t of the people went home satisfied; but not so the Rev.
Robert Wringhim. He did all that he could to inflame both judges and
populace against the young Cavaliers, especially against the young
Laird of Dalcastle, whom he represented as an incendiary, set on by an
unnatural parent to slander his mother, and make away with a hapless
and only brother; and, in truth, that declaimer against all human merit
had that sort of powerful, homely, and bitter eloquence which seldom
missed affecting his hearers: the consequence at that time was that he
made the unfortunate affair between the two brothers appear in
extremely bad colours, and the populace retired to their homes
impressed with no very favourable opinion of either the Laird of
Dalcastle or his son George, neither of whom were there present to
speak for themselves.

As for Wringhim himself, he went home to his lodgings, filled with gall
and with spite against the young laird, whom he was made to believe the
aggressor, and that intentionally. But most of all he was filled with
indignation against the father, whom he held in abhorrence at all
times, and blamed solely for this unmannerly attack made on his
favourite ward, namesake, and adopted son; and for the public
imputation of a crime to his own reverence in calling the lad his son,
and thus charging him with a sin against which he was well known to
have levelled all the arrows of church censure with unsparing might.

But, filled as his heart was with some portion of these bad feelings,
to which all flesh is subject, he kept, nevertheless, the fear of the
Lord always before his eyes so far as never to omit any of the external
duties of religion, and farther than that man hath no power to pry. He
lodged with the family of a Mr. Miller, whose lady was originally from
Glasgow, and had been a hearer and, of course, a great admirer of Mr.
Wringhim. In that family he made public worship every evening; and that
night, in his petitions at a throne of grace, he prayed for so many
vials of wrath to be poured on the head of some particular sinner that
the hearers trembled, and stopped their ears. But that he might not
proceed with so violent a measure, amounting to excommunication,
without due scripture warrant, he began the exercise of the evening by
singing the following verses, which it is a pity should ever have been
admitted into a Christian psalmody, being so adverse to all its mild
and benevolent principles:

Set thou