“So that is the man Gib,” he said musingly.  “I have heard tell of him, for he was a thorn in the flesh of blessed Mr. Cargill.  Often have I heard him repeat how he went to Gib in the moors to reason with him in the Lord’s name, and got nothing but a mouthful of devilish blasphemies.  He is without doubt a child of Belial, as much as any proud persecutor.  Woe is the Kirk, when her foes shall be of her own household, for it is with the words of the Gospel that he seeks to overthrow the Gospel work.  And how is it with you, my son?  Do you seek to add your testimony to the sweet savour which now ascends from moors, mosses, peat-bogs, closes, kennels, prisons, dungeons, ay, and scaffolds in this distressed land of Scotland?  You have not told me your name.”

When he heard it he asked for my father, whom he had known in old days at Edinburgh College.  Then he inquired into my religious condition with so much fatherly consideration that I could take no offence, but told him honestly that I was little of a partisan, finding it hard enough to keep my own feet from temptation without judging others.  “I am weary,” I said, “of all covenants and resolutions and excommunications and the constraining of men’s conscience either by Government or sectaries.  Some day, and I pray that it may be soon, both sides will be dead of their wounds, and there will arise in Scotland men who will preach peace and tolerance, and heal the grievously irritated sores of this land.”

He sighed as he heard me.  “I fear you are still far from grace, lad,” he said.  “You are shaping for a Laodicean, of whom there are many in these latter times.  I do not know.  It may be that God wills that the Laodiceans have their day, for the fires of our noble covenant have flamed too smokily.  Yet those fires die not, and sometime they will kindle up, purified and strengthened, and will burn the trash and stubble and warm God’s feckless people.”

He was so old and gentle that I had no heart for disputation, and could only beseech his blessing.  This he gave me and turned once more to his devotions.  I was very weary, my head was splitting with the foul air of the place, and I would fain have got me to sleep.  Some dirty straw had been laid round the walls of the room for the prisoners to lie on, and I found a neuk close by the minister’s side.

But sleep was impossible, for Muckle John got another fit of cursing He stood up by the door with his eyes blazing like a wild-cat’s, and delivered what he called his “testimony.”  His voice had been used to shout orders on shipboard, and not one of us could stop his ears against it.  Never have I heard such a medley of profane nonsense.  He cursed the man Charles Stuart, and every councillor by name; he cursed the Persecutors, from his Highness of York down to one Welch of Borrowstoneness, who had been the means of his first imprisonment; he cursed the indulged and tolerated ministers; and he cursed every man of the hill-folk whose name he could remember.