s you that sat in your red cloak by the
high-road, and told him there was a lion in the path?"

"In the name of Heaven! wha are ye?" said the old woman, breaking off her
narrative in astonishment. "But be wha ye may," she continued, resuming
it with tranquillity, "ye can ken naething waur o' me than that I hae
been willing to save the life o' friend and foe."

"I know no ill of you, Mrs. Maclure, and I mean no ill by you; I only
wished to show you that I know so much of this person's affairs that I
might be safely intrusted with the rest. Proceed, if you please, in your
narrative."

"There is a strange command in your voice," said the blind woman, "though
its tones are sweet. I have little mair to say. The Stewarts hae been
dethroned, and William and Mary reign in their stead; but nae mair word
of the Covenant than if it were a dead letter. They hae taen the indulged
clergy, and an Erastian General Assembly of the ante pure and triumphant
Kirk of Scotland, even into their very arms and bosoms. Our faithfu'
champions o' the testimony agree e'en waur wi' this than wi' the open
tyranny and apostasy of the persecuting times, for souls are hardened and
deadened, and the mouths of fasting multitudes are crammed wi' fizenless
bran instead of the sweet word in season; and mony an hungry, starving
creature, when he sits down on a Sunday forenoon to get something that
might warm him to the great work, has a dry clatter o' morality driven
about his lugs, and--"

"In short," said Morton, desirous to stop a discussion which the good old
woman, as enthusiastically attached to her religious profession as to the
duties of humanity, might probably have indulged longer,--"In short, you
are not disposed to acquiesce in this new government, and Burley is of
the same opinion?"

"Many of our brethren, sir, are of belief we fought for the Covenant, and
fasted and prayed and suffered for that grand national league, and now we
are like neither to see nor hear tell of that which we suffered and
fought and fasted and prayed for. And anes it was thought something might
be made by bringing back the auld family on a new bargain and a new
bottom, as, after a', when King James went awa, I understand the great
quarrel of the English against him was in behalf of seven unhallowed
prelates; and sae, though ae part of our people were free to join wi' the
present model, and levied an armed regiment under the Yerl of Angus, yet
our honest friend, and ot