e laird
never once chafed himself about the lady's companies, it was not long
before she began to intermeddle about some of his.

"Who is that fat bouncing dame that visits the laird so often, and
always by herself?" said she to her maid Martha one day.

"Oh dear, mem, how can I ken? We're banished frae our acquaintances
here, as weel as frae the sweet gospel ordinances."

"Find me out who that jolly dame is, Martha. You, who hold communion
with the household of this ungodly man, can be at no loss to attain
this information. I observe that she always casts her eye up toward our
windows, both in coming and going; and I suspect that she seldom
departs from the house emptyhanded."

That same evening Martha came with the information that this august
visitor was a Miss Logan, an old an intimate acquaintance of the
laird's, and a very worthy respectable lady, of good connections, whose
parents had lost their patrimony in the civil wars.

"Ha! very well!" said the lady; "very well, Martha! But, nevertheless,
go thou and watch this respectable lady's motions and behaviour the
next time she comes to visit the laird--and the next after that. You
will not, I see, lack opportunities."

Martha's information turned out of that nature that prayers were said
in the uppermost story of Dalcastle house against the Canaanitish
woman, every night and every morning; and great discontent prevailed
there, even to anathemas and tears. Letter after letter was dispatched
to Glasgow; and at length, to the lady's great consolation, the Rev.
Mr. Wringhim arrived safely and devoutly in her elevated sanctuary.
Marvellous was the conversation between these gifted people. Wringhim
had held in his doctrines that there were eight different kinds of
FAITH, all perfectly distinct in their operations and effects. But the
lady, in her secluded state, had discovered another five, making twelve
[sic] in all: the adjusting of the existence or fallacy of these five
faiths served for a most enlightened discussion of nearly seventeen
hours; in the course of which the two got warm in their arguments,
always in proportion as they receded from nature, utility, and common
sense. Wringhim at length got into unwonted fervour about some disputed
point between one of these faiths and TRUST: when the lady, fearing
that zeal was getting beyond its wonted barrier, broke in on his
vehement asseverations with the following abrupt discomfiture: "But,
Sir, as long as I rem