BY THE AUTHOR OF
“MARGARET MAITLAND.”

“Lord, look upon mine offering—I bring thee back seven-fold. Lord
of Mercy! cast me not away for evermore!—[See page 292].

STRINGER & TOWNSEND, NEW YORK.

M E R K L A N D,
OR,
SELF SACRIFICE.

BY
THE AUTHOR OF
“PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND,” &C.
NEW YORK:
STRINGER & TOWNSEND.
1854.

MERKLAND;
OR,
S E L F - S A C R I F I C E.

CHAPTER I.

“BUT may not Mrs. Catherine’s visitor belong to another family? The name is not uncommon.”

“You will permit me to correct you, Miss Ross. The name is by no means a common one; and there was some very distant connexion, I remember, between the Aytouns and Mrs. Catherine. I have little doubt that this girl is his daughter.”

“Mother! mother!” exclaimed the first speaker, a young lady, whose face, naturally grave and composed, bore tokens of unusual agitation. “It is impossible; Mrs. Catherine, considerate and kind as she always is, could never be so cruel.”

“I am quite at a loss for your meaning, Anne.”

“To bring her here—to our neighborhood,” said Anne Ross, averting her eyes, and disregarding her step-mother’s interruption, “where we must meet her continually, where our name, which must be odious to her, will be ringing in her ears every day. I cannot believe it. Mrs. Catherine could not do anything so barbarous.”

Mrs. Ross, of Merkland, threw down her work, and pushed back her chair from the table:

“Upon my word, Anne Ross, you turn more absurd every day. What is the meaning of this?—our name odious! I should not like Lewis to hear you say so.”

“But Lewis does not know this terrible story,” said Anne.

“And never shall,” replied Mrs. Ross. “Neither can your brother’s crime make my son’s name odious to any one. I fancied you knew that Norman was called by your mother’s name; and this Aytoun girl, if she knows anything of it at all, will have heard of him as Rutherford, and not as Ross.”

“But Mrs. Catherine—she at least cannot be ignorant, cannot have forgotten: who could forget this? and my mother was her friend!”

“The friendship has descended, I think,” said Mrs. Ross, with a sneer, “as you seem to imagine feuds should. I suppose you think this girl’s brother, if she has one, would be quite doing his duty if he demanded satisfaction from Lewis, for a thing which happened when the poor boy was a mere infant? But be not afraid, most tender and scrupulous sister. People have better sense in these days.”

Anne Ross turned away, grieved and silenced; her conversations with her step-mother too often terminated so: and there was a long pause. At last she said, timidly, as if desirous, and yet afraid of asking further: “And my father never knew how he died?”

Mrs. Ross glanced hurriedly at the door: “He did not die.”

Anne started violently. “Norman, my brother? I beseech you to tell me, mother, is he not dead?”

“Ah, there is Duncan back, from Portoran,” said Mrs. Ross, rising. “Letters from Lewis, no doubt. How slow they are!” And she rang the bell vehemently.

The summons brought in a maid, struggling with the buckle of Duncan’s letter-bag, which was opened at length, and gave to Mrs. Ross’s delighted eyes the expected letters from her only son: but Anne sat apart, shivering and trembling with a great dread—a secret, most sad and terrible; a tale of dishonor, and crime, and misery, such as might chill the very heart to hear.

“And there’s a letter from the Tower, Miss Anne,” said the maid, giving her a note. “Duncan got it at the Brig, from Johnnie Halflin, and Johnnie was to wait, till Duncan got back with the answer, if there was to be any.”

“There is no answer, May,” said Anne, glancing over the brief epistle; and May withdrew reluctantly, having obtained no news of Maister Lewis, or his wanderings, wherewith to satisfy her expectant audience in the kitchen.

The letter of Lewis was a long one, and Anne had time to travel listlessly again and again over the angular and decided characters of her ancient friend.

“My friend,” said the singularly-folded black letter-looking note, “you will come to the Tower to-morrow. I am expecting Alison Aytoun at night; and seeing the world has gotten two new generations (to keep within the truth) since I myself was done with the company of children, I am in need of your counsel how we are to brighten the bed-chamber and other apartments, so as will become the presence of youth. For undoubtedly in this matter, if I am like any mortal person, it is like Issachar in the prophecy (not to be profane,) for there is Elspat Henderson, my own woman, that would have out the old red satin curtains (that are liker black than red now, as you will mind,) to put upon the bed, and Euphan Morison, her daughter, is for no curtains at all, for the sake of health, (pity me, Anne, that have doctors among my serving-women!) and Jacky, Euphan’s daughter (bethanked that she has but one!) has been gathering dahlias and sunflowers, and such other unwholesome and unyouthful things, to put in the poor bairn Alison’s room, wherewith I have near brought a fever upon myself, first with the evil odor of them, and then with flying upon the elf Jacky. So mind you come to the Tower, like a good bairn, as you are, and have always been, as early in the day as you can; and before twelve of the clock, if possible, seeing that I have many things to say to you.

“Catherine Douglas.”

For the third or fourth time, Anne’s eyes had travelled down to that firm and clear signature, when an exclamation from her step-mother roused her. “Lewis will be home before his birthday! Lewis will be here on Friday! I believe you are more concerned about that girl coming to the Tower. Do you hear me, Anne? On Friday your brother will be home.”

There were only two days to prepare for his coming; and before Anne had finished her hasty perusal of the letter which Mrs. Ross permitted her to see, the house was full of joyful bustle and unwonted glee—for the frigid soul of its mistress melted under the influence of her son, as if his words had been very sunbeams. By nature she was neither amiable nor generous; but the mother’s love, in its first out-gushing, almost made her both.

