Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 3).djvu/86

 purer than snow, whiter than milk, more ruddy than sulphur, (meaning, perhaps, sapphires)—I say, what ails thee now, that thou art blacker than a coal, that thy beauty is departed, and thy loveliness withered like a dry potsherd? Surely it is time to be up and be doing, to cry loudly, and to spare nought, and to wrestle for the puir lads that are yonder testifying with their ain blude and that of their enemies."

This expostulation implied a reproach on Mr Kettledrummle, who, though an absolute Boanerges, or son of thunder, in the pulpit, when the enemy were afar, and indeed sufficiently contumacious, as we have seen, when in their power, had been struck dumb by the firing, shouts, and shrieks, which now arose from the valley, and,—as many an honest man might have been, in a situation where he could neither fight nor fly, was too much dismayed to take so favourable an opportunity to preach the terrors of presbytery, as the courageous Mause had expected at his hand, or even