His first purpose was instantly to take the road homewards, but other fears and cares, connected with news he had that day heard, induced him to linger till daybreak.

Reuben Butler was the grandson of a trooper in Monk’s army, and had been brought up by a grandmother, a widow, a cotter who struggled with poverty and the hard and sterile soil on the land of the Laird of Dumbiedikes.  She was helped by the advice of another tenant, David Deans, a staunch Presbyterian, and Jeannie, his little daughter, and Reuben herded together the handful of sheep and the two or three cows, and went together to the school; where Reuben, as much superior to Jeannie Deans in acuteness of intellect as inferior to her in firmness of constitution, was able to requite in full the kindness and countenance with which, in other circumstances, she used to regard him.

While Reuben Butler was acquiring at the university the knowledge necessary for a clergyman, David Deans, by shrewdness and skill, gained a footing in the world and the possession of some wealth.  He had married again, and another daughter had been born to him.  But now his wife was dead, and he had left his old home, and become a dairy farmer about half a mile from Edinburgh, and the unceasing industry and activity of Jeannie was exerted in making the most of the produce of their cows.

Effie, his youngest daughter, under the tend guileless purity of thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of person.  The news that this girl was in prison on suspicion of the murder of her child was what kept Reuben Butler lingering on the hills outside Edinburgh, until a fitting time should arrive to wait upon Jeannie and her father.  Effie denied all guilt of infanticide; but she had concealed the birth of a child, and the child had disappeared, so that by the law she was judged guilty.

His limbs exhausted with fatigue, Butler dragged himself up to St. Leonard’s crags, and presented himself at the door of Deans’ habitation, with feelings much akin to the miserable fears of its inhabitants.

“Come in,” answered the low, sweet-toned voice he loved best to hear, as he tapped at the door.  The old man was seated by the fire with his well-worn pocket Bible in his hands, and turned his face away as Butler entered and clasped the extended hand which had supported his orphan infancy, wept over it, and in vain endeavoured to say more than “God comfort you!  God comfort you!”

“He will—­He doth, my friend,” said Deans.  “He doth now, and He will yet more in His own gude time.  I have been ower proud of my sufferings in a gude cause, Reuben, and now I am to be tried with those whilk will turn my pride and glory into a reproach and a hissing.”

Butler had too much humanity to do anything but encourage the good old man as he reckoned up with conscious pride the constancy of his testimony and his sufferings, but seized the opportunity as soon as possible of some private conversation with Jeannie.  He gave her the message he had received from a stranger he had met an hour or two before, to the effect that she must meet him that night alone at Muschat’s cairn at moonrise.