with a visit.  About four days thereafter, accordingly, Mrs. Paterson kept her word, and next day Mr. Dodds repaired to Juniper Green.  At first Janet refused to see him; but upon Mrs. Paterson’s representations of his penitence and suffering, she became reconciled to an interview.  We may venture to say, without attempting a description of a meeting unparalleled in history, that if Janet Dodds had not been a veritable Calvinist, no good could have come of all Mr. Dodds’s professions; but she knew that the Master cast out the dumb spirit which tore the possessed, and that that spirit attempted murder not less than Tammas.  Wherefore might not his dumb spirit be cast out as well by that grace which aboundeth in the bosom of the Saviour?  We do not say that a return of her old love helped this deduction, because we do not wish to mix up profane with sacred things.  Enough if we can certify that a very happy conclusion was the result.  The doctor did his duty, and Janet having been declared compos mentis, returned to her old home.  Her first duty was to look for “the pose.”  It was gone in the manner we have set forth; but Janet could collect another, and no doubt in due time did; nor did she fail of any of her old peculiarities, all of which became endeared to Thomas by reason of their being veritable sacrifices to his domestic comfort.

GLEANINGS OF THE COVENANT.

THE LAST SCRAP.

It is a fact well known to Dr. Lee, and to many besides, that notwithstanding the extensive researches of Wodrow and others, there have died away in the silent lapse of time, or are still hovering over our cleuchs and glens, in the aspect of a dim and misty tradition, many instances of extreme cruelty and wanton oppression, exercised (during the reign of Charles II.) over the poor Covenanters, or rather Nonconformists, of the south and west counties of Scotland.  In particular, although the whole district suffered, it was in the vale of the Nith, and in the hilly portion of the parish of Closeburn, that the fury of Grierson, Dalzell, and Johnstone—­not to mention an occasional simoom, felt on the withering approach of Clavers with his lambs—­was felt to the full amount of merciless persecution and relentless cruelty.  The following anecdote I had from a sister of my grandmother, who lived till a great age, and who was lineally descended from one of the parties.  I have never seen any notice whatever taken of the circumstances; but am as much convinced of its truth, in all its leading features, as I am of that of any other similar statements which are made in Wodrow, “Naphtali,” or the “Cloud of Witnesses.”