carnal wisdom enough to
embrace the proposal, and with great indifference saw his old corps depart for
Coldstream, on their route for the south, to establish the tottering Government
of England on a new basis.
    The zone of the ex-trooper, to use Horace's phrase, was weighty enough to
purchase a cottage and two or three fields (still known by the name of
Beersheba), within about a Scottish mile of Dalkeith; and there did Stephen
establish himself with a youthful helpmate, chosen out of the said village,
whose disposition to a comfortable settlement on this side of the grave
reconciled her to the gruff manners, serious temper, and weather-beaten features
of the martial enthusiast. Stephen did not long survive the falling on »evil
days and evil tongues,« of which Milton, in the same predicament, so mournfully
complains. At his death his consort remained an early widow, with a male child
of three years old, which, in the sobriety wherewith it demeaned itself, in the
old-fashioned and even grim cast of its features, and in its sententious mode of
expressing itself, would sufficiently have vindicated the honour of the widow of
Beersheba, had any one thought proper to challenge the babe's descent from Bible
Butler.
    Butler's principles had not descended to his family, or extended themselves
among his neighbours. The air of Scotland was alien to the growth of
independency, however favourable to fanaticism under other colours. But,
nevertheless, they were not forgotten; and a certain neighbouring Laird, who
piqued himself upon the loyalty of his principles »in the worst of times«
(though I never heard they exposed him to more peril than that of a broken head,
or a night's lodging in the main guard, when wine and cavalierism predominated
in his upper storey), had found it a convenient thing to rake up all matter of
accusation against the deceased Stephen. In this enumeration his religious
principles made no small figure, as, indeed, they must have seemed of the most
exaggerated enormity to one whose own were so small and so faintly traced, as to
be well nigh imperceptible. In these circumstances, poor widow Butler was
supplied with her full proportion of fines for nonconformity, and all the other
oppressions of the time, until Beersheba was fairly wrenched out of her hands,
and became the property of the Laird who had so wantonly, as it had hitherto
appeared, persecuted this poor forlorn woman. When his purpose was fairly
achieved, he showed some remorse or moderation, of whatever the reader may
please to term it, in permitting her