to human eyes, and to practise upon
the feelings and senses of mankind. Suspicions, founded on such circumstances,
rushed on Butler's mind, unprepared as it was by any previous course of
reasoning, to deny that which all of his time, country, and profession believed;
but common sense rejected these vain ideas as inconsistent, if not with
possibility, at least with the general rules by which the universe is governed,
- a deviation from which, as Butler well argued with himself, ought not to be
admitted as probable, upon any but the plainest and most incontrovertible
evidence. An earthly lover, however, or a young man, who, from whatever cause,
had the right of exercising such summary and unceremonious authority over the
object of his long-settled, and apparently sincerely returned affection, was an
object scarce less appalling to his mind, than those which superstition
suggested.
    His limbs exhausted with fatigue, his mind harassed with anxiety, and with
painful doubts and recollections, Butler dragged himself up the ascent from the
valley to St. Leonard's Crags, and presented himself at the door of Deans's
habitation, with feelings much akin to the miserable reflections and fears of
its inhabitants.
 

                                Chapter Eleventh

 Then she stretched out her lily hand,
 And for to do her best;
 »Hae back thy faith and troth, Willie,
 God gie thy soul good rest!«
                                                                     Old Ballad.
 
»Come in,« answered the low and sweet-toned voice he loved best to hear, as
Butler tapped at the door of the cottage. He lifted the latch, and found himself
under the roof of affliction. Jeanie was unable to trust herself with more than
one glance towards her lover, whom she now met under circumstances so agonising
to her feelings, and at the same time so humbling to her honest pride. It is
well known, that much, both of what is good and bad in the Scottish national
character, arises out of the intimacy of their family connections. »To be come
of honest folk,« that is, of people who have borne a fair and unstained
reputation, is an advantage as highly prized among the lower Scotch, as the
emphatic counterpart, »to be of a good family,« is valued among their gentry.
The worth and respectability of one member of a peasant's family is always
accounted by themselves and others, not only a matter of honest pride, but a
guarantee for the good conduct of the whole. On the contrary, such a melancholy
stain as was now flung on one of the children of Deans, extended