And she had known the details of that dark mystery too long, and had too little liking for her husband’s unhappy son, to sympathize at all with Anne’s horror and agony. And so Mrs. Ross, of Merkland, bustled and rejoiced in her selfish gladness, while Anne, longing to ask, and yet afraid of rude repulse or angry reprimand, sat silently, with a heavy heart, beside her. At length, when they were about to separate for the night, Anne took courage.

“Mother,” she said, “I do not wish to disturb you, in so happy an occupation as this, but only one word—Norman, poor Norman, you said he did not die.”

“Upon my word, Anne, I think you might choose a better time for those disagreeable inquiries,” said Mrs. Ross, impatiently.

“He is my brother,” said Anne, “and with such a dreadful history. Mother, is Norman alive?”

“How can I tell?” cried Mrs. Ross. “You ought to desire most earnestly, Anne, both for his sake and your own, that he may be peacefully dead. Your father, I know, received a letter from him, secretly, after the ship was lost. He had escaped the wreck; but that is seventeen years ago.”

“And did he confess?” said Anne, eagerly.

“Confess! Criminals do not generally do that. No, no, he professed his innocence. I may find you the letter sometime. There, will not that do? Go to your room now.”

“And will you not tell Lewis?” said Anne.

“Tell Lewis!” exclaimed Mrs. Ross, “why should I grieve my boy? He is but his half-brother.”

Anne turned away without another word and went quietly up stairs—not to her own apartment first, but to a dusty attic lumber-room, seldom entered, except by herself. In one dark corner stood a picture, its face to the wall. Anne placed her candle on the floor, and kneeling down turned the portrait—a frank, bold, generous face, half boy, half man, with its unshadowed brow and clear eyes, that feared no evil.

“Lewis is but my half-brother also,” said Anne Ross, replacing the picture with a sigh; “but Norman was my mother’s son.”

The house and small estate of Merkland were situated in one of the northern counties of Scotland, within some three or four miles of a little post-town which bore the dignified name of Portoran. The Oran water swept by the side of its small port, just before it joined its jocund dark-brown waters to the sea, and various coasting vessels carried its name and its traffic out (a little way) into the world. The parish in which Merkland stood, boasted at least its three Lairds’ houses—there was Strathoran, the lordliest of all, with its wide acres extending over three or four adjacent parishes. There was the Tower, with its compact and richly-cultivated lands, the well-ordered property of Mrs. Catherine Douglas; and, lastly, there was Merkland—the home of a race of vigorous Rosses, renowned in former generations for its hosts of sons and daughters, and connected by the spreading of those strong and healthful off-shoots, with half of the families of like degree in Scotland. The children of the last Ross of Merkland had not been vigorous—one by one, in childhood, and in youth, they had dropped into the family grave, and when the infant Anne was born, her worn-out mother died, leaving besides the newborn child, only one son. His mother’s brother long before had made this Norman, his heir. At the same time, in consideration of his independent inheritance, and his changed name, he had been excluded from the succession to his father’s lands. So Mr. Ross of Merkland, in terror lest his estate should have no worthier proprietor than the sickly little girl whose birth had cost her mother’s life, married hastily again. When Lewis and Anne were still only infants, Norman Rutherford left his father’s house to take possession of his own—and then some terrible blight had fallen upon him, spoken of in fearful whispers at the time, but almost wholly forgotten now. A stranger in the district at the time our history begins would only have learned, after much inquiry, that Norman, escaping from his native country with the stain of blood upon his hands, proved a second Jonah to the ship in which he had embarked, and so was lost, and that grief for his crime had brought his father’s grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. But the difference of name, and the entire silence maintained by his family concerning him, had puzzled country gossips, and restrained the voice of rumor, even at the time. Now his remembrance had almost entirely passed away, and in another week Lewis Ross, Esq., of Merkland, would be of age.

But the whole dreadful tale in all the darkness of its misery had been poured into Anne’s ears that day. She had known nothing of it before. Now, her stepmother thought, it was full time she should know, because—a reason that made Anne shrink and tremble—Mrs. Ross felt convinced that the girl who was so soon to be a visitor at the Tower, could be no other than the daughter of the murdered man.

“The south room, May—he had it when he was a boy,” said Mrs. Ross, as Anne entered their breakfast-room the next morning. “I wish there had been time to get some of the furniture renewed; but I dare say Lewis will like to see it as he left it. Do you not think so, Anne?”

“He was always such a kindly heart,” interposed May.

Mrs. Ross looked dubious.

“You must remember, May, that my son is no longer a boy. This day week he will take the management of his affairs into his own hands. He left us a youth, but he returns a man.”

“And I was just thinking that myself, ma’am,” said May; “and Duncan says it behoves us to call the young Lord by his own name, Merkland,—and not Mr. Lewis; but I always think the old way’s the kindliest.”

“Lewis will be changed, if he does not like the kindliest best,” said Anne.

“Ah, that may be,” said Mrs. Ross; “but there is something due to—Well, where were we. Ay, the south room. I know you keep it in good order, May, but we must have it on Friday shining like—”

“Like a new pin, ma’am,” said May, as Mrs. Ross paused for a simile; “and so it shall, and you may trust that to me.”

“Yes, Lewis will be quite a man,” said Mrs. Ross, leaning back in her chair with a smile. “I should think he would be a good deal browned, Anne—I have been thinking so all the morning.”

“Oh! and he’ll have a lordly presence,” said May, “like his father before him. The Rosses have always been grand men to look upon. They say the young Laird—”

“Was not in the least degree like what my son will be,” said Mrs. Ross, stiffly, while Anne grew pale. “You will see that my orders are strictly attended to, May, and let Duncan come to me whenever we have had breakfast. Take your place, Anne.”

