One evening a woman came into Donald Menzies's barn just before the hour of service, elderly, most careful in her widow's dress, somewhat austere in expression, but very courteous in her manner. No one recognised her at the time, but she was suspected to be the forerunner of the Carnegie household, and Donald offered her a front seat. She thanked him for his good-will, but asked for a lower place, greatly delighting him by a reference to the parable wherein the Master rebuked the ambitious Pharisees who scrambled for chief seats. Their accent showed of what blood they both were, and that their Gaelic had still been mercifully left them, but they did not use it because of their perfect breeding, which taught them not to speak a foreign tongue in this place. So the people saw Donald offer her a hymn-book and heard her reply:
"It iss not a book that I will be using, and it will be a peety to take it from other people;" nor would she stand at the singing, but sat very rigid and with closed lips. When Carmichael, who had a pleasant tenor voice and a good ear, sang a solo, then much tasted in such meetings, she arose and left the place, and the minister thought he had never seen anything more uncompromising than her pale set face.
It was evident that she was Free Kirk and of the Highland persuasion, which was once over-praised and then has been over-blamed, but is never understood by the Lowland mind; and as Carmichael found that she had come to live in a cottage at the entrance to the Lodge, he looked in on his way home. She was sitting at a table reading the Bible, and her face was more hostile than in the meeting; but she received him with much politeness, dusting a chair and praying him to be seated. "You have just come to the district to reside, I think? I hope you will like our Glen."
"It wass here that I lived long ago, but I hef been married and away with my mistress many years, and there are not many that will know me."
"But you are not of Drumtochty blood?" inquired the minister.
"There iss not one drop of Sassenach blood in my veins"--this with a sudden flash. "I am a Macpherson and my husband wass a Macpherson; but we hef served the house of Carnegie for four generations."