Many
young persons, coming to prepare themselves against the season of the
holy communion, were dreadfully affected by his talk. He had a sermon
on I Pet. V. 8, "The devil as a roaring lion," on the Sunday after every
17th of August, and he was accustomed to surpass himself upon that text
both by the appalling nature of the matter and the terror of his bearing
in the pulpit. The children were frightened into fits, and the old
looked more than usually oracular, and were, all that day, full of those
hints that Hamlet deprecated. The manse itself, where it stood by the
water of Dule among some thick trees, with the Shaw overhanging it on
the one side, and on the other many cold, moorish hilltops rising toward
the sky, had begun, at a very early period of Mr. Soulis's ministry,
to be avoided in the dusk hours by all who valued themselves upon their
prudence; and guidmen sitting at the clachan alehouse shook their heads
together at the thought of passing late by that uncanny neighbourhood.
There was one spot, to be more particular, which was regarded with
especial awe. The manse stood between the highroad and the water
of Dule, with a gable to each; its bank was toward the kirktown of
Balweary, nearly half a mile away; in front of it, a bare garden, hedged
with thorn, occupied the land between the river and the road.
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