Even last night"---- "Nay, Clara, if you begin to tell your dreams, we shall never have done.
Sleeping, to be sure, is the most serious employment of your life--for as to eating, you hardly match a sparrow; but I entreat you to sleep without dreaming, or to keep your visions to yourself .-- Why do you keep such fast hold of me ?--What on earth can you be afraid of ?--Surely you do not think the blockhead Binks, or any other of the good folks below yonder, dared to turn on me?
Egad, I wish they would pluck up a little mettle, that I might have an excuse for drilling them.

Gad, I would soon teach them to follow at heel." "No, John," replied his sister; "it is not of such men as these that I have any fear--and yet, cowards are sometimes driven to desperation, and become more dangerous than better men--but it is not such as these that I fear.

But there are men in the world whose qualities are beyond their seeming--whose spirit and courage lie hidden, like metals in the mine, under an unmarked or a plain exterior .-- You may meet with such--you are rash and headlong, and apt to exercise your wit without always weighing consequences, and thus"---- "On my word, Clara," answered Mowbray, "you are in a most sermonizing humour this morning! the parson himself could not have been more logical or profound.

You have only to divide your discourse into heads, and garnish it with conclusions for use, and conclusions for doctrine, and it might be preached before a whole presbytery, with every chance of instruction and edification.

But I am a man of the world, my little Clara; and though I wish to go in death's way as little as possible, I must not fear the raw-head and bloody-bones neither .-- And who the devil is to put the question to me ?--I must know that, Clara, for you have some especial person in your eye when you bid me take care of quarrelling." Clara could not become paler than was her usual complexion; but her voice faltered as she eagerly assured her brother, that she had no particular person in her thoughts.
"Clara," said her brother, "do you remember, when there was a report of a bogle[I-17] in the upper orchard, when we were both children ?--Do you remember how you were perpetually telling me to take care of the bogle, and keep away from its haunts ?--And do you remember my going on purpose to detect the bogle, finding the cow-boy, with a shirt about him, busied in pulling pears, and treating him to a handsome drubbing ?--I am the same Jack Mowbray still, as ready to face danger, and unmask imposition; and your fears, Clara, will only make me watch more closely, till I find out the real object of them.