Jeanie Deans, the daughter of the goodman; let her know
that he she wots of remained here from daybreak till this hour, expecting
to see her, and that he can abide no longer. Tell her, she _must_ meet me
at the Hunter's Bog to-night, as the moon rises behind St. Anthony's
Hill, or that she will make a desperate man of me."

"Who or what are you," replied Butler, exceedingly and most unpleasantly
surprised, "who charge me with such an errand?"

"I am the devil!"--answered the young man hastily.

Butler stepped instinctively back, and commanded himself internally to
Heaven; for, though a wise and strong-minded man, he was neither wiser
nor more strong-minded than those of his age and education, with whom, to
disbelieve witchcraft or spectres, was held an undeniable proof of
atheism.

The stranger went on without observing his emotion. "Yes! call me
Apollyon, Abaddon, whatever name you shall choose, as a clergyman
acquainted with the upper and lower circles of spiritual denomination, to
call me by, you shall not find an appellation more odious to him that
bears it, than is mine own."

This sentence was spoken with the bitterness of self-upbraiding, and a
contortion of visage absolutely demoniacal. Butler, though a man brave by
principle, if not by constitution, was overawed; for intensity of mental
distress has in it a sort of sublimity which repels and overawes all men,
but especially those of kind and sympathetic dispositions. The stranger
turned abruptly from Butler as he spoke, but instantly returned, and,
coming up to him closely and boldly, said, in a fierce, determined tone,
"I have told you who and what I am--who and what are you? What is your
name?"

"Butler," answered the person to whom this abrupt question was addressed,
surprised into answering it by the sudden and fierce manner of the
querist--"Reuben Butler, a preacher of the gospel."

At this answer, the stranger again plucked more deep over his brows the
hat which he had thrown back in his former agitation. "Butler!" he
repeated--"the assistant of the schoolmaster at Liberton?"

"The same," answered Butler composedly.

The stranger covered his face with his hand, as if on sudden reflection,
and then turned away, but stopped when he had walked a few paces; and
seeing Butler follow him with his eyes, called out in a stern yet
suppressed tone, just as if he had exactly calculated that his accents
should not be heard a yard beyond the spot on which B