly Sacrament, after which nothing remains in the way of historical declension except for people to remain for the Sacrament as it may occur to them, and for men like Drumsheugh to get up at meetings to give their religious experiences, when every one that has any understanding will know that the reserve has gone out of Scottish character, and the reverence from Scottish faith.

Dr.Davidson's successor, a boisterous young man of bourgeois manners, elected by popular vote, has got guilds, where Hillocks' granddaughter reads papers on Emerson and refers to the Free Kirk people as Dissenters, but things were different in the old days before the Revolution.

The Doctor had such unquestioning confidence in himself that he considered his very presence a sufficient defence for the Kirk, and was of such perfect breeding that he regarded other Kirks with unbroken charity.
He was not the man to weary the parish with fussy little schemes, and he knew better than level down the Sacrament.

It was the summit of the year to which the days climbed, from which they fell away, and it was held in the middle of August.