If it had not been that Aminadab married the portly Janet, we might have heard no more of the fortunes of this man. But how true Aminadab's quotation, that God's vengeance never sleeps! Where, in all the scathed corpses of heaven's lightning, was there ever one that told its tale like that of Fletcher of Balinsloe, Lindertes, and Logie? He was recalled to India again. "Ay, Aminadab, he was forced to go by the Government; but maybe the Government was only like a thing that is moved by the storm, and cuts in twain, where its own silly power could do nothing. Before he went, he married a beautiful little woman,[*] perhaps the most spirited in the shire, white as Kalee was black, and come, too, of gentle blood. Why did she marry this man? Had she not heard of the fate of Kalee? Had she not seen the Cradle (still standing in the hollow of the hill)? No doubt; but woman will go through worse storms than man's passion to get to the goal of wealth and honour. Then there is a frenzy in woman, Aminadab. She is like the boys, who seek danger for its own sake, and will skim on skates the rim of the black pool that descends from the film of ice down to the bubbling well of death below. Women have an ambition to tame wild men; ay, even wild men have a charm for them, which the tame sons of prudence and industry cannot inspire. So it was: they were married, and he took her to India." [note *: Afterwards, as I have heard, the wife of Milne of Milneford. She lived till nearly a hundred.] "'So the Lord did lead him; and there was no strange god with them.'" "Ay, but there was a God _before_ him, lad." "What mean you, Janet?" "Do you not recollect of Brahma?" "Do not mention that strange figure, Janet. My blood runs cold." Janet laughed. "Runs cold, lad, at what? Brahma was just one of the Nawab's great men, whom he sent over here to watch the fate of his daughter. Why, man, he lodged next door to you, with Mrs. Lyon at the Scouring Burn." "The black man the boys used to run after?" "The very same. He returned with Ady, and was at the court of the Nawab and told all, ay, and more than we knew--that Fletcher would be obliged to visit Bombay again ere long after. He had got this from some of the authorities in England. For many a day did the prince weep for his Kalee; for many a day did he watch for the murderer's arrival, ay, as a tiger of his jungles watches in the night with fiery eyes for a beast even more cruel than himself. He had even all the coast of Coromandel, I think they call it, to give intelligence of the vessel. The very name of the vessel was known; the very paint of its sides, and the flag it bore--so well had he kept up his knowledge of what was going on in England." "Wonderful!" cried Aminadab. "'And the fowler that did slay, falleth into his own net.'" "And a terrible net, with meshes of sharp steel to hold and cut." "Ah!" cried Aminadab, as he rubbed his hands, and chuckled like a big boy who sees the porridge boiling.