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By Root 1080 0

of the MacDickinsons and the Episcopal church were the MacConnollys, who being proselytes of the pernicious Methodist sect believe that peasants who don't pay their rents should be pardoned and ultimately that one should hand out one's lands and chattels to the poor, the clans hostile to the MacDickinsons all preferred to turn a blind eye. From every Episcopal pulpit ministers preached hell and damnation on the MacConnollys and whomsoever bore arms under them or even so much as served in their household, and we MacFergusons, or MacStewarts, or MacBurtons, good Presbyterian families, let the matter pass. Of course the MacConnollys were themselves partly responsible for this state of affairs. Hadn't it been they who, when their clan was far more powerful than now, recogni2ed the Episcopal clergy's old right to a tithe upon our lands? Why did they do it? Because, as they said, it was not these things (mere formalities or little more) that were important in their religion, but other more substantial matters; or because, as we said, those damned Methodists thought they could beat the Devil at his own game and fool us all. In any event ill befell them and in very short order. We, for our part, certainly can't complain. We were allied to the MacDickinsons then and took care to increase the strength of their clan, since they were the only ones who could take on the MacConnollys and their accursed ideas with regard to oat harvest taxes. When we saw the Episcopalians leading one of MacConnolly's men into the village square with a noose round his neck and proclaiming him a creature of the Devil, we didn't turn our horses that way because it was none of our business.

And now that the MacDickinsons and their people are lording it in every village and hostelry, bullying and browbeating everybody so that no one can walk the high roads of Scodand without a kilt of their tartan, the Episcopal church chooses this moment to hurl anathema at us, the families of the upright Presbyterian faith, and to stir up our peasants and even our cooks against us. It's clear what they're after: an alliance with the Mac-duffs or the MacCockburns, old supporters of King James Stuart, papists or very nearly, that will bring them down from their mountain castles where they have been reduced to living like bandits among the goats.

Will it be a religious war? Really there's nobody, not even the most bigoted Episcopalian, who believes that fighting for steak-guzzling MacDickinsons capable of knocking back pints of beer even on a Sunday would amount to fighting for the faith. How do they see it, then? Perhaps they think that this is part of God's plan, like the captivity in Egypt. But Isaac's offspring were never asked to fight for the Pharaohs, even if God did choose to make them suffer so long in exile! If there is a war of religion, we MacFergusons will accept it as a test to strengthen our faith. But we know that on these shores the faithful of the rightful Church of Scotland are an elect minority, and that they may have been chosen by God - though God forbid! - for martyrdom. I have picked up my Bible again, which in the recent months of frequent enemy forays I had somewhat neglected, and now I leaf through the pages in the candlelight, though never losing sight of the moor down below where a rusde of wind has lifted, as always just before dawn. No, I'm at my wit's end; if God starts getting involved in our Scottish family quarrels - and in the event of a war of religion he can hardly do otherwise — who knows where it will end; each of us has his interests and his sins, the MacDick-insons more than anybody, and the Bible is there to tell us that God's intentions are always different from those that men imagine.

Perhaps this is where we have sinned, in always refusing to think of our wars as wars of religion, in the illusion that we would thus have greater liberty to compromise when it suited us. There is too great a spirit of appeasement in this part of Scotland, not a clan that doesn't fight without its ulterior motives. We have never taken sufficiently