to transgress one of those divine commandments which
Christians of all sects and denominations unite in holding most sacred.
    »Can this be?« said Jeanie, as the door closed on her father - »Can these be
his words that I have heard, or has the Enemy taken his voice and features to
give weight unto the counsel which causeth to perish? - a sister's life, and a
father pointing out how to save it! - O God, deliver me! - this is a fearfu'
temptation.«
    Roaming from thought to thought, she at one time imagined her father
understood the ninth commandment literally, as prohibiting false witness against
our neighbour, without extending the denunciation against falsehood uttered in
favour of the criminal. But her clear and unsophisticated power of
discriminating between good and evil, instantly rejected an interpretation so
limited, and so unworthy of the Author of the law. She remained in a state of
the most agitating terror and uncertainty - afraid to communicate her thoughts
freely to her father, lest she should draw forth an opinion with which she could
not comply, - wrung with distress on her sister's account, rendered the more
acute by reflecting that the means of saving her were in her power, but were
such as her conscience prohibited her from using, - tossed, in short, like a
vessel in an open roadstead during a storm, and, like that vessel, resting on
one only sure cable and anchor, - faith in Providence, and a resolution to
discharge her duty.
    Butler's affection and strong sense of religion would have been her
principal support in these distressing circumstances, but he was still under
restraint, which did not permit him to come to St. Leonard's Crags; and her
distresses were of a nature, which, with her indifferent habits of scholarship,
she found it impossible to express in writing. She was therefore compelled to
trust for guidance to her own unassisted sense of what was right or wrong. It
was not the least of Jeanie's distresses, that, although she hoped and believed
her sister to be innocent, she had not the means of receiving that assurance
from her own mouth.
    The double-dealing of Ratcliffe in the matter of Robertson had not prevented
his being rewarded, as double-dealers frequently have been, with favour and
preferment. Sharpitlaw, who found in him something of a kindred genius, had been
intercessor in his behalf with the magistrates, and the circumstance of his
having voluntarily remained in the prison, when the doors were forced by the
mob, would have made it a hard measure to