"Are you not?" said I, with as generous an intonation of surprise as conscience would permit.
"I'm no' an elder," he repeated. "But I gang till it," he added.
Then followed a pause, which I dared to break with the remark, "I am told it is a spacious edifice."
He merely glanced at me, as if to say that all irrelevant conversation was out of place, and then continued—
"And I'm no' the precentor; I'm no' the man, ye ken, that lifts the tune."
I nodded sympathetically, trying to convey my sense of the mistake the congregation had made in its choice of both elders and precentor.
"Ye wud say, to luik at me, that I'm no' an office-seeker, an' ye're richt. But I haud an office for a' that."
This time I smiled as if light had come to me, and as one who has been reassured in his belief in an overruling Providence.
"What office do you hold?" said I.
"Ye wudna guess in a twalmonth. I'm no' the treasurer, as ye're thinkin'—I'm the beadle."