The matter of the oaths,
they agreed, it was time enough to dispute about, whenever the shibboleth
should be tendered.
Many arrangements were adopted that evening, which were afterwards
ripened by correspondence with the Duke of Argyle's man of business, who
intrusted Deans and Butler with the benevolent wish of his principal,
that they should all meet with Jeanie, on her return from England, at the
Duke's hunting-lodge in Roseneath.
This retrospect, so far as the placid loves of Jeanie Deans and Reuben
Butler are concerned, forms a full explanation of the preceding narrative
up to their meeting on the island, as already mentioned.
CHAPTER TWENTIETH.
"I come," he said, "my love, my life,
And--nature's dearest name--my wife:
Thy father's house and friends resign,
My home, my friends, my sire, are thine."
Logan.
The meeting of Jeanie and Butler, under circumstances promising to crown
an affection so long delayed, was rather affecting, from its simple
sincerity than from its uncommon vehemence of feeling. David Deans, whose
practice was sometimes a little different from his theory, appalled them
at first, by giving them the opinion of sundry of the suffering preachers
and champions of his younger days, that marriage, though honourable by
the laws of Scripture, was yet a state over-rashly coveted by professors,
and specially by young ministers, whose desire, he said, was at whiles
too inordinate for kirks, stipends, and wives, which had frequently
occasioned over-ready compliance with the general defections of the
times.
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