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"Ye speired for news o' your cousin an' I find he's a neebour o' yours; ca'd to a new kirk i' the city o' your captivity an' na stickit minister he makes, forbye he's ane o' these new Puseyite sectarians, to judge by your uncle's report.
But, alas! partly from his own bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition to risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his first attempt, he became totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse, gasped, grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregation thought them flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the pulpit-stairs, trampling upon the old women who generally take their station there, and was ever after designated as a 'stickit minister. And thus he wandered back to his own country, with blighted hopes and prospects, to share the poverty of his parents.
BARNABAS. Let there be an end of this hinting that I am out of my mind. Come and look at the cinema record. I tell you this man is Archbishop Haslam, Archbishop Stickit, President Dickenson, General Bullyboy and himself into the bargain; all five of them. THE ARCHBISHOP. I do not deny it. I never have denied it. Nobody has ever asked me.
Then the auld ass made anither out of a broken canoe paddle, and stickit the thing up in my cook-shed! And I have no the heart to tell him to put it in the fire and warm his naked shin bones wi' it. But I think if we all tackle the native teacher together we may knock some sense into his conceited head, and make him treat the poor man better.
It was as easy aye, it was easier! to work while I waited, since wait I must. I hauled down my old greasy working clothes, and went off to the pithead. They were glad enough to take me on gladder, I'm thinkin', than I was to be taken. But it was sair hard to hear the other miners laughing at me. "There he gaes the stickit comic," I heard one man say, as I passed.
The congregation turned their empty pockets inside out, and the minister departed in a farmer's cart. The scene was not an amusing one to those who looked on at it. To the Auld Lichts was then the humiliation of seeing their pulpit "supplied" on alternate Sabbaths by itinerant probationers or stickit ministers.
And it was thought a proud word o' the family, and they aye stickit by it and the mair in the latter times, because in the night-time they had mair freedom to perform their popish ceremonies by darkness and in secrecy than in the daylight at least that was the case in my time; they wad hae been disturbed in the day-time baith by the law and the commons of Fairport they may be owerlooked now, as I have heard: the warlds changed I whiles hardly ken whether I am standing or sitting, or dead or living."
Anyhow, when David returned, marvellously and mercifully restored to health, setting his younger brother free once more, two precious years had flown; so that Robin now found himself, at the age of twenty-three, faced with the alternative of making a fresh start in life or remaining on the farm at home, that most pathetic and forlorn of failures, a "stickit minister."
A third ran forward while Pringle was loading and threw an assagai at him. It struck him with great force on the leathern bullet-pouch which hung at his belt. Sandy Black took aim at the savage with a pistol. "Aim low, Sandy," said Pringle, continuing to load. Sandy obeyed and shot the Kafir dead, then, turning round, said anxiously "Are 'ee stickit, sir?"
"Ae man thrashin', an' twa birdies pickin'!" she went on, quoting the old nursery nonsense. Then she stooped, and let down her veil. Florimel hated her, and therefore might know her. "It's the day o' the Lord wi' auld Sanny Grame!" she resumed to herself, as she lifted her head. "He's stickit nae mair, but a chosen trumpet at last! Foul fa' 'im for a wearifu' cratur for a' that!
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