If I seemed to intrude myself on her confidence, it was with the generous and disinterested (yes, I even ventured to call it the _disinterested_) intention of guiding, defending, and protecting her against craft--against malice,--above all, against the secret counsellor whom she had chosen for her confidant.

Such were the arguments which my will boldly preferred to my conscience, as coin which ought to be current, and which conscience, like a grumbling shopkeeper, was contented to accept, rather than come to an open breach with a customer, though more than doubting that the tender was spurious.
While I paced the green alleys, debating these things _pro_ and _con,_ I suddenly alighted upon Andrew Fairservice, perched up like a statue by a range of bee-hives, in an attitude of devout contemplation--one eye, however, watching the motions of the little irritable citizens, who were settling in their straw-thatched mansion for the evening, and the other fixed on a book of devotion, which much attrition had deprived of its corners, and worn into an oval shape; a circumstance which, with the close print and dingy colour of the volume in question, gave it an air of most respectable antiquity.
"I was e'en taking a spell o' worthy Mess John Quackleben's Flower of a Sweet Savour sawn on the Middenstead of this World," said Andrew, closing his book at my appearance, and putting his horn spectacles, by way of mark, at the place where he had been reading.
"And the bees, I observe, were dividing your attention, Andrew, with the learned author ?" "They are a contumacious generation," replied the gardener; "they hae sax days in the week to hive on, and yet it's a common observe that they will aye swarm on the Sabbath-day, and keep folk at hame frae hearing the word--But there's nae preaching at Graneagain chapel the e'en--that's aye ae mercy." "You might have gone to the parish church as I did, Andrew, and heard an excellent discourse." "Clauts o' cauld parritch--clauts o' cauld parritch," replied Andrew, with a most supercilious sneer,--"gude aneueh for dogs, begging your honour's pardon--Ay! I might nae doubt hae heard the curate linking awa at it in his white sark yonder, and the musicians playing on whistles, mair like a penny-wedding than a sermon--and to the boot of that, I might hae gaen to even-song, and heard Daddie Docharty mumbling his mass--muckle the better I wad hae been o' that!" "Docharty!" said I (this was the name of an old priest, an Irishman, I think, who sometimes officiated at Osbaldistone Hall)--"I thought Father Vaughan had been at the Hall.

He was here yesterday." "Ay," replied Andrew; "but he left it yestreen, to gang to Greystock, or some o' thae west-country haulds.

There's an unco stir among them a' e'enow.

They are as busy as my bees are--God sain them! that I suld even the puir things to the like o' papists.