Poor lass! I was wae for her. She stood bravely beside her father, whose face was as begrutten as hers was serene, and those who put her through her catechism found to my mind but a good heart and tolerance where they sought treachery and rank heresy. They convicted her notwithstanding.
“You have stood your trials badly, Jean MacVicar,” said Master Gordon. “A backslider and malignant proven! You may fancy your open profession of piety, your honesty and charity, make dykes to the narrow way. A fond delusion, woman! There are, sorrow on it! many lax people of your kind in Scotland this day, hangers-on at the petticoat tails of the whore of Babylon, sitting like you, as honest worshippers at the tables of the Lord, eating Christian elements that but for His mercy choked them at the thrapple. You are a wicked woman!”
“She’s a good daughter,” broke in the father through his tears; but his Gaelic never stopped the minister.
“An ignorant besom.”
“She’s leech-wife to half Kenmore,” protested the old man.
“And this court censures you, ordains you to make public confession at both English and Gaelic kirks before the congregations, thereafter to be excommunicate and banished furth and from this parish of Inneraora and Glenaora.”
The girl never winced.
Her father cried again. “She can’t leave me,” said he, and he looked to the Marquis, who all the time sat on the hard deal forms, like a plain man. “Your lordship kens she is motherless and my only kin; that’s she true and honest.”
The Marquis said yea nor nay, but had a minute’s talk with the clergyman, as I thought at the time, to make him modify his ruling. But Master Gordon enforced the finding of the session.
“Go she must,” said he; “we cannot have our young people poisoned at the mind.”