The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

392 WAVERLEY NOVELS'.
infancy, for they were the only relief which her father's conversation
afforded from controversial argument, or the gloomy history of the strivings
and testimonies, escapes, captures, tortures, and executions of those martyrs of the Covenant, with whom it was his chiefest boast to say he had
been acquainted. In the recesses of mountains, in caverns, and in morasses,
to which these persecuted enthusiasts were so ruthlessly pursued, they conceived they had often to contend with the visible assaults of the Enemy of
mankind, as in the cities, and in the cultivated fields, they were exposed to
those of the tyrannical government and their soldiery. Such were the terrors which made one of their gifted seers exclaim, when his companion
returned to him, after having left him alone in a haunted cavern in Sorn in
Galloway, "It is hard living in this world — incarnate devils above the
earth, and devils under the earth!. Satan has been here since ye went
away, but I have dismissed him by resistance; we will be no more troubled
with him this night." David Deans believed this, and many other such
ghostly encounters and victories, on the faith of the Ansars, or auxiliaries
of the banished prophets. This event was beyond David's remembrance.
But he used to tell with great awe, yet not without a feeling of proud superiority to his auditors, how he himself had been present at a field-meeting
at Crochmade, when the duty of the day was interrupted by the apparition
of a tall black man, who, in the act of crossing a ford to join the congregation, lost ground, and was carried down apparently by the force of the
stream. All were instantly at work to assist him, but with so little success,
that ten or twelve stout men, who had hold of the rope which they had cast
in to his aid, were rather in danger to be dragged into the stream, and lose
their own lives, than likely to save that of the supposed perishing man.
" But famous John Semple of Carspharn," David Deans used to say with
exultation, "saw the whaup in the rape. -' Quit the rape,' he cried to us,
(for I that was but a callant had a hanud o' the rape mysell,)'it is the Great
Enemy! he will burn, but not drown; his design is to disturb the good
wark, by raising wonder and confusion in your minds; to put off from your
spirits all that ye hae heard and felt.'-Sae we let go the rape," said David,
" and he went adown the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Bashan, as he's ca'd in Scripture."*
Trained in these and similar legends, it was no wonder that Jeanie began
to feel an ill-defined apprehension, not merely of the phantoms which might
beset her way, but of the quality, nature, and purpose of the being who
had thus appointed her a meeting, at a place and hour of horror, and at
a time when her mind must be necessarily full of those tempting and ensnaring thoughts of grief and despair, which were supposed to lay sufferers
particularly open to the temptations of the Evil One. If such an idea had
crossed even Butler's well-informed mind, it was calculated to make a much
stronger impression upon hers. Yet, firmly believing the possibility of an
encounter so terrible to flesh and blood, Jeanie, with a degree of resolution
of which we cannot sufficiently estimate the merit, because the incredulity
of the age has rendered us strangers to the, nature and extent of her feelings, persevered in her determination not to omit an opportunity of doing
something towards saving her sister, although, in the attempt to avail herself of it, she might be exposed to dangers so dreadful to her imagination.
So, like Christiana in the Pilgrim's Progress, when traversing with a timid
yet resolved step the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, she
glided on by rock and stone, "now in glimmer and now in gloom," as her
path lay'through moonlight or shadow, and endeavoured to overpower the
The gloomy, dangerous, and constanlt wanderings of the persecuted sect of Cameronians, naturally led
to their entertaining with peculiar credulity the belief, that they were sometimes persecuted, not only by the
wrath of men, but by the secret wiles and mrs of Satan. In fact, a flood could not happen, a horse
cast a shoe, or any other the most 61-dirn interrupt thwart a minister's wvish to perform service at a particular spot, than the accident wis imputed to the immediate agency of fiends. The encounter of Alexander Peden with the Devil in the cave, and that of John Semruple with the denmon in the ford, are given by Peter
Walker almost in the language of the text.