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JAMES HEPBURN - CONTENTS - JAMES HEPBURW. - THE MINISTER - lt A CROSS a wide stretch of dreary1 level moor the Free Church minister of Dunross was mending his way towards home, at a rapid pace, one cheerless, foggy afternoon, late in the autumn. There were certailily no temptations to linger by the way. On a bright Aygust or September afternoon, when the purple heather bloom was glowing under the rays of an unclouded sun, and picturesque ranges of hills were visible in the distance, the scene was not devoid of all beauty but when, as at the moment, a dull brown expanse, broken only by. occasiona1 patches of coarse gmss, or scattered bou1del. s of stone, faded at a few hundred yards distance into grey mist, and a raw, cold wind was driving frequent scuds of light rain across the country, the spot was not one where any human being of ordinarily healthy turn of mind would have felt disposed to linger. The minister certainly did not linger. It would have sorely taxed any one, save a very practised walker, to keep pace with him for a couple of miles and his long strides soon brought him to where the mere track he had been following gradually defined itself into a road. There, ascending a slight rise, he reached the head of a gradually widening glen, along the sides of which straggled the village of Dunross, in all the cold, stern solidity which is the leading character istic of a Scottish village. Dunross presented no salient feature to the eye, beyond the r e Cih urch, seeming to assertlitself a trikle ostentatiously on the summit of one knoll, vithits manse on the top of ailother knoll close at hand. C. As he reached this point on his homeward way the minister heaved a deep sigh, as intruth he had often done before, at that particular spot. Measured by his estimate of things, the lines had not fallen to him in pleasant places pet he had his own private reasons for cherishing a secret t conviction that no pleasanter ones were irr store for him he should probably live and die Free Church minister of Dunross. The existence, in such a mere hamlet as Dunross, of a Free Church and manse was due to an outburst of Disruption enthusiasm on the part of a lay supporter of the movement who owned some land in the village. Not even that sparsely populated clistrict, he determined, shotild be without its witness for the truth so he built both church and manse at his own expense, besides contributing large sums to the Sustentntion Fund and had thus ensured at least the one result, that one minister of the comlnunity had marvellously little wherewith to occupy his time. Of these few sheep in the wilderness James Hepburn had been the spiritual shepherd for twelve years and though these years had not been wasted, he was very tired of his seclusion. Not that he for a moment held that individual souls increased in value in proportion as the nurnber domiciled in n given space increased but there was so terribly little to do. Had every man, woman, and child of his flock been seized simultaneously with mortal illness, he could have personal visits almost daily to each sufferer without overtaxing the powers of an active man. Yet here he . Ja nes Hep burn. believed himself to be doomed to end his days, so it was little wonder he often sighed at that particular point, from, whence he had a birds eye view of nearly the whole limited range of possible activity accorded to him...

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