“--Wi’ this auld and brief breath,” continued Mause, “will I testify against the backslidings, defections, defalcations, and declinings of the land--against the grievances and the causes of wrath!” “Peace, I pr’ythee--Peace, good woman,” said the preacher, who had just recovered from a violent fit of coughing, and found his own anathema borne down by Mause’s better wind; “peace, and take not the word out of the mouth of a servant of the altar.--I say, I uplift my voice and tell you, that before the play is played out--ay, before this very sun gaes down, ye sall learn that neither a desperate Judas, like your prelate Sharpe that’s gane to his place; nor a sanctuary-breaking Holofernes, like bloody-minded Claverhouse; nor an ambitious Diotrephes, like the lad Evandale; nor a covetous and warld-following Demas, like him they ca’ Sergeant Bothwell, that makes every wife’s plack and her meal-ark his ain; neither your carabines, nor your pistols, nor your broadswords, nor your horses, nor your saddles, bridles, surcingles, nose-bags, nor martingales, shall resist the arrows that are whetted and the bow that is bent against you!” “That shall they never, I trow,” echoed Mause; “castaways are they ilk ane o’ them--besoms of destruction, fit only to be flung into the fire when they have sweepit the filth out o’ the Temple--whips of small cords, knotted for the chastisement of those wha like their warldly gudes and gear better than the Cross or the Covenant, but when that wark’s done, only meet to mak latchets to the deil’s brogues.” “Fiend hae me,” said Cuddie, addressing himself to Morton, “if I dinna think our mither preaches as weel as the minister!--But it’s a sair pity o’ his hoast, for it aye comes on just when he’s at the best o’t, and that lang routing he made air this morning, is sair again him too--Deil an I care if he wad roar her dumb, and then he wad hae’t a’ to answer for himsell--It’s lucky the road’s rough, and the troopers are no taking muckle tent to what they say, wi’ the rattling o’ the horse’s feet; but an we were anes on saft grund, we’ll hear news o’ a’ this.” Cuddie’s conjecture were but too true. The words of the prisoners had not been much attended to while drowned by the clang of horses’ hoofs on a rough and stony road; but they now entered upon the moorlands, where the testimony of the two zealous captives lacked this saving accompaniment. And, accordingly, no sooner had their steeds begun to tread heath and green sward, and Gabriel Kettledrummle had again raised his voice with, “Also I uplift my voice like that of a pelican in the wilderness”-- “And I mine,” had issued from Mause, “like a sparrow on the house-tops”-- When “Hollo, ho!” cried the corporal from the rear; “rein up your tongues, the devil blister them, or I’ll clap a martingale on them.” “I will not peace at the commands of the profane,” said Gabriel.