"
To this homely strain of consolation the mourners returned no answer;
indeed, they were so much lost in their own sorrows as to have become
insensible of Ratcliffe's presence. "O Effie," said her elder sister,
"how could you conceal your situation from me? O woman, had I deserved
this at your hand?--had ye spoke but ae word--sorry we might hae been,
and shamed we might hae been, but this awfu' dispensation had never come
ower us."
"And what gude wad that hae dune?" answered the prisoner. "Na, na,
Jeanie, a' was ower when ance I forgot what I promised when I faulded
down the leaf of my Bible. See," she said, producing the sacred volume,
"the book opens aye at the place o' itsell. O see, Jeanie, what a fearfu'
Scripture!"
Jeanie took her sister's Bible, and found that the fatal mark was made at
this impressive text in the book of Job: "He hath stripped me of my
glory, and taken the crown from my head. He hath destroyed me on every
side, and I am gone. And mine hope hath he removed like a tree."
"Isna that ower true a doctrine?" said the prisoner "Isna my crown, my
honour, removed? And what am I but a poor, wasted, wan-thriven tree, dug
up by the roots, and flung out to waste in the highway, that man and
beast may tread it under foot? I thought o' the bonny bit them that our
father rooted out o' the yard last May, when it had a' the flush o'
blossoms on it; and then it lay in the court till the beasts had trod
them a' to pieces wi' their feet.
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