From Ploughshare to Pulpit by Gordon Stables

There was something well calculated to raise the spirits of such a man as Mackenzie on this balmy spring morning. Mackenzie was the minister of the parish of Belhaven, a parish that lies far up the winding Don, in a country that combines all the beauties of Lowland vegetation and treescape with the wilder scenery of the true Scottish Highlands.

Mac had been called to this parish when very young, but had remained here ever since, and he was now over forty, hale, handsome, and as straight as the ramrod of the old muzzle-loader he used when shooting rabbits; cheery also to a degree, and he seldom moved around anywhere without singing some old Scotch lilt or merry jig. Well, the fact is Mac's life was a very easy one. His Church was the Established, not the Free Kirk, and he therefore was to all intents and purposes independent. He had not to depend upon the whims and caprices of the people for his salary, nor upon the state of the crops at harvest-time. Not only had he a good stipend "bound to his head," as his parishioners phrased it, but a bonnie stretch of glebe land, quite a farm, in fact, that extended for over a mile along one bank of the river.