, as if none had ever suffered evil before us. Weak and
gentle spirits have borne without repining, sufferings as great as
threaten us. Often has my mother told me the story of sweet Marjory
Wilson, drowned in the Solway water, in the days of Claverhouse, because
she met with her friends and kindred to worship God after their manner--
and never could I listen to it without tears. Ah, what a spirit was
there! She was but eighteen, and she could have saved her life by
saying a few words. Life was as sweet to her as it is to us: she too
had a home and friends and kindred, whom it must have been hard for the
poor young thing to leave so suddenly and awfully. And yet she refused
to speak those words--she chose to die rather. They took her out upon
the sand where the tide was rising fast, and bound her to a stake. Soon
the water came up to her face. She saw it go over the head of a poor
old woman, whom they had tied farther out than herself. She saw her
death struggles; she heard her gasp for breath, as she choked and
strangled in the yellow waves. Ah! she must have had courage from the
Lord, or that sight would have made her young heart fail. Once more,
and for the last time, the king's officer asked her to make the promise
never to attend a conventicle again. He urged it, for he pitied her
youth and innocence. Her friends and neighbours begged her to save her
life. `O speak, dear Marjory!' they cried, `and make the promise; it
can't be wrong. Do it for our sakes, dear Marjory, and they will let
you go!' But she would not save her life by doing what she had been
taught to think was wrong; and while the swirling waves of the Solway
were rising fast around her, she prayed to God, and kept singing
fragments of psalms, till the water choked her voice--and so she
perished. But, O friends! to know that such things have been; that
spirits gentle and brave as this have lived, makes it easier to suffer
courageously."

"Horrible!" exclaimed Max, "I seem to see all that you have so
graphically told. But how stern and cruel the teachers who would
sacrifice human life rather than abate their own sullen obstinacy, even
in trifles--who could encourage this innocent but misguided girl, in her
refusal to save her life by the harmless promise to attend a church
instead of a conventicle."

Just as Browne was commencing an eager and indignant reply to Max's rash
reflections upon the strictness of covenanting teachings, we we