Discomfited by her abrupt dismissal, May took her departure, muttering between her teeth:

“One would think it was a crime to speak a good word of the old lady’s bairns! Well, if one but knew what became of him at last, I would like to see the man in all Strathoran like the young Lord.”

“Anne,” said Mrs. Ross, somewhat sternly, as May withdrew, leaving Anne’s heart vibrating painfully with her indiscreet reference; “was it to-day that Mrs. Catherine expected her visitor?”

“Yes, mother.”

“And to-day you are engaged to go to the Tower?”

“Yes,” said Anne. “But I can send Duncan with an apology, if you wish it. I did not know that Lewis was likely to arrive so soon when I received Mrs. Catherine’s note.”

“Send Duncan! no, indeed!” said Mrs. Ross. “There would be little profit in wasting his time to save yours. Duncan is the most useful person about Merkland.”

“And I the most useless,” said Anne, sighing. “It grieves me deeply, mother, that it should be so.”

Mrs. Ross threw back her head slightly, expressing the peevish scorn which she did not speak, and Anne returned to her tea-making; and so they sat till their joyless meal was ended: each the sole companion and nearest connexion of the other, and yet so utterly separated in all that constitutes true fellowship.

The clear light of the October sun was shining on the waters of Oran, and its tinted, overshadowing leaves, when Anne emerged from among the trees that surrounded Merkland, and took her solitary way to the Tower. Her heart was heavy within her, her step irregular, her brow clouded. The great secret of the family had fallen upon her spirit with all the stunning force of a first grief, and vainly she looked about her for comfort, finding none.

How many times had May’s admiring mention of the “young Laird” called forth upon her lips a sad smile of affectionate sorrow for the dead brother whom she never saw. How often had she marvelled at the old nurse’s stern summary of his end: “He died a violent death!” How often lingered with sorrowful admiration over his picture in the attic lumber-room! And now his name had become a name of fear! The stain of blood was upon him! A Cain! a murderer!

Not dead! Anne’s hasty steps passed quick over the narrow pathway, with its carpeting of fallen leaves. In what pain—what misery, must that blighted life have passed! Whither might that guilty soul have wandered, seeking, in crowd or in solitude, to hide itself from its own fearful consciousness, and from its angry God! In privation, in danger, in want in sin, unfriended and accursed, and alone, with none to speak to him of mercy, of hope, of Divine forgiveness! And this was her brother! her mother’s son!

It was like some dreadful dream—but not like a dream could it be shaken off. How often in her childish imaginings, long ago, had she dreamed of the dead Norman living again, her friend and protector! Now how bitter and strong that unavailing wish, that God had indeed stricken him in his early youth, and laid him in the peaceful family grave unstained. Again and again those dark particulars rolled back upon her in bitter waves, swelling her grief and horror up to agony. And that the daughter of the slain man should come here—here, to have daily intercourse with the nearest kindred of her father’s murderer! The idea was so terrible, that it produced a revulsion. She tried to believe that it was not so—that it could not be possible.

Again and again she stopped, and would have turned back, and yet a strange fascination drew her on. There was a link of terrible connexion between herself and this girl, and Anne’s spirit throbbed to bursting with undefined and confused purposes. She could not trust herself alone, therefore she put force upon her struggling heart, as she had learned to do long years ago, and passed on to the Tower.

For the step-daughter of Mrs. Ross, of Merkland, had small reason to think of this many-sided world as a place of happiness. In a household which had barely means enough to support its station, and provide for the somewhat expensive wanderings of its heir, she was the one dependent, and Anne had ripened into some three-and-twenty years, and was no longer a girl. She felt how useless she was in the eyes of her clever step-mother; she felt the lethargic influence of having no aim, and deep down in that hidden heart of hers, which few others knew, or cared to know, sorrow and pain had been dwelling long, like Truth, in the well of their own solitary tears.

She was now proceeding to the house of her most dear and especial friend: an ancient lady, whose strong will swayed, and whose warm heart embraced all who came within their influence, and whose healthful and vigorous spirit was softened in a manner most rare and beautiful by those delicate perceptions and sympathies which form so important an element in the constitution of genius. Mrs. Catherine Douglas had seen the snows of sixty winters. For more than thirty of these, her strong and kindly hand had held absolute dominion at the Tower, yet of the few admitted to her friendship and confidence, Anne Ross, the neglected step-daughter of Mrs. Ross, of Merkland, an ill-used child, a slighted woman, held the highest place.

The Tower was a gray, old, stately place, defiant alike of storm and siege, with deep embrasures on its walls meant for no child’s play, and a court-yard that had rung to martial music centuries ago, in the days of the unhappy Stuarts. Deep woods stretched round it, tinted with autumn’s fantastic wealth of coloring. The Oran ran so close to the strong, heavy, battlemented wall, that in the old warlike days, it had been the castle-moat, but the drawbridge was gone, and there was peaceful access now, by a light bridge of oak. A boat lay on the stream, moored to an over-hanging rock, by which Mrs. Catherine herself was wont to make the brief passage of the Oran. It was a favorite toy of Anne’s also, in her happier moods, but she was too heavy of heart to heed it now.

“Mrs. Catherine is in the library, Miss Anne,” said Mrs. Euphan Morison, the portly, active housekeeper, whose medical propensities so frequently annoyed her mistress; and threading the dark passages familiarly, Anne passed on alone.

