From ploughshare to pulpit

A Tale of the Battle of Life
BY GORDON STABLES, M.D., C.M. ( Surgeon Royal Navy ) AUTHOR OF “THE CRUISE OF THE SNOWBIRD,” “JUST LIKE JACK,” “CHILDREN OF THE MOUNTAIN,” ETC. ETC.
“Who walked in glory and in pride, Following his plough along the mountain-side”
SECOND EDITION. London JAMES NISBET & CO. 21 BERNERS STREET Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson & Co At the Ballantyne Press TO MY OLD PROFESSOR SIR WM. D. GEDDES PRINCIPAL OF ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY This Book is Dedicated WITH SUNNY MEMORIES OF AULD LANG SYNE BY THE AUTHOR



There was something well calculated to raise the spirits of such a man as Mackenzie on this balmy spring morning. Mackenzie was the minister of the parish of Belhaven, a parish that lies far up the winding Don, in a country that combines all the beauties of Lowland vegetation and treescape with the wilder scenery of the true Scottish Highlands.
Mac had been called to this parish when very young, but had remained here ever since, and he was now over forty, hale, handsome, and as straight as the ramrod of the old muzzle-loader he used when shooting rabbits; cheery also to a degree, and he seldom moved around anywhere without singing some old Scotch lilt or merry jig. Well, the fact is Mac’s life was a very easy one. His Church was the Established, not the Free Kirk, and he therefore was to all intents and purposes independent. He had not to depend upon the whims and caprices of the people for his salary, nor upon the state of the crops at harvest-time. Not only had he a good stipend “bound to his head,” as his parishioners phrased it, but a bonnie stretch of glebe land, quite a farm, in fact, that extended for over a mile along one bank of the river.
There would have been silence up there to-day, save for the plaintive bleating of lambs, the occasional barking of the shepherd’s collie, the hum of bees among the whins, and the sweet tender notes of the rose-linnet perched on a thorn twig above them.