nds clench, but in my spirit I discovered that it
was then the hour of outrage, and that the Avenger's time was not yet
come.

CHAPTER LXIX

Rarely has it fallen to the lot of man to be so blessed with such
children as mine; but surely I was unworthy of the blessing. And yet,
though maybe unworthy, Lord, thou knowest by the nightly anthems of
thankfulness that rose from my hearth, that the chief sentiment in my
breast, in those moments of melody, was my inward acknowledgment to
Thee for having made this world so bright to me, with an offspring so
good and fair, and with Sarah Lochrig, their mother, she whose life was
the sweetness in the cup of my felicity. Let me not, however, hurry on,
nor forget that I am but an historian, and that it befits not the
juridical pen of the character to dwell upon my own woes when I have to
tell of the sufferings of others.

The trials and the tribulations which I had heard so much of, and
whereof I had witnessed so many, made me in a sense but little liable to
be moved when told of any new outrage. But the sight of that Highlander
wrenching from Sarah Lochrig's finger our wedding-ring did, in its
effects and influences, cause a change in my nature as sudden and as
wonderful as that which the rod of Moses underwent in being quickened
into a serpent.

For some time I sat as I was sitting while the deed was doing; and when
my wife, after the plunderers had departed, said to me, soothingly, that
we had reason to be thankful for having endured no other loss than a
little world's gear, she was surprised at the sedateness with which I
responded to her pious condolements. Michael, our first-born, then in
the prime beauty of his manhood, had been absent when the robbery was
committed, and coming in, on hearing what had been done, flamed with the
generous rage of youth, and marvelled that I had been so calm. My blithe
and blooming Mary joined her ingenuous admiration to theirs, but my mild
and sensible Margaret fell upon my neck, and weeping, cried, "O! father,
it's no worth the doure thought that gars your brows sae gloom;" while
Joseph, the youngest of the flock, then in his twelfth year, brought the
Bible and laid it on my knees.

I opened the Book, and would have read a portion, but the passage which
caught my eye was the beginning of the sixth chapter of Jeremiah, "O ye
children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of
Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa,