nsiderably advanced. While, now standing
with his arms across, and waiting the slow progress of the sun above the
horizon, now sitting upon one of the numerous fragments which storms had
detached from the rocks above him, he is meditating, alternately upon the
horrible catastrophe which he had witnessed, and upon the melancholy, and
to him most interesting, news which he had learned at Saddletree's, we
will give the reader to understand who Butler was, and how his fate was
connected with that of Effie Deans, the unfortunate handmaiden of the
careful Mrs. Saddletree.

Reuben Butler was of English extraction, though born in Scotland. His
grandfather was a trooper in Monk's army, and one of the party of
dismounted dragoons which formed the forlorn hope at the storming of
Dundee in 1651. Stephen Butler (called from his talents in reading and
expounding, Scripture Stephen, and Bible Butler) was a stanch
Independent, and received in its fullest comprehension the promise that
the saints should inherit the earth. As hard knocks were what had chiefly
fallen to his share hitherto in the division of this common property, he
lost not the opportunity which the storm and plunder of a commercial
place afforded him, to appropriate as large a share of the better things
of this world as he could possibly compass. It would seem that he had
succeeded indifferently well, for his exterior circumstances appeared, in
consequence of this event, to have been much mended.

The troop to which he belonged was quartered at the village of Dalkeith,
as forming the bodyguard of Monk, who, in the capacity of general for the
Commonwealth, resided in the neighbouring castle. When, on the eve of the
Restoration, the general commenced his march from Scotland, a measure
pregnant with such important consequences, he new-modelled his troops,
and more especially those immediately about his person, in order that
they might consist entirely of individuals devoted to himself. On this
occasion Scripture Stephen was weighed in the balance, and found wanting.
It was supposed he felt no call to any expedition which might endanger
the reign of the military sainthood, and that he did not consider himself
as free in conscience to join with any party which might be likely
ultimately to acknowledge the interest of Charles Stuart, the son of "the
last man," as Charles I. was familiarly and irreverently termed by them
in their common discourse, as well as in their more elabo