"We are in a land where the evil one bears full sway," said Moodie.
"Yet you have voluntarily put yourself in purgatory by coming to travel in it," said Lady Mabel. "But you have your consolation, and may give thankful utterance to the words of our Scotch poet:
'I bless and praise thy matchless might,
Whan thousands thou hast left in night,
That I am here afore thy sight,
For gifts an' grace,
A burning and a shining light,
To a' this place.'"
"I do not know that psalmist, if in truth he be a maker of spiritual songs," said Moodie, with a doubtful air.
"He did dabble a little in psalmody," said Lady Mabel; "but I doubt whether his attempts would satisfy you. How like you this sample:
'Orthodox, orthodox, who believe in John Knox,
Let me sound an alarm to your conscience;
There's a heretic blast has been blown in the Wast,
That what is not sense must be nonsense.
Calvin's sons, Calvin's sons, load your spiritual guns,
Ammunition you never can need;
Your hearts are the stuff, will be powder enough,
And your skulls are store-houses o' lead.'"
"'Tis that profane, lewd fellow, Burns," exclaimed Moodie, angrily. "He did worse than hide his ten talents in a napkin. I wonder, my lady, you defile your mouth with his scurrilous words."
"I have done with him," said Lady Mabel, laughing. "He was a profane, lewd fellow, far better at pointing out other men's errors than amending his own."
Moodie now fell back among the servants; and L'Isle remarked, "your old squire, Lady Mabel, holds an austere belief. I never met a man so confident of his own salvation and of the damnation of others."
"He reminds me," Mrs. Shortridge said, "of a dissenting neighbor of ours, when we lived in London, who was always saying, 'I am called, but my wife is not,' much to the poor woman's disquiet in this world, if not to the hazard of her happiness in the next."