Middleburgh, "you must think of your own
household first, or else you are worse even than the infidels."
"I tell ye, Bailie Middleburgh," retorted David Deans, "if ye be a
bailie, as there is little honour in being ane in these evil days--I tell
ye, I heard the gracious Saunders Peden--I wotna whan it was; but it was
in killing time, when the plowers were drawing alang their furrows on the
back of the Kirk of Scotland--I heard him tell his hearers, gude and
waled Christians they were too, that some o' them wad greet mair for a
bit drowned calf or stirk than for a' the defections and oppressions of
the day; and that they were some o' them thinking o' ae thing, some o'
anither, and there was Lady Hundleslope thinking o' greeting Jock at the
fireside! And the lady confessed in my hearing that a drow of anxiety had
come ower her for her son that she had left at hame weak of a decay*--And
what wad he hae said of me if I had ceased to think of the gude cause for
a castaway--a--It kills me to think of what she is!"
* See _Life of Peden,_ p. 14.
"But the life of your child, goodman--think of that--if her life could be
saved," said Middleburgh.
"Her life!" exclaimed David--"I wadna gie ane o' my grey hairs for her
life, if her gude name be gane--And yet," said he, relenting and
retracting as he spoke, "I wad make the niffer, Mr.
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