Before the Sacrament the Doctor gave one of his college sermons on some disputed point in divinity, and used language that was nothing short of awful.
"Grant me those premises," he would say, while the silence in the kirk could be felt, "and I will show to any reasonable and unprejudiced person that those new theories are nothing but a resuscitated and unjustifiable Pelagianism." Such passages produced a lasting impression in the parish, and once goaded Drumsheugh's Saunders into voluntary speech.
"Yon wes worth ca'in' a sermon. Did you ever hear sic words out o' the mouth o' a man? Noo that bleatin' cratur Curlew 'at comes frae Muirtown is jist pittin' by the time. Sall, ae sermon o' the Doctor's wud last yon body for a year."
After the sermon the people sang,
"'T was on that night when doomed to know,"
and the elders, who had gone out a few minutes before, entered the kirk in procession, bearing the elements, and set them before the Doctor, now standing at the table. The people came from their pews and took their seats, singing as they moved, while the children were left to their own devices, tempered by the remembrance that their doings could be seen by the Doctor, and would receive a just recompense of reward from their own kin in the evening. Domsie went down one side and Drumsheugh the other, collecting the tokens, whose clink, clink in the silver dish was the only sound.
"If there be any other person who desires to take the Sacrament at this the first table" (for the Sacrament was given then to detachments), "let him come without delay."
"Let us go, dad," whispered Kate. "He is a dear old padre, and … they are good people and our neighbours."
"But they won't kneel, you know, Kit; will you … ?"
"We 'll do as they do; it is not our Sacrament." So the father and daughter went up the kirk and took their places on the Doctor's left hand. A minute later Lord Hay rose and went up his aisle, and sat down opposite the Carnegies, looking very nervous, but also most modest and sincere.