sufferers had been contented to condole with each other in smothered expressions of complaint and indignation; but the sense of their injuries became more pungently aggravated as they communicated with each other, and they became at length unable to suppress their ire.

Woe, woe, and a threefold woe unto you, ye bloody and violent persecutors !" exclaimed the Reverend Gabriel Kettledrummle-Woe, and threefold woe unto you, even to the breaking of seals, the blowing of trumpets, and the pouring forth of vials!"

"Ayay-a black cast to a' their illfa'ar'd faces, and the outside o' the loof to them at the last day," echoed the shrill counter-tenor of Mause, falling in like the second part of a catch.

"I tell you," continued the divine, "that your rankings and your ridingsyour neighings and your prancings-your bloody, barbarous, and inhuman cruelties -your benumbing, deadening, and de

bauching the consciences of poor crea tures by oaths, soul-damning and self-contradictory, have risen from earth to Heaven like a foul and hideous outcry of perjury for hastening the wrath to comehugh! hugh! hugh!"

"And I say,” cried Mause, in the same tune, and nearly at the same time, "that wi' this auld breath o' mine, and it's sair ta'en down wi' the asthmatics and this rough trot"

"De'il gin they would gallop," said. Cuddie," wad it but gar her haud her tongue!"

"Wi' this auld and brief breath," continued Mause, " will I testify against the backslidings, defections, defalcations, and declinings, of the land-against the grievances and the causes of wrath."

"Peace, I pr'ythee-Peace, good woman,' said the preacher, who had just recovered from a violent fit of coughing, and found his own anathema borne down by Mause's better wind, peace, and take not the word out of the mouth of a servant of the

altar.-I say, I uplift my voice and tell ye, that before the play is played out-ay, be fore this very sun gaes down, ye sall learn that neither a desperate Judas, like your prelate Sharpe that's gone to his place; nor a sanctuary-breaking Holofernes, liké bloody-minded Claverhouse; nor an ambitious Diotrephes, like the lad Evandale; nor a covetous and warld-following De mas, like him they ca Serjeant Bothwell, that makes every wife's plack and her meal-ark his ain; neither your carabines, nor your pistols, nor your broadswords, hor your horses, nor your saddles, bridles, sarcingles, nose-bags, nor martingales, shall resist the arrows that are whetted and the bow that is bent against you.”

"That shall they never, I trow," echoed Mause; "castaways are they ilk ane o' them-besoms of destruction, fit only to be flung into the fire when they have sweepit the filth out o' the Temple-whips of small cords, knotted for the chastisement of those wha like their warldly gudes and

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gear better than the Cross or the Covenant, but when that wark's done, only meet to mak latchets to the de'il's brogues."

"Fiend hae me," said Cuddie, addressing himself to Morton, "if I dinna think our mither preaches as weel as the minister !— But it's a sair pity o' his hoast, for it aye comes on just when he's at the best o't, and that lang routing he made air this morning is sair again him too-De'il an I care if he wad roar her dumb, and than he wad hae't a' to answer for himsel-it's lucky the road's rough, and the troopers are no taking muckle tent to what they say wi' the rattling o' the horses feet; but an' we were anes on saft grund, we'll hear news o' a' this."

Cuddie's conjectures were but too true. The words of the prisoners had not been much attended to while drowned by the clang of the horses hoofs on a rough and stony road; but they now entered upon the moorland, where the testimony of the two

zealous captives lacked this saving accompaniment. And, accordingly, no sooner had their steeds begun to tread heath and green sward, and Gabriel Kettledrummle had again raised his voice with, "Also I uplift my song like that of a pelican in the wilderness".

"And I mine," had issued from Mause, "like a sparrow on the house-tops”—

When, " Hollo, ho!" cried the corporal from the rear; "rein up your tongues, the devil blister them, or I'll clap a martingale on them."

"I will not peace at the commands of the profane," said Gabriel.

"Nor I neither," said Mause, "for the bidding of no earthly potsherd, though it be painted as red as a brick of the tower of Babel, and ca' itsel a corporal."

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Halliday," cried the corporal, "hast got never a gag about thee, man?-We must stop their mouths before they talk us all dead."

Ere any answer could be made, or any