At the end of many years, Bob Dallas and Mysie Gow were respectively an old bachelor and an old maid.
Bob winced keenly under the marring finger of Time, and, by means of wig, paint, powder, and a jaunty manner, tried to hide its ravages and to make the people believe that he was still young. He did not convince the people; but it is said that, sometimes at least, he managed to convince himself. On one occasion, while talking about his infant nephew, he said, "he's a fine little fellow," and running his fingers through his luxuriant artificial locks, he added, "with a head of hair as thick and as black as my own." Consequently he was seen at every gay gathering, bearing himself like an Adonis, and paying assiduous attention to the young ladies; and when they, fooling him to the top of his bent, gathered round him and bandied compliments with him, he put on a youthful air and silently congratulated himself that he was still "Bob Dallas, the Invincible."
"An auld donnert eediot," said the indignant Mrs Chatteris, the town-clerk's widow, "deckin' himsel up like an antic for the lasses to giggle at."
"You're too hard upon him," said her son Joe. "He's more useful than that. He's an old battered figurehead, used by the girls as a butt for practising their arrows on."
Mysie, on the other hand, received the first touches of age in the most cheerful spirit, and wore her grey hair like a becoming ornament, and made her wrinkles shine with good humour; and, as her years grew fewer, she tried more and more to fill them, with grateful feelings towards her Maker and kind words and deeds towards her fellow-creatures.
Many years ago a new class of preachers started suddenly up in the country. They were called the sensational school, and were not unlike a certain section of the clergy in the present day. Their motto seemed to be: "Catch the public, by dignified means if you can, but by all means catch the public." Their rules for doing this were these: "Choose as the subject of your sermon some prevalent vice; denounce it in the plainest and strongest language; threaten those who practise it, or even encourage it, with all the misery of this world and all the eternal woes of the next; draw your illustrations hot from ordinary life; if they are vulgar or grotesque, and excite a titter, never mind; one great end is gained if by any means they arouse the interest of the audience."
The most promising member of this school was the Rev. Jeremiah MacGuffog, the new parish minister at Sandyriggs. He took the most solemn view of his office. He was placed there, he felt, as an ambassador of the Most High to denounce the iniquities that were lifting their heads on every side. It was no time for smooth words. Like the martyred prophets and reformers of old, he must boldly face the transgressors, tell them of their sins in the most direct language, and warn them of the terrible doom that awaits them.