“Mrs. Catherine is in the library, Miss Anne,” repeated a dark, thin, elfin-like girl, who sat on the sill of a deep window, reading, and hiding her book beneath the stocking which she ought to have been knitting, as she threw furtive glances to the door of the housekeeper’s especial sanctum: “but there’s gentlemen with her. It’s a business day.”

“I suppose you may admit me, Jacky,” said Anne. “Mrs. Catherine expects me.”

“Mr. Walter Foreman’s in, Miss Anne,” said Jacky.

“And what then?” said Anne, smiling.

“And Mr. Ferguson, the factor from Strathoran,” said the girl, gravely, taking up, with a look of abstraction, some dropt loops in her neglected stocking.

“Then I will go to the drawing-room,” said Anne. “Tell me, Jacky, when Mrs. Catherine is disengaged.”

“And Miss Anne,” said Jacky, starting, as Anne was about to pass on, “the young lady’s coming.”

“So I have heard,” said Anne.

“And she’s to get the mid-chamber,” said Jacky, “and the chairs have come out of the big room in the west tower. You never saw them, Miss Anne. Will you come?” And Jacky jerked her thin, angular frame off her seat, and threw down book and stocking.

“What have you been reading, Jacky?” said Anne.

The sharp, dark face owned an involuntary flush, and the furtive eyes glanced back to the housekeeper’s closed door. “It was only the Faery Queen.”

“The Faery Queen! Jacky, these are strange studies for you.”

“There’s no harm in it,” muttered the girl, angrily.

“I did not say there was,” said Anne; “and you need not transfix me with those sharp eyes of yours, because I wondered. But, Jacky, your mother would not be pleased with this.”

“It’s not the chief end of woman to work stockings,” murmured the girl.

“No, surely,” said Anne; “nor yet to read poems. Come, Jacky, let me see the mid-chamber.”

Jacky seized the book, deposited it in a dark niche below the window, and glided away before Anne up the broad stone stairs, to the room which the united skill of the household had been decking for a bower to little Alice Aytoun. The mid-chamber, as its name imports, occupied the front of the building, between the two round towers, that rose grimly with their dark turrets on either side. It was a room of good proportions, with two deep windows, looking out on the windings of the Oran, and commanding a view of the little town, seated on the point where the river poured itself into the sea. The country looked rich and gay in its russet coloring, and here and there you could see the harvest labourers in a half-reaped field—for the harvests were late beneath the northern sky of Strathoran. A little way below, the unpretending house of Merkland stood, peacefully among its trees; on the left hand, the plain church and substantial Manse basked in the sunbeams; and the broad sea, flashing beneath the light, belted its blue breadths around the landscape. Anne stood at the window, and looked out, as in a dream; dim, misty, spectral visions floating before her, in which were ever mingling her unhappy wandering brother, and the unconscious girl who should look forth on that same scene to-night.

“It’s not so much here,” said Jacky, glancing round, and looking complacently on a great bunch of dahlias and hollyhocks, rudely inserted in an uncouth china vase. “The room’s just as it always is, except the flowers—will you come in here, Miss Anne?”

Anne followed, thinking little of the arrangements which she came to superintend. The room they entered was small and rounded, occupying as it did, a corner of the eastern tower. Its deep-set window was toward the sunrising—towards the hills, too, and the sea—and Anne paused upon the threshold, in wonder at the unwonted preparations made for this youthful visitor. In one end of the room stood a great wardrobe of richly-carved oak. There was an ancient piano, also, and little tables laden with well-chosen books, and the antique chairs looked richly sober in their renovation, heightening the air of olden romance which hung about this lady’s bower. The blooming plants in the window were the only things new, and pertaining to the immediate present. Graceful and pure in its antique delicacy, the small apartment was a bower indeed.

“But Mrs. Catherine,” said Jacky, “would let me put no flowers here—only a big branch of barberries that I slipped in myself.”

The branch of barberries was, indeed, projecting fantastically from the rich frame of the mirror on the wall.

“I think you may let Mrs. Catherine have the whole merit of this, Jacky,” said Anne, taking it down; “and do you have a ramble through the garden, and find something more fragrant than those sunflowers. You will get some roses yet—run, Jacky. Mrs. Catherine—”

“Is troubled with undutiful bairns,” said the lady herself entering the room. “Wherefore did you not come to me, Anne, and me in urgent need of counsel? And wherefore did you not open the door, you elf, Jacky, unless you be indeed a changeling, as I have always thought you, and were feared for learned words? Come down with me this moment, Anne! You can fiddle about these trifling things when there is no serious matters in hand. I am saying, Come with me!”

Mrs. Catherine Douglas was tall and stately, with a firm step, and a clear voice, strong constitutioned, and strong spirited. In appearance she embodied those complexional peculiarities which gave to the fabled founder of her house his far-famed name—black hair, streaked with silver, the characteristic pale complexion, and strongly-marked features, harmonising perfectly in the hue—she was dark-grey. It seemed her purpose, too, to increase the effect by her dress. At all times and seasons, Mrs. Catherine’s rich, rustling, silken garments were grey, of that peculiar dark-grey which is formed by throwing across the sable warp a slender waft of white. In winter, a shawl of the finest texture, but of the simple black and white shepherd’s check, completed her costume. In summer, its soft, fine folds hung over her chair. No rejoicing, and no sorrow, changed Mrs. Catherine’s characteristic dress. The lustrous silken garment, the fine woollen shawl, the cap of old and costly lace remained unchanged for years.

“It is a new vocation for me, child,” said Mrs. Catherine, as Anne followed her down stairs, “to set myself to the adorning of rooms; but when my serving-women must have their divers notions concerning them, I should put to my own hand, unless I had wanted the stranger to be terrified with the aspect of my house—which I do not, for—Look back, child, is that elf Jacky behind you with her sharp eyes. But I have matters more important on my hand to-day.”

