"But famous John
Semple of Carspharn," David Deans used to say with exultation, "saw the
whaup in the rape.--'Quit the rope,' he cried to us (for I that was but a
callant had a hand o' the rape mysell), 'it is the Great Enemy! he will
burn, but not drown; his design is to disturb the good wark, by raising
wonder and confusion in your minds; to put off from your spirits all that
ye hae heard and felt.'--Sae we let go the rape," said David, "and he
went adown the water screeching and bullering like a Bull of Bashan, as
he's ca'd in Scripture."*
* Note J. Intercourse of the Covenanters with the invisible world.
Trained in these and similar legends, it was no wonder that Jeanie began
to feel an ill-defined apprehension, not merely of the phantoms which
might beset her way, but of the quality, nature, and purpose of the being
who had thus appointed her a meeting, at a place and hour of horror, and
at a time when her mind must be necessarily full of those tempting and
ensnaring thoughts of grief and despair, which were supposed to lay
sufferers particularly open to the temptations of the Evil One. If such
an idea had crossed even Butler's well-informed mind, it was calculated
to make a much stronger impression upon hers. Yet firmly believing the
possibility of an encounter so terrible to flesh and blood, Jeanie, with
a degree of resolution of which we cannot sufficiently estimate the
merit, because the incredulity of the age has rendered us strangers to
the nature and extent of her feelings, persevered in her determination
not to omit an opportunity of doing something towards saving her sister,
although, in the attempt to avail herself of it, she might be exposed to
dangers so dreadful to her imagination.
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