th were many of them wending, and to what a horror of
an immortality! "Are not two sparrows," "Whosoever shall smite thee,"
"God sendeth His rain," "Judge not, that ye be not judged"--these texts
made her body of divinity; she put them on in the morning with her
clothes and lay down to sleep with them at night; they haunted her like
a favourite air, they clung about her like a favourite perfume. Their
minister was a marrowy expounder of the law, and my lord sat under him
with relish; but Mrs. Weir respected him from far off; heard him (like
the cannon of a beleaguered city) usefully booming outside on the
dogmatic ramparts; and meanwhile, within and out of shot, dwelt in her
private garden which she watered with grateful tears. It seems strange
to say of this colourless and ineffectual woman, but she was a true
enthusiast, and might have made the sunshine and the glory of a
cloister. Perhaps none but Archie knew she could be eloquent; perhaps
none but he had seen her--her colour raised, her hands clasped or
quivering--glow with gentle ardour. There is a corner of the policy of
Hermiston, where you come suddenly in view of the summit of Black Fell,
sometimes like the mere grass top of a hill, sometimes (and this is her
own expression) like a precious jewel in the heavens. On such days, upon
the sudden view of it, her hand would tighten on the child's fingers,
her voice rise like a song. "_I to the hills!_" she would repeat. "And
O, Erchie, arena these like the hills of Naphtali?" and her tears would
flow.

Upon an impressionable child the effect of this continual and pretty
accompaniment to life was deep. The woman's quietism and piety passed on
to his different nature undiminished; but whereas in her it was a native
sentiment, in him it was only an implanted dogma. Nature and the child's
pugnacity at times revolted. A cad from the Potterrow once struck him in
the mouth; he struck back, the pair fought it out in the back stable
lane towards the Meadows, and Archie returned with a considerable
decline in the number of his front teeth, and unregenerately boasting of
the losses of the foe. It was a sore day for Mrs. Weir; she wept and
prayed over the infant backslider until my lord was due from Court, and
she must resume that air of tremulous composure with which she always
greeted him. The judge was that day in an observant mood, and remarked
upon the absent teeth.

"I am afraid Erchie will have been fechting with some of