y persuasion, hinnie!" said the too-enlightened Mause; "wae's me for
thy blindness and theirs. O, Cuddie, they are but in the court of the
Gentiles, and will ne'er win farther ben, I doubt; they are but little
better than the prelatists themsells. They wait on the ministry of that
blinded man, Peter Poundtext, ance a precious teacher of the Word, but
now a backsliding pastor, that has, for the sake of stipend and family
maintenance, forsaken the strict path, and gane astray after the black
Indulgence. O, my son, had ye but profited by the gospel doctrines ye hae
heard in the Glen of Bengonnar, frae the dear Richard Rumbleberry, that
sweet youth, who suffered martyrdom in the Grassmarket, afore Candlemas!
Didna ye hear him say, that Erastianism was as bad as Prelacy, and that
the Indulgence was as bad as Erastianism?"

"Heard ever ony body the like o' this!" interrupted Cuddie; "we'll be
driven out o' house and ha' again afore we ken where to turn oursells.
Weej, mither, I hae just ae word mair--An I hear ony mair o' your
din--afore folk, that is, for I dinna mind your clavers mysell, they aye
set me sleeping--but if I hear ony mair din afore folk, as I was saying,
about Poundtexts and Rumbleberries, and doctrines and malignants, I'se
e'en turn a single sodger mysell, or maybe a sergeant or a captain, if ye
plague me the mair, and let Rumbleberry and you gang to the deil
thegither. I ne'er gat ony gude by his doctrine, as ye ca't, but a sour
fit o' the batts wi' sitting amang the wat moss-hags for four hours at a
yoking, and the leddy cured me wi' some hickery-pickery; mair by token,
an she had kend how I came by the disorder, she wadna hae been in sic a
hurry to mend it."

Although groaning in spirit over the obdurate and impenitent state, as
she thought it, of her son Cuddie, Mause durst neither urge him farther
on the topic, nor altogether neglect the warning he had given her. She
knew the disposition of her deceased helpmate, whom this surviving pledge
of their union greatly resembled, and remembered, that although
submitting implicitly in most things to her boast of superior acuteness,
he used on certain occasions, when driven to extremity, to be seized with
fits of obstinacy, which neither remonstrance, flattery, nor threats,
were capable of overpowering. Trembling, therefore, at the very
possibility of Cuddie's fulfilling his threat, she put a guard over her
tongue, and even when Poundtext was commended in her pre