He might, however, have sought some foundation for a true judgment, in a personal knowledge of their doctrine and collective behaviour; but, instead of going to hear what the babblers had to say, and thus satisfying himself whether the leaders of the movement spoke the words of truth and soberness, or of discord and denial-- whether their teaching and their prayers were on the side of order and law, or tending to sedition--he turned a ready ear to all the reports afloat concerning them, and, misjudging them utterly, made up his mind to use all _lawful_ means for putting an end to their devotions and exhortations. One fact he either had not heard or made no account of--that the public houses in the villages whence these assemblies were chiefly gathered, had already come to be all but deserted. Alone, then, and unsupported by one of his brethren of the Presbytery, even of those who suffered like himself, he repaired to Lossie House, and laid before the marquis the whole matter from his point of view:--that the tabernacles of the Lord were deserted for dens and caves of the earth; that fellows so void of learning as not to be able to put a sentence together, or talk decent English, (a censure at which Lord Lossie smiled, for his ears were accustomed to a different quality of English from that which now invaded them) took upon themselves to expound the Scriptures; that they taught antinomianism, (for which assertion, it must be confessed, there was some _apparent_ ground) and were at the same time suspected of Arminianism and Anabaptism: that, in a word, they were a terrible disgrace to the godly and hitherto sober-minded parishes in which the sect, if it might be dignified with even such a name, had sprung up. The marquis listened with much indifference, and some impatience: what did he or any other gentleman care about such things? Besides, he had a friendly feeling towards the fisher-folk, and a decided disinclination to meddle with their liberty, either of action or utterance.[6] [6] Ill, from all artistic points of view, as such a note comes in, I must, for reasons paramount to artistic considerations, remind my readers, that not only is the date of my story half a century or so back, but, dealing with principles, has hardly anything to do with actual events, and nothing at all with persons. The _local_ skeleton of the story alone is taken from the real, and I had not a model, not to say an original, for one of the characters in it --except indeed Mrs Catanach’s dog. “But what have I to do with it, Mr Cairns?” he said, when the stream of the parson’s utterance had at length ceased to flow. “I am not a theologian; and if I were, I do not see how that even would give me a right to interfere.”