Walter did not much like disputing about these matters; but in this he felt that his reason acquiesced, and he answered thus: "Ye speak like a true man, and a clever man, Doctor; and if I had a desperate cause by the end, and wanted ane to back me in't, the deil a step wad I gang ayont this moss hag to find him; but, Doctor, there's a time for every thing. I wadna hae ye to fling away a gude cause, as I wad do a rotten ewe, that winna haud ony langer. But dinna ye think that a fitter time may come to mak a push? ye'll maybe sell mae precious lives for nae end, wi' your declarations; take care that you, and the like o' you, haena these lives to answer for.--I like nae desperate broostles--od, man, it's like ane that's just gaun to turn divour, taking on a' the debt he can."
"Dinna fear, gudeman! dinna fear! There's nae blood shed in sic a cause that can ever be shed in vain. Na, na! that blood will argue better at the bar o' Heaven for poor distressed Scotland than all the prayers of all the living. We hae done muckle, but we'll do mair yet--muckle blood has been wantonly and diabolically shed, and our's may rin wi' the rest--we'll no thraw't wantonly and exultingly away; but, when our day comes, we'll gie it cheerfully--as cheerfully, gudeman, as ever ye paid your mail to a kind landlord, even though the season had been hard and stormy. We had aince enough of this warld's wealth, and to spare; but we hae naething now but our blood, and we'll part wi' that as cheerfully as the rest. And it will tell some day! and ye may live to see it yet. But enough, gudeman; we have all resolved, that, whatever the consequence may be, to live no more on your bounty--therefore, do not urge it--but give us all your hand--Farewell!--and may God bless you in all your actings and undertakings!--There is little chance that we shall ever meet again--We have no reward to give but our blessing and good wishes; but, whenever a knee here present is bowed at the footstool of grace, you will be remembered."
Walter could not bear thus to part with them, and to give them up as it were to certain destruction. He argued as well as he could on the imprudence of the step they were going to take--of the impossibility of their finding a retreat so inaccessible in all the bounds of the south of Scotland, and the prospect that there was of the persecution soon relaxing. But when he had said all that he could say, a thin spare old man, with grey dishevelled locks, and looks, Walter said, as stern as the adders that he had lately been eating, rose up to address him. There was that in his manner which commanded the most intense attention.