eight years after. She bore him three
daughters in the interval; and I suppose the poor child's martyrdom was
made as easy for her as might be. She was "extremely attentive to him"
at the end, we read; and he seems to have spoken to her with some
confidence. Moreover, and this is very characteristic, he had copied out
for her use a little volume of his own devotional letters to other
women.

This is the end of the roll, unless we add to it Mrs. Adamson, who had
delighted much in his company "by reason that she had a troubled
conscience," and whose deathbed is commemorated at some length in the
pages of his history.[116]

And now, looking back, it cannot be said that Knox's intercourse with
women was quite of the highest sort. It is characteristic that we find
him more alarmed for his own reputation than for the reputation of the
women with whom he was familiar. There was a fatal preponderance of self
in all his intimacies: many women came to learn from him, but he never
condescended to become a learner in his turn. And so there is not
anything idyllic in these intimacies of his; and they were never so
renovating to his spirit as they might have been. But I believe they
were good enough for the women. I fancy the women knew what they were
about when so many of them followed after Knox. It is not simply because
a man is always fully persuaded that he knows the right from the wrong
and sees his way plainly through the maze of life, great qualities as
these are, that people will love and follow him, and write him letters
full of their "earnest desire for him" when he is absent. It is not over
a man, whose one characteristic is grim fixity of purpose, that the
hearts of women are "incensed and kindled with a special care," as it
were over their natural children. In the strong quiet patience of all
his letters to the weariful Mrs. Bowes, we may perhaps see one cause of
the fascination he possessed for these religious women. Here was one
whom you could besiege all the year round with inconsistent scruples and
complaints; you might write to him on Thursday that you were so elated
it was plain the devil was deceiving you, and again on Friday that you
were so depressed it was plain God had cast you off for ever; and he
would read all this patiently and sympathetically, and give you an
answer in the most reassuring polysyllables, and all divided into
heads--who knows?--like a treatise on divinity. And then, those easy
tears of