"Sae be’t, sae be’t!" replied Smellie, with a cackle of a laugh, as much as to say, "I have him!" He then bowed and departed, walking silently like a cat along the street, but not purring. Yet he seemed to be feeling for something with the long hairs which projected from his whiskers like bristles.
Poor Adam! Now began such a week in his history as he never had experienced before. Oh! it was cold, dark, and dreary! He had to drink the cup of loneliness in the midst of his fellowmen--the bitterest cup which can be tasted by anyone who loves his brother. But all his suffering was kept within his own heart, and found "no relief in word, or sigh, or tear".
What a sinner he had become in the opinion of many of the respectable inhabitants of Drumsylie! What a double distilled spirit of evil!--far over proof, for no _proofs_ are ever applied to such evil spirits. Drumsylie was all agog about him. He was as interesting as a shipwreck to a seaport town; as a great swindle to a stock exchange; or as a murder to a quiet neighbourhood! What had he done! What had he been guilty of! Some said, or at least heard that some one else had said, that he had insulted the minister and the Kirk Session; others, that he had secretly supported himself as a poacher; others that he had been heard to declare, that rather than kill the bird, he would, out of mere spite and obstinacy, give up the eldership, the Church, ay, even Christianity itself; others, that he had stolen a child from Mrs. Craigie, whom, though a woman, he, a soldier, had threatened to strike in his own house. He was a terror even to evil doers!
Most marvellous is this birth and upbringing of lies! Who lays the first egg? How does it multiply so rapidly? And how singular is the development of each of the many eggs--through all the stages of evil thoughts, suspicious hints, wondering _if’s_ and _maybe’s_, perversions, exaggerations, fibs, white lies--until it is fully hatched into out-and-out lies repeated with diligence, malice, and hate! We can give no account of this social phenomenon except the old one, of the devil being first the parent of the whole family, and his then distributing and boarding out each to trustworthy friends to be hatched and trained up in the way it should go in order to please him, its parent.