“Of course all that duelling is wrong. But then Mr Scott only half disapproves of it.--And it is almost a pity it is wrong,” remarked Malcolm with a laugh; “it is such an easy way of settling some difficult things. Yet I hate it. It’s so cowardly. I may be a better shot than the other, and know it all the time. He may know it too, and have twice my courage. And I may think him in the wrong, when he _knows_ himself in the right.--There _is_ one man I have felt as if I should like to kill. When I was a boy I killed the cats that ate my pigeons.” A look of horror almost distorted Lady Clementina’s countenance. “I don’t know what to say next, my lady,” he went on, with a smile, “because I have no way of telling whether you looked shocked for the cats I killed, or the pigeons they killed, or the man I would rather see killed than have him devour more of my--white doves,” he concluded sadly, with a little shake of the head.--“But, please God,” he resumed, “I shall manage to keep them from him, and let him live to be as old as Methuselah if he can, even if he should grow in cunning and wickedness all the time. I wonder how he will feel when he comes to see what a sneaking cat he is. But this is not what we set out for.--Mr Tyrrel, then, the author’s hero, joins the Moravians at last.” “What are they?” questioned Clementina. “Simple, good, practical Christians, I believe,” answered Malcolm. “But he only does it when disappointed in love.” “No, my lady; he is not disappointed. The lady is only dead.” Clementina stared a moment--then dropped her head as if she understood. Presently she raised it again and said, “But, according to what you said the other day, in doing so he was forsaking altogether the duties of the station in which God had called him.” “That is true. It would have been a far grander thing to do his duty where he was, than to find another place and another duty. An earldom allotted is better than a mission preferred.” “And at least you must confess,” interrupted Clementina, “that he only took to religion because he was unhappy.” “Certainly, my lady, it is the nobler thing to seek God in the days of gladness, to look up to him in trustful bliss when the sun is shining. But if a man be miserable, if the storm is coming down on him, what is he to do? There is nothing mean in seeking God then, though it would have been nobler to seek him before.--But to return to the matter in hand: the author of Waverley makes his noble-hearted hero, whom assuredly he had no intention of disgracing, turn Moravian; and my conclusion from it is that, in his judgment, nobleness leads in the direction of religion; that he considers it natural for a noble mind to seek comfort there for its deepest sorrows.” “Well, it may be so; but what is religion without consistency in action?” said Clementina. “Nothing,” answered Malcolm. “Then how can you, professing to believe as you do, cherish such feelings towards any man as you have just been confessing?”