How much longer this military theologist might have continued his invective, in which he spared nobody but the scattered remnant of hill-folk, as he called them, is absolutely uncertain.  His matter was copious, his voice powerful, and his memory strong; so that there was little chance of his ending his exhortation till the party had reached Stirling, had not his attention been attracted by a pedlar who had joined the march from a cross-road, and who sighed or groaned with great regularity at all fitting pauses of his homily.

‘And what may ye be, friend?’ said the Gifted Gilfillan.

’A puir pedlar, that’s bound for Stirling, and craves the protection of your honour’s party in these kittle times.  Ah’ your honour has a notable faculty in searching and explaining the secret,—­ay, the secret and obscure and incomprehensible causes of the backslidings of the land; ay, your honour touches the root o’ the matter.’

‘Friend,’ said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had hitherto used, ’honour not me.  I do not go out to park-dikes and to steadings and to market-towns to have herds and cottars and burghers pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o’ Cairnvreckan, and ca’ me laird or captain or honour.  No; my sma’ means, whilk are not aboon twenty thousand merk, have had the blessing of increase, but the pride of my heart has not increased with them; nor do I delight to be called captain, though I have the subscribed commission of that gospel-searching nobleman, the Earl of Glencairn, fa whilk I am so designated.  While I live I am and will be called Habakkuk Gilfillan, who will stand up for the standards of doctrine agreed on by the ance famous Kirk of Scotland, before she trafficked with the accursed Achan, while he has a plack in his purse or a drap o’ bluid in his body.’

‘Ah,’ said the pedlar, ’I have seen your land about Mauchlin.  A fertile spot! your lines have fallen in pleasant places!  And siccan a breed o’ cattle is not in ony laird’s land in Scotland.’

‘Ye say right,—­ye say right, friend’ retorted Gilfillan eagerly, for he was not inaccessible to flattery upon this subject,—­’ye say right; they are the real Lancashire, and there’s no the like o’ them even at the mains of Kilmaurs’; and he then entered into a discussion of their excellences, to which our readers will probably be as indifferent as our hero.  After this excursion the leader returned to his theological discussions, while the pedlar, less profound upon those mystic points, contented himself with groaning and expressing his edification at suitable intervals.

’What a blessing it would be to the puir blinded popish nations among whom I hae sojourned, to have siccan a light to their paths!  I hae been as far as Muscovia in my sma’ trading way, as a travelling merchant, and I hae been through France, and the Low Countries, and a’ Poland, and maist feck o’ Germany, and O! it would grieve your honour’s soul to see the murmuring and the singing and massing that’s in the kirk, and the piping that’s in the quire, and the heathenish dancing and dicing upon the Sabbath!’