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.

168 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
"And that was just what I thought when I sent to you, Clerk Lawford,"
said the Doctor.
"A wiser man he could not have called on to a difficult case," added Mrs.
Gray, as she sat with her work at a little distance from the table.
" Thanks t'ye, and here's t'ye, my good neighbour," answered the scribe;
" will you not let me help you to another glass of punch, Mrs. Gray?" This
being declined, he proceeded. " I am jalousing that the messenger and his
warrant were just brought in to prevent any opposition. Ye saw how
quietly he behaved after I had laid down the law -I'll never believe the
lady is in any risk from him. But the father is a dour chield; depend
upon it, he has bred up the young filly on the curb-rein, and that has made
the poor thing start off the course. I should not be surprised that he took
her abroad, and shut her up in a convent."
" Hardly," replied Doctor Gray, " if it be true, as I suspect, that both the
father and daughter are of the Jewish persuasion."
" A Jew!" said Mrs. Gray; " and have I been taking a' this fyke about
a Jew?-I thought she seemed to gie a scunner at the eggs and bacon that
Nurse Simson spoke about to her. But I thought Jews had aye had lang
beards, and yon man's face is just like one of our-ain folk's - I have seen
the Doctor with a langer beard himsell, when he has not had leisure to
shave."
"That might have been Mr. Moncada's case," said Lawford, "for he
seemed to have had a hard journey. But the Jews are often very respectable people, Mrs. Gray -they have no territorial property, because the law
is against them there, but they have a good hank in the money marketplenty of stock in the funds, Mrs. Gray, and, indeed, I think this poor
young woman is better with her ain father, though he be a Jew and a dour
chield into the bargain, than she would have been with the loon that
wranged her, who is, by your account, Dr. Gray, baith a papist and a
rebel. The Jews are well attached to government; they hate the Pope, the
Devil, and the Pretender, as much as any honest man among ourselves."
" I cannot admire either of the gentlemen," said Gideon. " But it is but
fair to say, that I saw Mr. Monqada when he was highly incensed, and to
all appearance not without reason. Now, this other man Tresham, if that
be his name, was haughty to me, and I think something careless of the poor
young woman, just at the time when he owed her most kindness, and me
some thankfulness. I am, therefore, of your opinion, Clerk Lawford, that
the Christian is the worse bargain of the two."
" And you think of taking care of this wean yourself, Doctor? That is
what I call the good Samaritan."
"At cheap cost, Clerk; the child, if it lives, has enough to bring it up
decently, and set it out in life, and I can teach it an honourable and useful
profession. It will be rather an amusement than a trouble to me, and I
want to make some remarks on the childish diseases, which, with God's
blessing, the child must come through under my charge; and since Heaven
has sent us no children" -
"Hoot, hoot!" said the Town-Clerk, "you are in ower great hurry now
-you have na been sae lang married yet. - Mrs. Gray, dinna let tny daffing chase you away - we will be for a dish of tea belive, for the Doctor and
I are nae glass-breakers."
Four years after this conversation took place, the event happened, at the
possibility of which the Town-Clerk had hinted; and Mrs. Gray presented
her husband with an infant daughter. But good and evil are strangely
mingled in this sublunary world. The fulfilment of his anxious longing for
posterity was attended with the loss of his simple and kind-hearted wife;
one of the most heavy blows which fate could inflict on poor Gideon, and,
his house was made desolate even by the event which had promised for
months before to add new comforts to its humble roof. Gray felt the shock