“O, sirs,” exclaimed Mause, “here’s a goodly spectacle indeed! My spirit is like that of the blessed Elihu, it burns within me--my bowels are as wine which lacketh vent--they are ready to burst like new bottles. O, that He may look after His ain people in this day of judgment and deliverance!--And now, what ailest thou, precious Mr Gabriel Kettledrummle? I say, what ailest thou, that wert a Nazarite purer than snow, whiter than milk, more ruddy than sulphur,” (meaning, perhaps, sapphires,)--“I say, what ails thee now, that thou art blacker than a coal, that thy beauty is departed, and thy loveliness withered like a dry potsherd? Surely it is time to be up and be doing, to cry loudly and to spare not, and to wrestle for the puir lads that are yonder testifying with their ain blude and that of their enemies.” This expostulation implied a reproach on Mr Kettledrummle, who, though an absolute Boanerges, or son of thunder, in the pulpit, when the enemy were afar, and indeed sufficiently contumacious, as we have seen, when in their power, had been struck dumb by the firing, shouts, and shrieks, which now arose from the valley, and--as many an honest man might have been, in a situation where he could neither fight nor fly--was too much dismayed to take so favourable an opportunity to preach the terrors of presbytery, as the courageous Mause had expected at his hand, or even to pray for the successful event of the battle. His presence of mind was not, however, entirely lost, any more than his jealous respect for his reputation as a pure and powerful preacher of the word. “Hold your peace, woman!” he said, “and do not perturb my inward meditations and the wrestlings wherewith I wrestle.--But of a verity the shooting of the foemen doth begin to increase! peradventure, some pellet may attain unto us even here. Lo! I will ensconce me behind the cairn, as behind a strong wall of defence.” “He’s but a coward body after a’,” said Cuddie, who was himself by no means deficient in that sort of courage which consists in insensibility to danger; “he’s but a daidling coward body. He’ll never fill Rumbleberry’s bonnet.--Odd! Rumbleberry fought and flyted like a fleeing dragon. It was a great pity, puir man, he couldna cheat the woodie. But they say he gaed singing and rejoicing till’t, just as I wad gang to a bicker o’ brose, supposing me hungry, as I stand a gude chance to be.-- Eh, sirs! yon’s an awfu’ sight, and yet ane canna keep their een aff frae it!”