kept him prisoner, escaped the last horror, and fled from the fatal
spot.

His first purpose was instantly to take the road homewards, but other
fears and cares, connected with news he had that day heard, induced him
to linger till daybreak.

Reuben Butler was the grandson of a trooper in Monk's army, and had been
brought up by a grandmother, a widow, a cotter who struggled with
poverty and the hard and sterile soil on the land of the Laird of
Dumbiedikes. She was helped by the advice of another tenant, David
Deans, a staunch Presbyterian, and Jeannie, his little daughter, and
Reuben herded together the handful of sheep and the two or three cows,
and went together to the school; where Reuben, as much superior to
Jeannie Deans in acuteness of intellect as inferior to her in firmness
of constitution, was able to requite in full the kindness and
countenance with which, in other circumstances, she used to regard him.

While Reuben Butler was acquiring at the university the knowledge
necessary for a clergyman, David Deans, by shrewdness and skill, gained
a footing in the world and the possession of some wealth. He had married
again, and another daughter had been born to him. But now his wife was
dead, and he had left his old home, and become a dairy farmer about half
a mile from Edinburgh, and the unceasing industry and activity of
Jeannie was exerted in making the most of the produce of their cows.

Effie, his youngest daughter, under the tend guileless purity of
thought, speech, and action, as by her uncommon loveliness of person.
The news that this girl was in prison on suspicion of the murder of her
child was what kept Reuben Butler lingering on the hills outside