The Reverend David Sempill began his ministry¹ in Woodilee on the fifteenth day of August in the year of grace sixteen hundred and forty-four. He was no stranger to the glen, for as a boy he had spent his holidays with his grandfather, who was the miller² of Roodfoot. In that year when the horn of the Kirk was exalted³ the voice of a patron mattered less; Mr. Sempill had been, as they said, “popularly called,” and so entered upon his office with the eager interest of the parish which had chosen him. A year before he had been licensed⁴ by the presbytery of Edinburgh; he was ordained⁵ in Woodilee in the present year on the last Sabbath of June, and “preached in” on the first Sabbath of August by the weighty voice of Mungo Muirhead, the minister of Kirk Aller. His plenishing — chiefly books — had come from Edinburgh on eight pack~horses, and, having escaped the perils⁶ of Carnwath Moss⁷, was now set out in an upper chamber⁸ of the little damp manse, which stood between the kirk and Woodilee burn. A decent widow woman, Isobel Veitch by name, had been found to keep his house, and David himself, now that all was ready, had ridden over on his grey cob from his cousin’s at Newbiggin and taken seisin of his new home. He had sung as he came in sight of Woodilee; he had prayed with bowed head as he crossed the manse threshold; but as he sat in the closet which he named his “study,” and saw his precious books on the shelf, and the table before him on which great works would be written, and outside the half-glazed window the gooseberry bushes of the garden and the silver links of the burn, he had almost wept with pure gratitude¹⁰ and content.

His first hour he had spent exploring his property. The manse was little and

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