house. Her great-great-grandfather had drawn the sword against the

Lord's anointed on the field of Rullion Green, and breathed his last

(tradition said) in the arms of the detestable Dalyell. Nor could she

blind herself to this, that had they lived in those old days, Hermiston

himself would have been numbered alongside of Bloody MacKenzie and the

politic Lauderdale and Rothes, in the band of God's immediate enemies.

The sense of this moved her to the more fervour; she had a voice for

that name of PERSECUTOR that thrilled in the child's marrow; and when

one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling

carriage, and cried, "Down with the persecutor! down with Hanging

Hermiston!" and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the

glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face,

bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave

sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but

he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was

raised demanding an explanation: why had they called papa a persecutor?

"Keep me, my precious!" she exclaimed. "Keep me, my dear! this is

poleetical. Ye must never ask me anything poleetical, Erchie. Your

faither is a great man, my dear, and it's no for me or you to be judging

him. It would be telling us all, if we behaved ourselves in our several

stations the way your faither does in his high office; and let me hear

no more of any such disrespectful and undutiful questions! No that you

meant to be undutiful, my lamb; your mother kens that - she kens it

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