Mr.
Thomson, the "curat" of Anstruther Easter, was a man highly
obnoxious to the devout: in the first place, because he was a
"curat"; in the second place, because he was a person of irregular
and scandalous life; and in the third place, because he was
generally suspected of dealings with the Enemy of Man. These three
disqualifications, in the popular literature of the time, go hand
in hand; but the end of Mr. Thomson was a thing quite by itself,
and in the proper phrase, a manifest judgment. He had been at a
friend's house in Anstruther Wester, where (and elsewhere, I
suspect) he had partaken of the bottle; indeed, to put the thing in
our cold modern way, the reverend gentleman was on the brink of
DELIRIUM TREMENS. It was a dark night, it seems; a little lassie
came carrying a lantern to fetch the curate home; and away they
went down the street of Anstruther Wester, the lantern swinging a
bit in the child's hand, the barred lustre tossing up and down
along the front of slumbering houses, and Mr. Thomson not
altogether steady on his legs nor (to all appearance) easy in his
mind. The pair had reached the middle of the bridge when (as I
conceive the scene) the poor tippler started in some baseless fear
and looked behind him; the child, already shaken by the minister's
strange behaviour, started also; in so doing, she would jerk the
lantern; and for the space of a moment the lights and the shadows
would be all confounded.
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