There was much giggling and blushing on these occasions among the maidens, and shouts from their relatives and friends to "Haud yer head up, Jean," and "Lat them see yer een, Jess." The dominie enjoyed this, and was one time chosen a judge, when he insisted on the prize's being bestowed on his own daughter, Marget.

The other judges demurred, but the dominie remained firm and won the day.
"She wasna the best-faured amon them," he admitted afterwards, "but a man maun mak the maist o' his ain." The dominie, too, would not shake his head with Mr.Rattray over the apple and loaf bread raffles in the smithy, nor even at the Daft Days, the black week of glum debauch that ushered in the year, a period when the whole countryside rumbled to the farmer's "kebec"-laden cart.
For the great part of his career the dominie had not made forty pounds a year, but he "died worth" about three hundred pounds.

The moral of his life came in just as he was leaving it, for he rose from his deathbed to hide a whisky bottle from his wife..