He had frequent letters from the Laird, which told him all the news he cared to know of Glen Effick, whose dust he vowed to himself he had shaken from his feet for ever. The beadle's appearance at church in the new character of married man had overturned and shivered to pieces the whole fabric of scandal under which he had lain, and the old gentleman grew quite humorous over the consternation and recriminations of his brother elders in Session assembled. A scapegoat had at first appeared necessary to these wiseacres, and poor Joseph was selected as the victim on whom they might lay the punishment of their stupid credulity, sending it and him forth into the wilderness to be no more heard of or remembered; and it had taken all the Laird's and the new minister's eloquence and influence to dissuade them from their vindictive intentions, and let the poor wretch work out in peace the heavy domestic retribution he had brought upon himself. 'I might say,' he added, 'that we all congratulate you; but you know we never supposed that there was anything in it, and we only regretted that you should have taken a nonsensical accusation so seriously to heart.' 'We all' Roderick understood to be the old gentleman's way of including Sophia with himself, and he was greatly cheered. He kept up a constant correspondence with the Laird himself, and took care that Mary's letterwriting to Sophia should never flag, so that he felt by no means cut off from her. He might have adventured a letter to her himself now, with far greater hope than he had felt on a previous occasion, but he had begun to doubt and wonder as to his own future plans in life, and he misgave as to his moral right to commit another to the hazy uncertainties he begun to see before him. His utter outrooting from Glen Effick was not a process which could take place without leaving changes and permanent effects on his whole nature. It was no mere transplanting-process, in which the fibres retain some clod of the old for stay and nourishment until they are able to spread themselves and take hold on the new soil. His clerical brethren had treated him as a diseased and withered branch, a weed to be plucked up by the root and cast out of the vineyard; and finding himself thus out for the moment, he was minded to look well about him before he returned.