nonn of that! No son of mine shall be speldering in the glaur with any

dirty raibble."

The anxious mother was grateful for so much support; she had even feared

the contrary. And that night when she put the child to bed - "Now, my

dear, ye see!" she said, "I told you what your faither would think of

it, if he heard ye had fallen into this dreidful sin; and let you and me

pray to God that ye may be keepit from the like temptation or

strengthened to resist it!"

The womanly falsity of this was thrown away. Ice and iron cannot be

welded; and the points of view of the Justice-Clerk and Mrs. Weir were

not less unassimilable. The character and position of his father had

long been a stumbling-block to Archie, and with every year of his age

the difficulty grew more instant. The man was mostly silent; when he

spoke at all, it was to speak of the things of the world, always in a

worldly spirit, often in language that the child had been schooled to

think coarse, and sometimes with words that he knew to be sins in

themselves. Tenderness was the first duty, and my lord was invariably

harsh. God was love; the name of my lord (to all who knew him) was

fear. In the world, as schematised for Archie by his mother, the place

was marked for such a creature. There were some whom it was good to

pity and well (though very likely useless) to pray for; they were named

reprobates, goats, God's enemies, brands for the burning; and Archie

tallied every mark of identification, and drew the inevitable private

inference that the Lord Justice-Clerk was the chief of sinners.

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