they saw me coming, ran crying to their mothers. "Here's the feckless Mess-John;" and then when I went in into the houses, their parents would no ask me to sit down, but with a scornful way, said, "Honest man, what's your pleasure here?" Nevertheless, I walked about from door to door, like a dejected beggar, till I got the almous deed of a civil reception, and who would have thought it, from no less a person than the same Thomas Thorl that was so bitter against me in the kirk on the foregoing day.
Thomas was standing at the door with his green duffle apron, and his red Kilmarnock nightcap—I mind him as well as if it was but yesterday—and he had seen me going from house to house, and in what manner I was rejected, and his bowels were moved, and he said to me in a kind manner, "Come in, sir, and ease yourself; this will never do, the clergy are God's gorbies, and for their master's sake it behoves us to respect them. There was no ane in the whole parish mair against you than mysel, but this early visitation is a symptom of grace that I couldna have expeccit from a bird out of the nest of patronage." I thanked Thomas, and went in with him, and we had some solid conversation together, and I told him that was not so much the pastor's duty to feed the flock, as to herd them well; and that although there might be some abler with the head than me, there wasna a he within the bounds of Scotland more willing to watch the fold by night and by day. And Thomas said he had not heard a mair sound observe for some
