"He turned fiercely--'Keep your sentimentality for your next sermon, sir;' and he looked at me with a withering scowl that sent a chill to my heart. I felt a blighting of the soul that I would not willingly have acknowledged--a sort of crushing consciousness, that the person before me was in very deed my evil genius; but the _consciousness_ of such a feeling drove me in the present instance to return his savage look as haughtily as it was given; and I made a sudden motion with my hand, which made him start back, and grasp the sma' end of his long hammer-headed hunting whip.--'I say, dominie, I do not _quite_ understand you this morning; but, by G--, sir, if you give me an opportunity I will read you a lesson that is not in your primer.'--And he raised his whip threateningly. He was, as I have before mentioned, a tall well-put-together man, as we say in Lincumdodie, and far more than a match for me, at my best, when I had twa legs, and therefore incomparably my superior in bodily strength and activity, maimed as I now was. However, I took no time to consider of all this, but making a sudden spring, I wrenched his whip from him, and as he swerved from me, he fell over the trestle whereon the body of the carrier lay, and upset it, to the great horror of the bystanders; and there lay, side by side, the living scoffer and the dead corpse. A murmur of something that hovered between applause and disapprobation buzzed amongst the group of villagers; and the wee callant cried loud and bitterly, when, as the laird was in the act of gathering himself up, Mr Bland himsell entered the kirk, and with more sternness in his countenance than I had ever seen there before. "'Mr Adderfang,' said he to the young man, 'what is the meaning of all this?--Is it becoming in a gentleman of your rank to desecrate the House of God by heartless and ill-timed levity, first of all; for I have heard the story from one of my elders; and then to threaten an unoffending schoolmaster--ay, sir,'--for here Adderfang seemed on the point of contradicting the minister--'ay, sir, and, to the credit of your discretion be it said, a maimed man, too? Was this decent? was it gentlemanly?' "Here the poor wife of the carrier, with her clothes dripping with water, and splashed with red clay stains from the miry road, without her mutch, her grey haffits clotted with rain and perspiration over her blue and shrunken features, and with her lip quivering, rushed into the church. "'Whar is he--whar is he--whar is my Willie?' The instant her eye rested on the body she gave a long loud shriek, that echoed along the roof, and fell down on it senseless. We had the poor woman removed, and by that time Mr Adderfang had disappeared." * * * * * But the plot was fast thickening both with the dominie and poor Jessy Miller.