There was the split in the kirk, too, that comes once at least to every Auld Licht minister.

He was long in marrying.

The congregation were thinking of approaching him, through the medium of his servant, Easie Haggart, on the subject of matrimony; for a bachelor coming on for twenty-two, with an income of eighty pounds per annum, seemed an anomaly, when one day he took the canal for Edinburgh and returned with his bride.

His people nodded their heads, but said nothing to the minister.

If he did not choose to take them into his confidence, it was no affair of theirs.