"'Now, Reverend Sir,' said the judge, 'this wine has been slandered and its fair fame taken away without reason. I demand that you absolve it from the scandal.'
"'My Lord,' said my worthy forbear, 'you are a great criminal lawyer, but you are not well read in Kirk law, for no offender can be absolved without three appearances.'
"My grandfather," the Doctor used to conclude, "had the best of that jest besides at least two bottles of claret, for in those days a clergyman took more wine than we would now think seemly, although, mark you, the old gentleman always denounced drunkenness on two grounds: first, because it was an offence against religion, and second, because it was a sign of weakness."
Some old folk could remember the Doctor's father, who never attained to the Doctorate, but was a commanding personage. He published no sermons, but as the first Davidson in Drumtochty, he laid the foundations of good government. The Kilspindie family had only recently come into the parish--having purchased the larger part of the Carnegies' land--and Drumtochty took a thrawn fit, and among other acts of war pulled down time after time certain new fences. The minister was appealed to by his lordship, and having settled the rights of the matter, he bade the factor wait in patience till the Sacrament, and Drumsheugh's father used to tell unto the day of his death, as a historical event, how the Doctor's father stood at the communion-table and debarred from the Sacrament evil livers of all kinds, and that day in especial all who had broken Lord Kilspindie's fences,--which was an end of the war. There was a picture of him in the Doctor's study, showing a very determined gentleman, who brought up both his parish and his family upon the stick, and with undeniable success.
With such blood in his veins it was not to be expected that our Doctor should be after the fashion of a modern minister. No one had ever seen him (or wished to see him) in any other dress than black cloth, and a broad-brimmed silk hat, with a white stock of many folds and a bunch of seals depending from some mysterious pocket. His walk, so assured, so measured, so stately, was a means of grace to the parish, confirming every sound and loyal belief, and was crowned, so to say, by his stick, which had a gold head, and having made history in the days of his father, had reached the position of a hereditary sceptre. No one could estimate the aid and comfort that stick gave to the Doctor's visits, but one quite understood the force of the comparison Hillocks once drew, after the Doctor's death, between the coming to his house of the Doctor and a "cry" from his energetic successor under the new _régime_.