There were nights of it when he was here on sentry,
the place a' wheesht, the frosts o' winter maybe riving in the
wa's, and he would hear ane o' the prisoners strike up a psalm, and
the rest join in, and the blessed sounds rising from the different
chalmers--or dungeons, I would raither say--so that this auld craig
in the sea was like a pairt of Heev'n. Black shame was on his
saul; his sins hove up before him muckle as the Bass, and above a',
that chief sin, that he should have a hand in hagging and hashing
at Christ's Kirk. But the truth is that he resisted the spirit.
Day cam, there were the rousing compainions, and his guid resolves
depairtit.
In thir days, dwalled upon the Bass a man of God, Peden the Prophet
was his name. Ye'll have heard tell of Prophet Peden. There was
never the wale of him sinsyne, and it's a question wi' mony if
there ever was his like afore. He was wild's a peat-hag, fearsome
to look at, fearsome to hear, his face like the day of judgment.
The voice of him was like a solan's and dinnle'd in folks' lugs,
and the words of him like coals of fire.
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