as well as the soutar, like an evil conscience, till they had finished
them. Thus grievous was Shargar's introduction to the comforts of
respectability. Nor did he like it much better when he was dressed, and
able to go about; for not only was he uncomfortable in his new clothes,
which, after the very easy fit of the old ones, felt like a suit of
plate-armour, but he was liable to be sent for at any moment by the
awful sovereignty in whose dominions he found himself, and which,
of course, proceeded to instruct him not merely in his own religious
duties, but in the religious theories of his ancestors, if, indeed,
Shargar's ancestors ever had any. And now the Shorter Catechism seemed
likely to be changed into the Longer Catechism; for he had it Sundays as
we'll as Saturdays, besides Alleine's Alarm to the Unconverted, Baxter's
Saint's Rest, Erskine's Gospel Sonnets, and other books of a like
kind. Nor was it any relief to Shargar that the gloom was broken by the
incomparable Pilgrim's Progress and the Holy War, for he cared for none
of these things. Indeed, so dreary did he find it all, that his love to
Robert was never put to such a severe test. But for that, he would have
run for it. Twenty times a day was he so tempted.

At school, though it was better, yet it was bad. For he was ten times as
much laughed at for his new clothes, though they were of the plainest,
as he had been for his old rags. Still he bore all the pangs of
unwelcome advancement without a grumble, for the sake of his friend
alone, whose dog he remained as much as ever. But his past life of cold
and neglect, and hunger and blows, and homelessness and rags, began
to glimmer as in the distance of a vaporous sunset, and the loveless
freedom he had then enjoyed gave it a bloom as of summer-roses.

I wonder whether there may not have been in some unknown corner of the
old lady's mind this lingering remnant of paganism, that, in reclaiming
the outcast from the error of his ways, she was making an offering
acceptable to that God whom her mere prayers could not move to look
with favour upon her prodigal son Andrew. Nor from her own acknowledged
religious belief as a background would it have stuck so fiery off
either. Indeed, it might have been a partial corrective of some yet
more dreadful articles of her creed,--which she held, be it remembered,
because she could not help it.

CHAPTER XI. PRIVATE INTERVIEWS.

The winter passed slowly away. Robert a