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Testaments; while there was scarcely one in the whole country, who was so thoroughly acquainted with those Books from beginning to end; for, though she had read a portion every day for forty years, she had never perused any other books but the Scriptures. They were her week-day books and her Sunday books, her books of amusement, and books of devotion. Would to God that all our brethren and sisters of the human race—the poor and comfortless, as well as the great and wise, knew as well how to estimate these books as Tibby Hyslop did!
Tibby's history is shortly this. Her mother was married to a sergeant of a recruiting party. The year following he was obliged to go to Ireland, and from thence nobody knew where; but neither he nor his wife appeared again in Scotland. Before their departure, however, they left Tibby, then a helpless babe, with her grandmother, who lived in a hamlet somewhere about Tinwald; and with that grandmother was she learned to read the Bible, card and spin and work at all kinds of country labour to which women are accustomed. Jane Harvey was her grandmother's name, a woman then scarcely past her prime, certainly within forty years of age, but her elder sister, named Douglas, lived also with her, and with these two were the early years of Tibby
