I have been told, that an Argyllshire woman, one evening, while expecting her husband's return, was surprised by a visit from some persons whom she guessed to be officers of justice sent to apprehend him. Finding the man absent, they determined to wait his arrival in the hut; taking care, of course, that his wife should not go out to apprise him of his danger. She contrived, however, to hush her baby with an extemporary song, which, without alarming the vigilance of the guards, warned her husband from his perilous threshold, and he escaped. Other instances, somewhat of a similar kind, suggested the incident in the text.
Indeed, the only merit which the Highland scenes in Discipline presume to claim, is, that, however inartificially joined, they are all borrowed from fact.
[29] Although, in the remoter parts of Scotland, chastity is by no means the universal virtue of unmarried persons, instances of conjugal infidelity are still rare. Within the present generation they were almost unknown.
About twenty years ago, it happened, in a remote country town, that two persons of the lower rank were accused of adultery. The charge, whether true or false, had such an effect, that the man was driven like a wild beast from human converse. The very children pelted him with mud in the street; crying out, 'There goes the adulterer.'
[30] Hamlet,—Town.
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