74 THE APPRENTICE. 



Highland proprietor. Miller describes the country 

 around as ' somewhat bare and dreary a scene of bogs 

 and moors, overlooked by a range of tame heathy hills/ 

 It was while here that he became acquainted with 

 that remarkable maniac of whom he has left an ac- 

 count in the Schools and Schoolmasters. Looking at 

 midnight from the window in the loft in which he slept, 

 he beheld a light moving among the ruins of an old 

 chapel and the graves of the surrounding burial-ground. 

 It was carried in the hand of the escaped maniac. 

 He attracted her attention and secured her regard 

 by interfering on her behalf when she was being 

 chained down on the damp floor of her hut. Of a 

 naturally powerful though completely disordered intel- 

 lect, she had sagacity enough to discover that Miller was 

 of a different strain from his fellow masons, and enter- 

 tained him with -stories of the Highlands and anecdotes 

 of her deceased brother, a preacher of reputation. She 

 loved to discuss the most abstruse questions of metaphy- 

 sical theology. That every human soul is immediately 

 created by God, not transmitted from a human ancestor, 

 she declared herself to be fully convinced ; but, then, 

 how to account for the influence exerted on all souls 

 by the fall ? It would take a powerful theologian, sane 

 or insane, to answer this question. Miller informed her 

 that a great authority thought it might be ' by way of 

 natural concomitancy, as Estius will have it ; or, to speak 

 as Dr Reynolds doth, by way of ineffable resultancy and 

 emanation/ 'As this,' he adds, 'was perfectly unin- 

 telligible, it seemed to satisfy my new friend/ A singular 

 pair on the black Ross-shire moor ! It is only, I suppose, 

 in Scotland that masons' apprentices and female maniacs 

 engage in abstruse metaphysical discussions. 



The jointure-house finished, Miller bids adieu to his 



