"And how shall I ask of the pure and unstained what is denied to me by a sinner like mysell? If I hae sinned, hae I not suffered?—Hae I had a day's peace or an hour's rest since these lang wet locks of hair first lay upon my pillow at Craigburnfoot?—Has not my house been burned, wi' my bairn in the cradle?—Have not my boats been wrecked, when a' others weather'd the gale?—Have not a' that were near and dear to me dree'd penance for my sin?—Has not the fire had its share o' them—the winds had their part—the sea had her part?—And oh!" she added, with a lengthened groan, looking first upwards towards Heaven, and then bending her eyes on the floor—"O that the earth would take her part, that's been lang lang wearying to be joined to it!" Lord Glenallan had reached the door of the cottage, but the generosity of his nature did not permit him to leave the unhappy woman in this state of desperate reprobation. "May God forgive thee, wretched woman," he said, "as sincerely as I do!—Turn for mercy to Him who can alone grant mercy, and may your prayers be heard as if they were mine own!—I will send a religious man." "Na, na—nae priest! nae priest!" she ejaculated; and the door of the cottage opening as she spoke, prevented her from proceeding. CHAPTER THIRTEENTH. Still in his dead hand clenched remain the strings That thrill his father's heart—e'en as the limb, Lopped off and laid in grave, retains, they tell us, Strange commerce with the mutilated stump, Whose nerves are twinging still in maimed existence. Old Play. The Antiquary, as we informed the reader in the end of the thirty-first CHAPTER, [tenth] had shaken off the company of worthy Mr. Blattergowl, although he offered to entertain him with an abstract of the ablest speech he had ever known in the teind court, delivered by the procurator for the church in the remarkable case of the parish of Gatherem. Resisting this temptation, our senior preferred a solitary path, which again conducted him to the cottage of Mucklebackit. When he came in front of the fisherman's hut, he observed a man working intently, as if to repair a shattered boat which lay upon the beach, and going up to him was surprised to find it was Mucklebackit himself. "I am glad," he said in a tone of sympathy—"I am glad, Saunders, that you feel yourself able to make this exertion." "And what would ye have me to do," answered the fisher gruffly, "unless I wanted to see four children starve, because ane is drowned? It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer."