ons, are enough for admiration: while Bertram, and even
Marmion, though loyal to his country, are meant only to be pitied--not
honored. But neither Scott nor Byron will ever allow any grain of mercy
to a coward; and the final difference, therefore, between Fairservice
and Moniplies, which decides their fate in Scott's hands, is that
between their courage and cowardice. Fairservice is driven out at the
kitchen door, never to be heard of more, while Richie rises into Sir
Richie of Castle-Collop--the reader may perhaps at the moment think by
too careless grace on the King's part; which, indeed, Scott in some
measure meant;--but the grotesqueness and often evasiveness of Richie's
common manner make us forget how surely his bitter word is backed by his
ready blow, when need is. His first introduction to us (i. 33), is
because his quick temper overcomes his caution,--

"I thought to mysel', 'Ye are owre mony for me to mell with; but
let me catch ye in Barford's Park, or at the fit of the vennel, I
could gar some of ye sing another sang.' Sae, ae auld hirpling
deevil of a potter behoved just to step in my way and offer me a
pig, as he said, just to pit my Scotch ointment in, and _I gave him
a push, as but natural_, and the tottering deevil couped owre amang
his ain pigs, and damaged a score of them. And then the
reird[105] raise"--

while in the close of the events (ii. 365), he wins his wife by a piece
of hand-to-hand fighting, of the value of which his cool and stern
estimate, in answer to the gay Templar, is one of the great sentences
marking Scott's undercurrent of two feelings about war, in spite of his
love of its heroism.

"Bravo, Richie," cried Lowestoffe, "why, man, there lies Sin struck down
like an ox, and Iniquity's throat cut like a calf."

"I know not why you should upbraid me with my upbringing, Master
Lowestoffe," answered Richie, with great composure; "but I can tell you,
the shambles is not a bad place for training one to this work."

118. These then being the radical conditions of native character in the
two men, wholly irrespective of their religious persuasion, we have to
note what form their Presbyterian faith takes in each, and what effect
it has on their consciences.

In Richie, it has little to do; his conscience being, in the deep of it,
frank and clear. His religion commands him nothing which he is not at
once ready to do, or has not habitually done; an