They reached the library door as Mrs. Catherine spoke, and she entered, while Anne lingered behind. Another voice, the brisk one of Walter Foreman, the young Portoran writer, began to speak immediately, but was summarily interrupted by Mrs. Catherine’s clear tones:

“I tell you you’re a fool, Walter Foreman, as was your father before you—it’s in the blood. You say he was a kinsman. Ay, doubtless, as if I did not known that. And was not James Aytoun as near of kin to him as me, and Ralph Falconer nearer. To think of any mortal, in his senses, passing over the promising lads, to leave siller to me! Me, that have an abundance for my own turns, and none to be heir to either my land or my name. Speak not to me. Walter Foreman, I say the man was crazy!”

“But even if he were,” said Mr. Walter Foreman, as Anne entered the library, “you would surely never think, Mrs. Catherine, of contesting the validity of a will made in your own favor.”

“And who said I would not, if it seemed right in my own eyes?” said Mrs. Catherine, indignantly. “Come here, Anne; you are not blinded with the sight of siller, as this youth is. Robert Falconer, the merchant (the third son of old Falcon’s Craig,) is dead, and passing over his own near kin, that needed it (besides leaving the most part of his siller to hospitals, which may be was right, and may be not, I have not time to enter upon it,) the auld fool—that I should speak so of a man that is gone to his account—has left by his will a portion of siller, ten thousand pounds, no less, to me: me, that have no manner of use for it; that know not even what to do with it. I am thankful to you, Mr. Ferguson, you would learn me an easy way of putting it out of my hand; but I must consider, first, with your permission, whether I have any right to take it in.”

Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, smiled. “It is not often, Mrs. Catherine, that people receive legacies as you do.”

“No—neither, I am hoping, are there many left like this,” said Mrs. Catherine; “but truly, gentlemen, that is no fault of yours, that I should fall upon you for it. Come back to me this day week, Mr. Ferguson; and you can come also, Walter Foreman, unless your father, who has more discretion, has the time to spare; and in that space, I will have taken counsel what I should do.”

Mr. Ferguson and the young lawyer took their leave; and Mrs. Catherine turned to Anne: “Heard you ever the like of it, child? To leave siller to me! You did not know the man; but Ralph Falconer, of Falcon’s Craig, is his grand-nephew, and James Aytoun is also allied to him by the mother’s side: and I, that am but his cousin, three times removed, and having my own share of this world’s goods, and none to come after me—undoubtedly the man was crazy!”

CHAPTER II.

THE October sun rose brilliantly upon ancient Edinburgh, throwing the strong radiance of its russet gold upon the noble outline and antique grandeur of the historic city, and shone joyously into a family room, where a small household round their breakfast table were discussing the journey which that fair-haired, smiling girl, half-timorous, half-exultant, was to undertake that day. The white hair upon the mother’s placid forehead was belied by the fresh cheek and dewy liquid eye, from which time had not taken the brightness. Her son was entering upon the strongest years of manhood, with sense and intelligence shining in his face. Her daughter was a girl, just emerging from the child’s mirth and unrestrained gaiety, into those sensitive, imaginative years, which form the threshold of graver life—

“Standing with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood sweet.”

“But, mother,” exclaimed Alice Aytoun, suddenly, “Miss Douglas will see at once that Bessie has not been my maid at home.”

“Miss Douglas!” cried her mother. “Alice, did I not tell you that you were on no account to call her Miss. Remember always, Mrs. Catherine. And she knows very well that we are not able to keep a maid for you, and will understand that Bessie is for a companion on the way, and in some sense a protector. If you stay long, you can send her home.”

“And be alone in the strange place, mother,” said Alice, the sunshine fading, for a moment, from her face.

“How long will it be strange, Alice?” said her brother. “How many acquaintances will you make in a week?”

The sunshine flushed back again.

“And Mrs. Catherine—is she very eccentric, mother? I hope I shall like her.”

“I hope still more, Alice,” said Mrs. Aytoun, smiling, “that she may like you. Mrs. Catherine has many friends who could serve James; and then, you know, she has no heir. So be as fascinating as possible.”

“Mother!” exclaimed James, “this worldly wisdom sounds strangely from your lips. We do not send Alice away to pay court to Mrs. Catherine Douglas for her estate’s sake.”

“By no means,” said Mrs. Aytoun. “I have heard Mrs. Catherine spoken of often as a most kind, loveable person, in her own peculiar way; and I accepted her invitation to Alice gladly, not because she has an estate unheired, but because—for various reasons, indeed—but the other, by the way. You are a landless laird yourself, James, and I am not quite so stoical as to despise a good inheritance.”

“Do you know any of Mrs. Catherine’s neighbors, mother?” said Alice, whose attention, sadly distracted by anticipation, had altogether wandered during this discussion of motives. “The people I am likely to meet, do you know any of them?”

“No,” said Mrs. Aytoun, “I never was at the Tower; and my mother left the neighborhood young, and died so soon, too, that I have had very little connexion with her friends or native place. Indeed, it surprised me, that Mrs. Catherine should remember our relationship at all: but she is one of the most generous persons possible, I have heard often; and no doubt wishes to give you a glimpse, Alice, of the world you should enter on now.” And Mrs. Aytoun gave a very quiet sigh.

“Nonsense, mother!” said her son, energetically. “Alice stands in no need of generosity: and I should fancy a set of North Country lairds could be very little superior to the society we have here, landless though we be.”

“There are most gentlemanly and intellectual men in the North Country, James,” said Mrs. Aytoun, quietly shifting her premises.

