After the moments of amazement had passed, Lecoq turned to leave the room, but Nina barred the way.
"Caldas," she cried, "have you not punished me enough? Caldas...."
Prosper went from the office alone.
[JOHN GALT]
[Annals of the Parish]
John Gait, poet, dramatist, historian, and novelist, was born at Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, on May 2, 1779. He was trained for a commercial career in the Greenock Custom House, and in the office of a merchant in that seaport. Removing to London, Gait engaged in business and afterwards travelled extensively to forward mercantile enterprises in all the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and the Near East, where he repeatedly met Lord Byron. His first work of fiction was a Sicilian story, published in 1816, but it was not until 1820 that he found his true literary expression, when the "Ayrshire Legatees" appeared in "Blackwood's Magazine." The success of this tale was so great that Gait finished the "Annals of the Parish; or the Chronicle of Dalmailing, during the Ministry of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder," which he had really begun in 1813, and they were published in 1821. The "Annals" contain a lively and humorous picture of Scottish character, manners, and feeling during the era described. In the latter part of his life Gait wrote several novels, a life of Byron, an autobiography, and his "Literary Life and Miscellanies." He died on April 11, 1838.
I.--The Placing of Mr. Balwhidder
The year A.D. 1760 was remarkable for three things in the parish of Dalmailing. First and foremost, there was my placing, then the coming of Mrs. Malcolm with her five children to settle among us, and next my marriage with my own cousin, Miss Betty Lanshaw. The placing was a great affair, for I was put in by the patron, and the people knew nothing of me whatsoever. They were really mad and vicious, insomuch that there was obliged to be a guard of soldiers to protect the presbytery. Dirt was flung upon us as we passed, and the finger of scorn held out to me. But I endured it with a resigned spirit, compassionating their wilfulness and blindness.
The kirk door was nailed up and we were obligated to go in by the window, making the Lord's house like an inn on a fair-day with their grievous yelly hooing. Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot, got up at the time of the induction and protested, and said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door of the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber."