There is a kind of a decency to be observit. Then comes the next of it
- what am I to do with ye next? Ye'll have to find some kind of a
trade, for I'll never support ye in idleset. What do ye fancy ye'll be
fit for? The pulpit? Na, they could never get diveenity into that
bloackhead. Him that the law of man whammles is no likely to do muckle
better by the law of God. What would ye make of hell? Wouldna your
gorge rise at that? Na, there's no room for splairgers under the fower
quarters of John Calvin. What else is there? Speak up. Have ye got
nothing of your own?"

"Father, let me go to the Peninsula," said Archie. "That's all I'm fit
for - to fight."

"All? quo' he!" returned the Judge. "And it would be enough too, if I
thought it. But I'll never trust ye so near the French, you that's so
Frenchi-feed."

"You do me injustice there, sir," said Archie. "I am loyal; I will not
boast; but any interest I may have ever felt in the French - "

"Have ye been so loyal to me?" interrupted his father.

There came no reply.

"I think not," continued Hermiston. "And I would send no man to be a
servant to the King, God bless him! that has proved such a shauchling
son to his own faither. You can splairge here on Edinburgh street, and
where's the hairm? It doesna play buff on me! And if there were twenty
thousand eediots like yourself, sorrow a Duncan Jopp would hang the
fewer. But there's no splairging possible in a camp; and if ye were to