“No doubt of it, mother; but not better than we have in Edinburgh.”

Mrs. Aytoun drew her hand over her daughter’s fair curls, and made no answer; confessing to herself, that a North Country laird would be, in her eyes, a more suitable partner for her Alice, than any rising W.S., or poor advocate of all James Aytoun’s friends.

Alice’s trunks were standing, corded and ready. Little Bessie, the daughter of a woman who had been Mrs. Aytoun’s nurse in better times, and who was her humble agent and assistant in all emergencies now, sat in the kitchen in all the glory of a new shawl and bonnet, a brevet ladies-maid; and it was nearly time to start. Mrs. Aytoun had yet to pack some small, forgotten tendernesses in a basket, with tremulous mother-anxiety, half-pleased, half-sorrowful, while James stood, watch in hand, warning her of the flight of those quick moments and of the possible starting of the coach before her cares were at an end.

At last, they left the house, established Alice in the cosiest corner, set little Bessie by her side, gave the guard all manner of instructions to attend to their comfort, and waited till the vehicle should start.

“Mind, Alice,” whispered Mrs. Aytoun, anxiously; “always to call her Mrs. Catherine,” and, in a moment more, Alice had lost sight of the compelled smile on her mother’s pale face, and had started on her first journey from home.

She was seventeen only, and her heart was bounding high within her. The October morning was so bright and invigorating, the beautiful world so new and so unknown. A transitory qualm passed over the unclouded, youthful spirit, as she thought it not right, perhaps, to rejoice at leaving home, but that passed speedily. A temporary anxiety as to the unknown Mrs. Catherine, whom she was hastening to see: but that disappeared also. The brilliant dreams that had been rising by day and night, since that momentous invitation came, floated together in indistinct brightness before her. The red October sunbeams, the bracing October breeze, the beautiful landscapes on that northern road—though these danced but indistinctly in her eyes, a part of the exhilaration of spirit, yet scarcely things rejoiced in for their own beauty—filled up her gladness to overflowing. The little heart at her side danced too, in its degree, as blithely, for after the young lady herself, in the great house to which they journeyed, was not the young lady’s maid next in dignity.

At one of the stages of the journey, a hypochondriac old gentleman, who had been the only other tenant of the coach, became faint, and declared himself unable to remain in the inside; whereupon, after some delay, an outside passenger was prevailed upon to exchange. A by no means unpleasant exchange, for the new comer was a young man of good looks, and frank, prepossessing manners, to whom the innocent, youthful face, with its blue eyes and fair curls might, or might not, have been an inducement to descend.

The beauty of the road became more articulate after that, as the polite stranger, apparently well-acquainted with the way, took care to point out to his young fellow-traveller its various points of interest, and imperceptibly, Alice scarce knew how, they glided into confidential conversation. For Strathoran, the stranger said, was his home and birth-place, whither he was returning after a long absence, and Mrs. Catherine Douglas was one of his oldest friends—he had known her all his life. So the hours went on, quick and pleasantly, and the long miles gradually dwindled down. Her new friend talked, Alice thought, as few could talk, and interspersed his comments on their present road so gracefully, with anecdotes of other roads, world-famed and wonderful, which she had read of often, but which he had seen.

He told her of her kinswoman, too, and of the Tower, and hinted how her own gentle presence would brighten the old walls and recall its youth again, till Alice, with all these magic influences about her, began to discover that this journey, instead of the weary means of reaching a wished-for destination, was in itself a young Elysium, unthought of, and delightful—the first homage rendered to the youthful woman, no longer a child: the first sign of her entrance into that fair world of more eventful life, whose air seemed now so golden with smiles and sunshine.

The dim lights of Portoran began to blink at last through the mists of the October night, and by and bye, the coach stopped at the door of the principal inn, in the main street. Already Alice could perceive various individual loungers without, touching their hats as they caught a glimpse of her companion, and while she herself began to wonder how she was to travel the remaining five or six miles to the Tower, the head of a tall and gaunt, elderly woman, dressed in stiff old-fashioned garments, looked in at the coach window.

“Is Miss Aytoun here?” said a harsh voice.

Alice answered timidly to her name.

“Quite safe; but very weary I am afraid,” said the gentleman, “Mistress Elspat, you have forgotten me, I see. How are they all at the Tower?”

“Bless me, Mr. Lewis, is’t you?” said the stately Mrs. Elspat Henderson, own woman to Mrs. Catherine Douglas, of the Tower. “Who would have thought of meeting you here? They’re a’ well, Sir. I left Miss Anne there even now; but the carriage is waiting for the young lady. The carriage is waiting, Miss Aytoun.”

And, beginning to tremble, with a revulsion of all her simple apprehensions and timidity, Alice Aytoun was transferred to Mrs. Catherine’s comfortable carriage, and leaving Lewis Ross at the inn door, looking after her, rolled away through the darkness to the Tower.

It was not a pleasant change; to leave the cheerful voice and vivacious conversation of Lewis, for those formal questions as to her journey, and the terrified stillness of little Bessie, as she sat tremulously by Mrs. Elspat’s side. Alice had scarcely ever seen before the dense darkness of starless nights in so wide and lonely a country, as she looked out through the carriage window, and saw, or fancied she saw the body of darkness floating round about her, the countless swimming atoms of gloom that filled the air, her bounding heart was chilled. The faint autumnal breeze, too, pouring its sweeping, sighing lengths, through those endless walls of trees; the excited throb of her pulse when in some gaunt congregation of firs, she fancied she could trace the quaint gables and high roof of some olden dwelling-place; the disappointment of hearing in answer to her timid question that the Tower was yet miles away! Alice sank back into her corner in silence, and closed her eyes, feeling now many fears and misgivings, and almost wishing herself at home.

