It was a greater disappointment to her than she cared to acknowledge either to her husband or to herself.
But the commotion caused in the community by the fight was soon swallowed up in the interest aroused by the opening of the new church, an event for which they had made long and elaborate preparation.

The big bazaar, for which the women had been sewing for a year or more, was held on Wednesday, and turned out to be a great success, sufficient money being realized to pay for the church furnishing, which they had undertaken to provide.
The day following was the first of the "Communion Season." In a Highland congregation the Communion Seasons are the great occasions of the year.
For weeks before, the congregation is kept in mind of the approaching event, and on the Thursday of the communion week the season opens with a solemn fast day.
The annual Fast Day, still a national institution in Scotland, although it has lost much of its solemnity and sacredness in some places, was originally associated with the Lord's Supper, and was observed with great strictness in the matter of eating and drinking; and in Indian Lands, as in all congregations of that part of the country, the custom of celebrating the Fast Day was kept up.

It was a day of great solemnity in the homes of the people of a godly sort.

There was no cooking of meals till after "the services," and indeed, some of them tasted neither meat nor drink the whole day long.

To the younger people of the congregation it was a day of gloom and terror, a kind of day of doom.
Even to those advanced in godliness it brought searchings of heart, minute and diligent, with agonies of penitence and remorse.