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ME WILL HAVE THE BENEFIT; therefore it cannot defile me.--Offences
must come, therefore I will do them!" "Imagine our Lord in the
brewing trade instead of the carpentering!" she would say. That
better beer was provided by the good brewer would not go far for
brewer or drinker, she said: it mattered little that, by drinking
good beer, the drunkard lived to be drunk the oftener. A brewer
might do much to reduce drinking; but that would be to reduce a
princely income to a modest livelihood, and to content himself with
the baker's daughter instead of the duke's! It followed that the
Macruadh would rather have robbed a church than touched Mr.
Peregrine Palmer's money. To rifle the tombs of the dead would have
seemed to him pure righteousness beside sharing in that. He could
give Mercy up; he could NOT take such money with her! Much as he
loved her, separate as he saw her, clearly as she was to him a woman
undefiled and straight from God, it was yet a trial to him that she
should be the daughter of a person whose manufacture and trade were
such.
After much consideration, it was determined in the family conclave,
that Ian should accompany the two women to Canada, note how things
were going, and conclude what had best be done, should further
exodus be found necessary. As, however, there had come better news
of Lachlan, and it was plain he was in no immediate danger, they
would not, for several reasons, start before the month of September.
A few of the poorest of the clan resolved to go with them. Partly
for their sakes, partly because his own provision would be small,
Ian would take his passage also in the steerage.
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