When the minister of Nether Pitfoodles--who had sermons on "Love, Courtship, and Marriage," and was much run after in Muirtown--quarrelled with his elders about a collection, and asked the interference of the Presbytery, Dr.Davidson dealt severely with him in open court as one who had degraded the ministry and discredited government.

It was noticed also that the old gentleman would afterward examine Nether Pitfoodles curiously for minutes together in the Presbytery, and then shake his head.
"Any man," he used to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of Scotland." And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry over their wine in Kildrummie Manse--being both of the same school, cultured, clean-living, kind-hearted, honourable, but not extravagantly evangelical clergymen.

They agreed in everything except the matter of their after-dinner wine, Dr.Davidson having a partiality for port, while the minister of Kildrummie insisted that a generous claret was the hereditary drink of a Scottish gentleman.

This was only, however, a subject of academic debate, and was not allowed to interfere with practice--the abbe of Drumtochty taking his bottle of claret, in an appreciative spirit, and the cure of Kildrummie disposing of his two or three glasses of port with cheerful resignation.
If Drumtochty exalted its minister above his neighbours, it may be urged in excuse that Scottish folk are much affected by a man's birth, and Dr.Davidson had a good ancestry.

He was the last of his line, and represented a family that for two centuries had given her sons to the Kirk.