"No, man!" added I, snapping with great pith my finger and thumb in Thomas's eyes, "not for all the ministers and elders that ever were cleckit! They may do their best; and ye may tell them so, if ye like.

I was born a free man; I live in a free country; I am the subject of a free king and constitution; and I'll be shot before I submit to such rank, diabolical papistry." "Hooly and fairly," quoth Thomas, staring a wee astonished like, and not a little surprised to see my birse up in this manner; for, when he thought upon shearing a lamb, he found he had catched a tartar; so, calming down as fast as ye like, he said, "Hooly and fairly, Mansie," (or Maister Wauch, I believe, he did me the honour to call me,) "they'll maybe no be sae hard as they threaten.

But ye ken, my friend, I'm speaking to ye as a brither; it was an unco-like business for an elder, not only to gang till a play, which is ane of the deevil's rendevouses, but to gang there in a state of liquor: making yoursell a world's wonder--and you an elder of our kirk!! I put the question to yourself soberly." His threatening I could despise, and could have fought, cuffed, and kicked with all the ministers and elders of the General Assembly, to say nothing of the Relief Synod and the Burgher Union, before I would have demeaned myself to yield to what my inward spirit plainly told me to be rank cruelty and injustice; but ah! his calm, brotherly, flattering way I could not thole with, and the tears came rapping into my eyes, faster than it cared my manhood to let be seen; so I said till him, "Weel, weel, Thomas, I ken I have done wrong; and I am sorry for't: they'll never find me in siccan a scrape again." Thomas Burlings then came forward in a friendly way, and shook hands with me; telling that he would go back and plead before them in my behalf.

He said this over again, as we parted, at my shop-door; and, to do him justice, surely he had not been worse than his word, for I have aye attended the kirk as usual, standing, when it came to my rotation, at the plate, and nobody, gentle or semple, ever spoke to me on the subject of the playhouse, or minted the matter of the Rebuke from that day to this..