At last the voice of the Oran roused her; there was something homelike in its tinkling musical footsteps, and Alice looked up.—Dimly the massy Tower was rising before her, planting its strong breadth firmly upon its knoll, like some stout sentinel of old. The great door was flung wide open as they approached, and a flood of light, and warmth, and kindliness beaming out, dazzled and made denser the intervening gloom. Foremost on the broad threshold, stood a young lady, whose graver and elder womanhood, brought confidence to the throbbing girlish heart; behind stood the portly Mrs. Euphan Morison—the elfin Jacky, and furthest back of all, a tall figure, enveloped in the wide soft folds of the gray shawl, Mrs. Catherine’s characteristic costume. Little Alice alighted, half stumbling in bashful awkwardness, the young lady on the threshold came forward, took her hand, and said some kindly words of welcome. Jacky curtsied; the tall figure advanced.

“I have brought ye the young lady—Miss Aytoun, ma’am,” said Mrs. Elspat Henderson, and Alice lifted her girlish face, shy and blushing, to the scrutiny of her ancient kinswoman. Mrs. Catherine drew the young stranger forward, took her hand, and looked at her earnestly.

“A right bonnie countenance it is,” she said at last, bending to kiss the white forehead of the tremulous Alice. “You are welcome to my house, Alison Aytoun. Anne, the bairn is doubtless cold and wearied. Do you guide her up the stair.”

Up the fine old staircase, into the inner drawing-room, which was Mrs. Catherine’s especial sanctum, with its warm colors, and blazing fire, and shining tea equipage. Little Alice had to close her blue eyes perforce, dazzled as they were, that no one might see the happy dew that gathered in them. The contrast was so pleasant, and forthwith the bounding of that gay heart, and all its bright dreams and sunshiny anticipations came flushing back again.

“And so you had a pleasant journey,” said Mrs. Catherine, kindly, when after half an hour which Alice had spent arranging her dress, half in awe, and more than half in pleasure, in the beautiful apartment called her dressing-room, they were seated at table—Anne Ross presiding over the massy silver tea-pot, and hissing urn: “and were not feared to travel your lane? Jacky, you elf! what call had you to open that door, and let in a draft upon us? The bairn will get her death of cold.”

“If you please, Miss Anne,” said Jacky, resolutely holding the door of the outer room open, as she kept her ground.

“Come in, ye fairy, and shut the door,” commanded Mrs. Catherine.

The girl obeyed, casting long sharp glances from under her dark eye-brows at the wondering Alice.

“If you please, Miss Anne, my grandmother says—”

“What, Jacky?”

Jacky had paused to ascertain who it was that the young stranger was like, and muttered a private memorandum of her discovery before she went on.

“It’s the little picture in the west room—my grandmother says, Miss Anne, that Mr. Lewis—but she bade me say, Merkland—”

“What of him, Jacky?” said Anne, rising hastily.

“If ye please, Miss Anne, he came to Portoran in the coach with a young lady to-night.”

“Came to Portoran to-night!” repeated Anne, “then you must let me leave you immediately, Mrs. Catherine. I must hasten to tell my mother, if indeed Lewis is not at home already.”

“Away with you down the stairs, you elf,” cried Mrs. Catherine, “and see if the horses are put up yet; and if they’re not, let Simon be ready to drive Miss Ross to Merkland. Anne, doubtless you must go, but mind the bairn Alison is not used to such company as a staid auld wife like me, and be soon back again.”

“I will bring Lewis to see you to-morrow, Mrs. Catherine,” said Anne, as she hastily bade Alice good night.

“It must have been your brother who travelled with me, Miss Ross,” said Alice. “He said he had been abroad, and knew Mrs. Catherine—and he was very kind. Will you thank him for me?”

Anne Ross felt herself shrink and tremble from the touch of the small soft hand, the innocent frank look of the girlish face—the child of the slain man, whose blood was on Norman’s hand.

A strange contrast—the little throbbing happy heart, whose slight fears, and shy apprehensions, scarcely graver than a child’s, had trembled and palpitated so short a time before, in the same vehicle which carried down to Merkland, so grave a burden of grief, so few hopes, so many sorrows, in Anne’s maturer spirit—for before her there lay no brilliant heritage of unknown good to come. One vision was in her very heart continually—a wandering, sorrowing, sinning man, buffeting the wind, striving through the tempest, enveloped with every physical attribute of misery, and carrying its essence in his soul. It is only those who have mourned and yearned for such, who can know how the sick heart, in its anxious agonies, conjures up storm, and blast, and desolation, to sweep around the beloved head, of whose sin and wanderings it knows, yet knows not where those wanderings are—the pain without, symbolizing and heightening the darker pain within, with one of those touches of tragic art, which grief does so strangely excel in.

Lewis had not arrived when Anne reached Merkland, but he came shortly after; and the stir of joy incident on his arrival united the family more closely together than was usual for them. Mrs. Ross’s cold bright eyes were wet with tears of joy that night, and her worldly spirit melted into kindliness; and the presence of Lewis gave his only sister a greater share in the household and its rejoicings. He stood between her step-mother and her, the nearest relation of each, linking them together. Lewis had been two years away. He had gone, a fairhaired youth, with a gay party from Strathoran, who, seizing the first opportunity of restored peace, set out to those sunny continental countries from which mere tourists had been excluded so long. He was a man now, bronzed and bearded, and with the independent manners of one who had been accustomed in all matters to guide and direct himself. There were various particulars of that same independence which jarred upon Anne’s delicate feelings. A considerable remainder of boyish self-importance, and braggadocio—a slight loudness of tone, and flippancy of expression; but there was the excitement of his home-coming, to excuse these faults in some degree.

