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Updated: June 16, 2025
Tammas preserved the Bible, and showed it complacently to visitors as the present he got from Mr. Byars. The minister knew this, and it turned his temper sour. Tammas's proud moments, after that, were when he passed the minister.
The most uncanny thing about the kirk was the precentor's box beneath the pulpit. Three Auld Licht ministers I have known, but I can only conceive one precentor. Lang Tammas's box was much too small for him. Since his disappearance from Thrums I believe they have paid him the compliment of enlarging it for a smaller man no doubt with the feeling that Tammas alone could look like a Christian in it.
"Weel, then, what is't?" demanded Pete, who had never properly come under Tammas's spell. "I ken," said Tammas. "Oot wi't then." "I dinna say it's lyin' on my tongue," Tammas replied, in a tone of reproof, "but if ye'll juist speak awa aboot some other thing for a meenute or twa, I'll tell ye syne."
"I would be of opeenion," said Hendry, who was one of Tammas's most staunch admirers, "'at another mark o' the rale humorist was his seein' humour in all things?" Tammas shook his head a way he had when Hendry advanced theories. "I dinna haud wi' that ava," he said.
"There's nae pooer on heaven or airth like luve," Marget said to me afterwards; "it maks the weak strong and the dumb tae speak. Oor herts were as water afore Tammas's words, an' a' saw the doctor shake in his saddle. A' never kent till that meenut hoo he hed a share in a'body's grief, an' carried the heaviest wecht o' a' the Glen.
Are ye in pain?" Then, catching sight of Owd Bob, he started back in affected horror. "And, ma certes! so's yer dog! Yer dog as was gray is green. Oh, guid life! " and he made as though about to fall fainting to the ground. Then, in bantering tones: "Ah, but ye shouldna covet " "He'll ha' no need to covet it long, I can tell yo'," interposed Tammas's shrill accents. "And why for no?"
As certainly as the shutting of a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a toll of the bell in front of the minister. Tammas's halfpenny rang in the plate as Gavin passed T'nowhead's pew, and Gavin's sixpence with the snapping-to of the precentor's door.
Then the precentor's fingers relaxed their grip, and he tottered into the middle of the room. "Hendry," he pleaded, holding out his arms pathetically, "tak' back these words. Oh, man, have pity, and tak' them back!" But Hendry would not, and then Lang Tammas's mouth worked convulsively, and he sobbed, crying, "Nobody kent it, but mair than mortal son, O God, I did love the lad!"
"A' said she cudna be cured, and it was true, for there's juist ae man in the land fit for 't, and they micht as weel try tae get the mune oot o' heaven. Sae a' said naethin' tae vex Tammas's hert, for it's heavy eneuch withoot regrets.
"You're screening him better by standing whaur you are," said the imperturbable Hendry; "for as lang as you dinna show your face they'll think it may be you that's missing instead o' Mr. Dishart." Indeed, Gavin's appearance in church without the precentor would have been as surprising as Tammas's without the minister.
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