Below him sat the elders in their blacks, wearing white stocks that had cost them no little vexation that morning, and the precentor, who was determined no man, neither Saunders Baxter nor another, should outsing him that day in Coleshill.

Down the centre of the kirk ran a long table, covered with pure white linen, bleached in the June showers and wonderfully ironed, whereon a stain must not be found, for along that table would pass the holy bread and wine.

Across the aisle on either side, the pews were filled with stalwart men, solemn beyond their wonted gravity, and kindly women in simple finery, and rosy-cheeked bairns.

The women had their tokens wrapped in snowy handkerchiefs, and in their Bibles they had sprigs of apple-ringy and mint, and other sweet-scented plants.

By-and-by there would be a faint fragrance of peppermint in the kirk--the only religious and edifying sweet, which flourishes wherever sound doctrine is preached and disappears before new views, and is therefore now confined to the Highlands of Wales and Scotland, the last home of our fathers' creed.