ferent seeds he chose to sow in it. I have seen his master at work in this little spot, with his coat off, and his dibble in his hand: it was a scene of tranquil virtue to have stopped an angel on his errands of mercy! Harley had contrived to lead a little bubbling brook through a green walk in the middle of the ground, upon which he had erected a mill in miniature for the diversion of Edwards's infant grandson, and made shift in its construction to introduce a pliant bit of wood, that answered with its fairy clack to the murmuring of the rill that turned it. I have seen him stand, listening to these mingled sounds, with his eyes fixed on the boy, and the smile of conscious satisfaction on his cheek; while the old man, with a look half turned to Harley, and half to Heaven, breathed an ejaculation of gratitude and piety.

Father of mercies! I also would thank thee! that not only hast thou assigned eternal rewards to virtue, but that, even in this bad world, the lines of our duty, and our happiness, are so frequently woven together.

IAN MACLAREN.

IAN MACLAREN, pseudonym of Rev. John Watson, a Scottish clergyman and novelist, born in Manningtree, Essex, England, in 1849. Though born in England, he is of pure Scotch blood. He was educated at Edinburgh University, and studied for the ministry at New College, Edinburgh. His first pastorate was in the Free Church in Logiealmond, Perthshire, now known as Drumtochty. He is now the minister of a Presbyterian church in Sefton Park, Liverpool. It was not until 1893 that Mr. Watson became known as a writer. He has published: "The Days of Auld Lang Syne" (1893); "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush" (illustrated ed., 1896), both very popular; "The Upper Room" (1895); "Kate Carnegie (1896); "The Cure of Souls" (1896); "Home Making;" "The Mind of the Master" (1896); "Ideals of Strength" (1897); "The Potter's Wheel" (1897).

A GRAND INQUISITOR.

(From "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush.")1

THE Free Kirk of Drumtochty had no gallery, but a section of seats at the back was raised two feet, and any one in the first pew might be said to sit in the "briest o' the laft." When Lachlan Campbell arrived from the privileged parish of Auchindarroch, where the "Men" ruled with iron hand and no one shaved on Sabbath, he examined the lie of country with the eye of a strategist, and seized at once a corner seat on the crest of the hill. From this vantage ground, with his back to the wall and a clear space left between himself and his daughter Flora, he had an easy command of the pulpit, and within six months had been constituted a court of review neither minister nor people could lightly disregard. It was not that Lachlan spoke hastily or at length, for his policy was generally a silence pregnant with judgment, and his deliverances were for the most part in parables none the less awful because hard of interpretation. Like every true Celt, he had the power of reserve, and knew the 1 Copyright, 1894, by Dodd, Mead & Co. Reprinted by permission.

value of mystery. His voice must not be heard in irresponsible gossip at the Kirk door, and he never condescended to the level of Mrs. MacFadyen, our recognized sermon taster, who criticised everything in the technique of the pulpit, from the number of heads in a sermon to the air with which a probationer used his pocket-handkerchief. She lived in the eye of the public, and gave her opinions with the light heart of a newspaper writer; but Lachlan kept himself in the shadow and wore a manner of studied humility as became the administrator of the Holy Office in Drumtochty.

Lachlan was a little man, with a spare, wiry body, iron gray hair and whiskers carefully arranged, a keen, old-fashioned face sharpened by much spiritual thinking, and eyes that looked at you from beneath shaggy eyebrows as from some other world. His face had an irresistible suggestion of a Skye terrier, the most serious of animals, with the hair reduced, and Drumsheugh carried us all with him when, in a moment of inspiration, he declared that "the body looks as if he hed juist come oot o' the Ark." He was a shepherd to trade, and very faithful in all his work, but his life business was theology, from Supralapsarianism in Election to the marks of faith in a believer's heart. His library consisted of some fifty volumes of ancient divinity, and lay on an old oak kist close to his hand, where he sat beside the fire of a winter night. When the sheep were safe and his day's labor was over, he read by the light of the fire and the "crusie "(oillamp) overhead, "Witsius on the Covenants," or Rutherford's "Christ Dying," or Bunyan's "Grace Abounding," or Owen's "130th Psalm," while the collies slept at his feet, and Flora put the finishing stroke to some bit of rustic finery. Worship was always colored by the evening's reading, but the old man never forgot to pray that they both might have a place in the everlasting covenant, and that the backslidings of Scotland might be healed.

As our inquisitor, Lachlan searched anxiously for sound doctrine and deep experience, but he was not concerned about learning, and fluency he regarded with disgust. When a young

minister from Muirtown stamped twice in his prayer at the Drumtochty Fast, and preached with great eloquence from the words, "And there was no more sea," repeating the text at the end of each paragraph, and concluding the sermon with "Lord Ullin's Daughter," the atmosphere round Lachlan became electric, and no one dared to speak to him outside. He never

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