Confessions of A Justified Sinner | Page 7

husband's
impertinence!"
The poor afflicted woman wept and prayed, but the baillie would not
abate aught of his severity. After fuming and beating her with many
stripes, far drawn, and lightly laid down, he took her up. to her chamber,
five stories high, locked her in, and there he fed her on bread and water,
all to be revenged on the presumptuous Laird of Dalcastle; but ever and
anon, as the baillie came down the stair from carrying his daughter's
meal, he said to himself: "I shall make the sight of the laird the blithest

she ever saw in her life."
Lady Dalcastle got plenty of time to read, and pray, and meditate; but
she was at a great loss for one to dispute with about religious tenets; for
she found that, without this advantage, about which there was a perfect
rage at that time, the reading and learning of Scripture texts, and
sentences of intricate doctrine, availed her naught; so she was often
driven to sit at her casement and look out for the approach of the
heathenish Laird of Dalcastle.
That hero, after a considerable lapse of time, at length made his
appearance. Matters were not hard to adjust; for his lady found that
there was no refuge for her in her father's house; and so, after some
sighs and tears, she accompanied her husband home. For all that had
passed, things went on no better. She WOULD convert the laird in spite
of his teeth: the laird would not be converted. She WOULD have the
laird to say family prayers, both morning and evening: the laird would
neither pray morning nor evening. He would not even sing psalms, and
kneel beside her while she performed the exercise; neither would he
converse at all times, and in all places, about the sacred mysteries of
religion, although his lady took occasion to contradict flatly every
assertion that he made, in order that she might spiritualize him by
drawing him into argument.
The laird kept his temper a long while, but at length his patience wore
out; he cut her short in all her futile attempts at spiritualization, and
mocked at her wire-drawn degrees of faith, hope, and repentance. He
also dared to doubt of the great standard doctrine of absolute
predestination, which put the crown on the lady's Christian resentment.
She declared her helpmate to be a limb of Antichrist, and one with
whom no regenerated person could associate. She therefore bespoke a
separate establishment, and, before the expiry of the first six months,
the arrangements of the separation were amicably adjusted. The upper,
or third, story of the old mansion-house was awarded to the lady for her
residence. She had a separate door, a separate stair, a separate garden,
and walks that in no instance intersected the laird's; so that one would
have thought the separation complete. They had each their own parties,
selected from their own sort of people; and, though the laird never once
chafed himself about the lady's companies, it was not long before she
began to intermeddle about some of his.

"Who is that fat bouncing dame that visits the laird so often, and always
by herself?" said she to her maid Martha one day.
"Oh dear, mem, how can I ken? We're banished frae our acquaintances
here, as weel as frae the sweet gospel ordinances."
"Find me out who that jolly dame is, Martha. You, who hold
communion with the household of this ungodly man, can be at no loss
to attain this information. I observe that she always casts her eye up
toward our windows, both in coming and going; and I suspect that she
seldom departs from the house emptyhanded."
That same evening Martha came with the information that this august
visitor was a Miss Logan, an old an intimate acquaintance of the laird's,
and a very worthy respectable lady, of good connections, whose parents
had lost their patrimony in the civil wars.
"Ha! very well!" said the lady; "very well, Martha! But, nevertheless,
go thou and watch this respectable lady's motions and behaviour the
next time she comes to visit the laird--and the next after that. You will
not, I see, lack opportunities."
Martha's information turned out of that nature that prayers were said in
the uppermost story of Dalcastle house against the Canaanitish woman,
every night and every morning; and great discontent prevailed there,
even to anathemas and tears. Letter after letter was dispatched to
Glasgow; and at length, to the lady's great consolation, the Rev. Mr.
Wringhim arrived safely and devoutly in her elevated sanctuary.
Marvellous was the conversation between these gifted people.
Wringhim had held in his doctrines that there were eight different kinds
of FAITH, all perfectly distinct in their operations and effects. But the
lady, in her