“Oho!” cried Bruce, and straddled around the room with his face turned to the joists.—“My dear Copland, did you ever hear such a thing in all the days that ever you have to live? Upon my soul, the old woman is talking of grace, and salvation, and the joys of heaven too, by Saint G‑‑! My dearest honey and darling, will you be so kind as stand up upon the soles of your feet, and let me see what kind of a figure you will be in heaven. Now, by the cross of Saint Patrick, I would take a journey there to see you go swimming through Heaven in that same form, with your long waist, and plaitted quoif, and that same charming face of yours. Och! och! me! what a vile she whig we have got in this here corner!—Copland, my dear soul, I foresee that all the ewes and kine of Chapelhope will soon be rouped at the cross of Selkirk, and then what blessed lawings we shall have! Now my dear mistress Grace, you must be after renouncing the joys of heaven immediately; for upon my honour, the very sight of your face would spoil the joys of any place whatever, and the first thing you must do is to lay that delightful old book with the beautiful margin along the side of it, on the coals; but before you do that we shall sing to his praise and glory from the 7th verse of the 149th psalm.” He then laid aside his helmet and sung the psalm, giving out each line with a whine that was truly ludicrous, after which he put the Bible into the goodwife’s hand, and desired her, in a serious tone, instantly to lay it on the fire. The captain’s speech to his companions about the ewes and kine of Chapelhope was not altogether lost on the conscience of Maron Linton. It was not, as she afterwards said, like water spilt upon the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. “Why, dear sir,” said she, “ye ken, after a’, that the beuk’s naething but paper an’ ink, an’ three shillings an’ aughtpence will buy as gude a ane frae Geordy Dabson, the morn, an’ if there be ony sin in’t, it will lye at your door, an’ no at mine. I’ll ne’er haigel wi’ my king’s officer about three and aughtpence.” So saying, Maron laid the Bible on the fire, which soon consumed it to ashes. “Now, may the devil take me,” said Bruce, “if I do not believe that you are a true woman after all, and if so, my purse is lighter by one half than it was; but, my dear honey, you have the very individual and genuine seeds of whiggism in your constitution—You have, I will swear, been at many a harmless and innocent conventicle.” “Ye ken little about me, sir.—Gude forbid that ever I countenanced sic traitors to the kirk and state!” “Amen! say I; but I prophecy and say unto thee, that the first field–meeting into which thou goest in the beauty of holiness, thou shalt be established for ever with thy one foot in Dan and the other in Beersheba, and shalt return to thy respective place of abode as rank a whig as ever swung in the Grass–Market.”