“You would call it persecution, wouldn’t you?”
“Ay; it wad be that.”
“And what do you call it now, when you prevent a man from going his own way, after he has had enough of your foolery?”
“Ow, we ca’ ’t dissiplene!” answered the fellow.
The marquis got down, annoyed, but laughing at his own discomfiture. “I’ve stopped the screaming, anyhow,” he said.
Ere the preacher, the tap of whose eloquence presently began to yield again, but at first ran very slow, had gathered way enough to carry his audience with him, a woman rushed up to the mouth of the cave, the borders of her cap flapping, and her grey hair flying like an old Maenad’s. Brandishing in her hand a spurtle with which she had been making the porridge for supper, she cried in a voice that reached every ear:
“What’s this I hear o’ ’t! Come oot o’ that, Lizzy, ye limmer! Ir ye gauin’ frae ill to waur, i’ the deevil’s name!”
It was Meg Partan. She sent the congregation right and left from her, as a ship before the wind sends a wave from each side of her bows. Men and women gave place to her, and she went surging into the midst of the assembly.
“Whaur’s that lass o’ mine?” she cried, looking about her in aggravated wrath at failing to pounce right upon her.
“She’s no verra weel, Mrs Findlay,” cried Mrs Catanach, in a loud whisper, laden with an insinuating tone of intercession. “She’ll be better in a meenute. The minister’s jist ower pooerfu’ the nicht.”