r the burning, a fagot for hell-fire?"

"I'm very sorry, ma'am," said Francie. "I humbly beg the Lord's pardon,
and yours, for my wickedness."

"H'm," grunted the lady. "Did ye see nobody else?"

"No, ma'am," said Francie, with the face of an angel, "except Jock
Crozer, that gied me the billet."

"Jock Crozer!" cried the lady. "I'll Crozer them! Crozers indeed! What
next? Are we to repose the lives of a suffering remnant in Crozers? The
whole clan of them wants hanging, and if I had my way of it, they
wouldna want it long. Are you aware, sir, that these Crozers killed your
forebear at the kirk-door?"

"You see, he was bigger 'n me," said Francie.

"Jock Crozer!" continued the lady. "That'll be Clement's son, the
biggest thief and reiver in the countryside. To trust a note to him! But
I'll give the benefit of my opinions to Lady Whitecross when we two
forgather. Let her look to herself! I have no patience with half-hearted
carlines, that complies on the Lord's day morning with the kirk, and
comes taigling the same night to the conventicle. The one or the other!
is what I say: hell or heaven--Haddie's abominations or the pure word of
God dreeping from the lips of Mr. Arnot,

"'Like honey from the honeycomb
That dreepeth, sweeter far.'"

My lady was now fairly launched, and that upon two congenial subjects:
the deficiencies of the Lady Whitecross and the turpitudes of the whole
Crozer race--which, indeed, had never been conspicuous for
respectability. She pursued the pair of them for twenty minutes on the
clock with wonderful animation and detail, something of the pulpit
manner, and the spirit of one possessed. "O hellish compliance!" she
exclaimed. "I would not suffer a complier to break bread with Christian
folk. Of all the sins of this day there is not one so God-defying, so
Christ-humiliating, as damnable compliance": the boy standing before her
meanwhile, and brokenly pursuing other thoughts, mainly of Haddo and
Janet, and Jock Crozer stripping off his jacket. And yet, with all his
distraction, it might be argued that he heard too much: his father and
himself being "compliers"--that is to say, attending the church of the
parish as the law required.

Presently, the lady's passion beginning to decline, or her flux of ill
words to be exhausted, she dismissed her audience. Francie bowed low,
left the room, closed the door behind him: and then turned him about in
the passage-way, and with a low voice, bu