“I just mean neither mair nor less than that Thomas Snoddy o’ Rubbledykes, wha should hae been my gudeman, is deein’ as fast as he can bicker; and that by and by I might have been my Leddy Rubbledykes wi’ three hundred a year, and nae husband to trouble me.” “That’s ill news,” continued David; “for if he dees, the debt will gae to his brother, a man who would raze the skin frae the mother’s face that bore him, if he could mak a leather purse out o’t. But what maks ye think he is deein’, lass?” “Deein’!” rejoined Dorothy, with an ill-timed, if not cruel laugh. “That cough o’ his would kill baith you and me in a year, even if we should only cough time about.” “Ower true, I fear,” groaned David; “and then there’s a’ thae ither debts upon me. Hark, Dorothy, ye’re a clever dame; could ye no’ get the laird to discharge the debt?” “Maybe I might, were I to kiss him, David,” was the answer, with another smile. “And what for no’?” asked this honest man, who raised his voice in the Tron every Sunday. “Because I am neither a Judith nor a Judas,” replied she. “But ye’re a Christian,” was the ready rejoinder; “and what’s mair, a Calvinist.” “As if a body could be a Christian without being a Calvinist,” said she. “But what do ye mean, David--are ye crazy? Why should I kiss another man because I’m a Calvinist?” “Nae sin, nae salvation,” said he. Whereupon the worthy couple laughed at a tenet which, being liable to a double construction, has always been dangerous to the common people of Scotland. And what was worse, this laugh was only the prelude to a further conversation so deep and mysterious, and withal conducted in so low a train of whispers and re-whispers, that even our familiar, endowed as he is with the power of going through stone walls, could carry off no more than smiles and nods and winks, and more and more of the same kind of laughs. But as the son of Sirach says, “There is an exquisite subtlety, and the same is unjust;” and “Wrath will surely search it.” Nor was there in this case much time required for the retribution, for the very next day a man rushed into the house of Mrs Dempster with the intelligence on his tongue that David Dempster was drowned at Granton. The dreadful story was indeed corroborated into a certainty by a bundle of clothes which the messenger of evil tidings laid on the table, no other than the suit which David had put on that morning, including the linen shirt which Dorothy’s own fingers had adorned with the breast-ruffle, and identified with the beloved initials, D. D., more precious to her than the symbols of ecclesiastical honours. All were there as he had left them on the beach before the plunge which was to be unto death--yea, something after death, and more terrible, for had not David been a scoffer? If Mrs Dempster had at first been able to collect her scattered senses, she would have been satisfied even with the look of the clothes, for she