rms than man's passion to get to the
goal of wealth and honour. Then there is a frenzy in woman, Aminadab.
She is like the boys, who seek danger for its own sake, and will skim on
skates the rim of the black pool that descends from the film of ice down
to the bubbling well of death below. Women have an ambition to tame wild
men; ay, even wild men have a charm for them, which the tame sons of
prudence and industry cannot inspire. So it was: they were married, and
he took her to India."

[note *: Afterwards, as I have heard, the wife of Milne of
Milneford. She lived till nearly a hundred.]

"'So the Lord did lead him; and there was no strange god with them.'"

"Ay, but there was a God _before_ him, lad."

"What mean you, Janet?"

"Do you not recollect of Brahma?"

"Do not mention that strange figure, Janet. My blood runs cold."

Janet laughed.

"Runs cold, lad, at what? Brahma was just one of the Nawab's great men,
whom he sent over here to watch the fate of his daughter. Why, man, he
lodged next door to you, with Mrs. Lyon at the Scouring Burn."

"The black man the boys used to run after?"

"The very same. He returned with Ady, and was at the court of the Nawab
and told all, ay, and more than we knew--that Fletcher would be obliged
to visit Bombay again ere long after. He had got this from some of the
authorities in England. For many a day did the prince weep for his
Kalee; for many a day did he watch for the murderer's arrival, ay, as a
tiger of his jungles watches in the night with fiery eyes for a beast
even more cruel than himself. He had even all the coast of Coromandel, I
think they call it, to give intelligence of the vessel. The very name of
the vessel was known; the very paint of its sides, and the flag it
bore--so well had he kept up his knowledge of what was going on in
England."

"Wonderful!" cried Aminadab. "'And the fowler that did slay, falleth
into his own net.'"

"And a terrible net, with meshes of sharp steel to hold and cut."

"Ah!" cried Aminadab, as he rubbed his hands, and chuckled like a big
boy who sees the porridge boiling.

"You may well be anxious, lad; but you'll have more than you want."

"No, unless he is put into a fiery pit and burnt to a cinder, or into a
den of tigers, or a nest of hooded snakes, or--"

"Peace, lad; better than all. But surely we are forgetting that we are
Christians, that we have seen the new light of grace, Aminadab."

"Ay, true. Mercy pertaine