Yet, in spite of her boasted constancy, it was pretty evident to Flora that Rab Duncan was fiddling his way fast into the buxom Marion's heart; and she thought it more than probable that he would succeed in persuading her to follow his fortunes instead of seeking a home with her brother and her old sweetheart in the far West. There was one sour-looking puritanical person on board, who regarded the music and dancing with which the poor emigrants beguiled the tedium of the long voyage with silent horror. He was a minister of some dissenting church; but to which of the many he belonged Flora never felt sufficiently interested in the man to inquire. His countenance exhibited a strange mixture of morose ill-humour, shrewdness, and hypocrisy. While he considered himself a vessel of grace chosen and sanctified, he looked upon those around him as vessels of wrath only fitted for destruction. In his eyes they were already damned, and only waited for the execution of their just sentence. Whenever the dancing commenced he went below and brought up his Bible, which he spread most ostentatiously on his knees, turning up the whites of his eyes to heaven, and uttering very audible groans between the pauses in the music. What the subject of his meditations were, is best known to himself: but no one could look at his low head, sly, sinister-looking eyes and malevolent scowl, and imagine him a messenger of the glad tidings that speak of peace and good-will to man. He seemed like one who would rather call down the fire from heaven to destroy, than learn the meaning of the Christ-spoken text--"I will have mercy and not sacrifice." Between this man and Mr. Lootie a sort of friendship had sprung up. They might constantly be seen about ten o'clock P.M. seated beneath the shade of the boat, wrangling and disputing about contested points of faith, contradicting and denouncing their respective creeds in the most unchristianlike manner, each failing to convince the other, or gain the least upon his opponent. "That is the religion of words," said Lyndsay, one day to Flora, as they had been for some time silent listeners to one of Mr. S----'s fierce arguments on predestination--"I wonder how that man's actions would agree with his boasted sanctity?" "Let him alone," said Flora; "time will perhaps show. I have no faith in him."