utter inaction, she was not that kind of women
who sit and bear the stripes without an effort to ward them off. If
Jeannie was as quick as lightning, she was sure as that which follows
the flash. She thought for a moment, "God does not absolutely and for
ever leave his servants." Some thought had struck her. She put on her
bonnet and cloak deliberately, even looking into the glass to see if she
was tidy enough for where she intended going, and for whom she intended
to see.

And now this quiet woman is on her way down Broughton Street at twelve
o'clock of a cold winter night, which, like her own mind, had only that
calmness which results from the exhaustion of sudden biting gusts from
the north, and therefore right in her face. She drew her cloak round
her. She had a long way to go, but her son was in danger of the gallows;
and thoughtless, and as it now seemed, wicked as he was, he was yet her
_son_. The very word is a volume of heart language--not the fitful
expression of passion, but that quiet eloquence which bedews the eye and
brings deep sighs with holy recollections of the child-time, and
germinating hopes of future happiness up to the period when he would
hang over her departing spirit. Much of all that had gone, and been
replaced by dark forebodings of the future; and now there was before her
the vision of an ignominious death as the termination of all these holy
inspirations. But her faithful saying was always, "Wait, hope, and
persevere;" and the saying was muttered a hundred times as she trudged
weariedly, oh! how weariedly, for one who had scarcely tasted food for
that day, and who had left untouched the gift brought by her loving
daughter that night--for which, plain as it was, her heart yearned even
amidst its grief, yea, though grief is said, untruly no doubt, to have
no appetite. Perhaps not to those who are well fed; but nature is
stronger than even grief, and she now felt the consequence of her
disobedience to her behests in her shaking limbs and fainting heart. Yet
she trudged and trudged on, shutting her mouth against her empty stomach
to keep out the cold north wind. She is at the foot of Inverleith Row,
and her face is to the west; she will now escape the desultory blasts by
keeping close by the long running dyke. She passes the scene of the
robbery without knowing it; else, doubtless, she would have stood and
examined it by those instincts that force the spirit to such modes of
satisfaction, as if