“And the Duncombes, Lewis,” asked Mrs. Ross, when the first burst of welcome was over, and they were seated by the fireside, discussing his journey—”where are they now?”

“Oh, Duncombe’s in Gibraltar,” said Lewis, “with his regiment of course. Duncombe can’t afford to choose his residence—he must have his full pay. A dull life they have of it, yonder.”

“And how does Isabel Sutherland like that, Lewis?” said Anne.

“Isabel Sutherland? Mrs. Duncombe, do you mean? Why you don’t think she’s one of the garrison! She’s not such a fool, I can tell you!”

“Where is she then, if she is not with her husband?” said Anne, wonderingly.

“What an innocent you are, sister Anne!” said Lewis, laughing. “Why, she’s one of the ‘unattached,’ as Gordon says. I left her in Paris with Archie. You have no idea what a moody, gloomy fellow Duncombe’s grown. I should think he was enough to frighten anybody!”

“He was always a bilious-looking man,” said Mrs. Ross; “and yet Isabel ran away with him.”

“Ah! there’s no accounting for the taste of young ladies,” said Lewis, lightly. “I should think she would be more likely to run away from him, than with him, now. But you should see their menage in Paris! Archie’s the man for all that.”

“How do you mean, Lewis?” said Anne.

“You used to like him—eh, Annie?” said Lewis. “Don’t break your heart—it’s all up with that now. But, I can tell you, he makes the money fly finely.”

Anne’s face flushed deeply—perhaps with the faintest shadow of pain at that intelligence, more than did merely belong to her regret for the folly of an old neighbor and early companion—but certainly with a painful feeling of the levity and carelessness of Lewis.

“Well, Lewis,” said Mrs. Ross; “I should think Archibald Sutherland could afford it pretty well. The old people must have saved a great deal, they lived so quietly. Strathoran is a good estate. Archie does not need to be so frugal as you.”

“Frugal!” echoed her son. “I wish you only saw. But, unless you did, with your quiet Scotch notions, you could have no idea of it. If Archie Sutherland is not poorer than we are, I’m mistaken.”

“Oh!” said Mrs. Ross; “that will be the reason they are thinning the woods. Then why don’t they come home and economize?”

“Come home!” cried Lewis. “Home to this dull Strathoran after Paris! It’s not such an easy thing, I can tell you, mother. But, to be sure, one never knows the true reason. I’ve heard Archie often wishing for home—perhaps he is afraid of falling in love with Anne.”

“At all events, Lewis,” said Anne, gravely, “whatever Archie Sutherland fears, you are not afraid of giving me pain.”

“Don’t be absurd, Anne,” said Mrs. Ross. “The poor boy’s first night at home, to begin with these airs of yours!”

Lewis saw the painful flush upon Anne’s face—the look of deep humiliation with which she turned away her head, and his heart smote him.

“I did not think you were so easily hurt. Nonsense, Anne! It was mere thoughtlessness, I assure you. I would not give you pain for anything.”

Alas! there were many things for which Lewis Ross would have been content to pain any one in the world. But Anne was easily mollified, and he ran on:

“I met a little fairy of a girl in the coach, to-day. She was going to the Tower, to visit Mrs. Catherine. Hallo! what’s the matter, Anne?”

“Nothing,” said Anne, forcing a smile on the lip which she had felt quiver a moment before.

“How pale you were!” said Lewis. “I thought you were ill. I must go up to see Mrs. Catherine to-morrow. How does she wear, the old lady? She must be getting very ancient now. But that girl is a pretty little thing. Who can she be—do you know, Anne? I thought of her being a companion, or something of that kind; but there was a little maid with her.”

“A relative of Mrs. Catherine’s,” said Anne, faintly.

“A relative—oh! What if she cuts you out!” said Lewis.—”I should have thought you sure of a good place in Mrs. Catherine’s will, Anne. But there is no saying what a little fairy like that may do.”

Anne Ross felt the pang of dependence bitterly that night. Lewis was too like his mother to make it light to her; and portionless, with her plain face, and fastidious taste, what could she ever look for but dependence. Marriage, that necessity, often enough an unhappy one, to which so many young women in her position must look, as to a profession, for home and means, could never be a matter of mercenary convenience to Anne, and honorable earning of her own bread was an impossibility. And from her own sombre prospects she could turn for relief to so few of the things or people around. Lewis, so carelessly unfeeling and indifferent, so blunted in perception—Norman, whose very life was so great a dread to her, remaining before her mind’s eye for ever—and even the sunny, youthful face at the Tower, which had lifted its blue eyes so trustfully to her own—why did its remembrance, and Lewis’s light words of comment on its girlish comeliness, strike so deep a chill of fear into her heart? Ah! clouds deeply gathering, heavily brooding over this nook of still and peaceful country, what new combinations were your dark mists to form?

Alice Aytoun by this time was snugly settled in the Tower, and had already written a little note, overflowing with innocent pride and joyousness to her mother at home, describing that most cheerful of all inner drawing-rooms, and dwelling fully upon the glories of her own apartments, the carved wardrobe, the old piano, the beautiful flowers; mentioning, too, in the postscript, in the very slightest manner, a “young gentleman,” who had pointed out all the places to her on the way, and who turned out to be Miss Ross’s brother, though who Miss Ross was, Alice did not stay to particularize. And after the letter was written, Mrs. Catherine, whose eyes had been lingering on the youthful face with most genial kindliness, began to play with her in talk, half childish, and wholly affectionate, as with some toy of unknown construction, whose capabilities she did not yet quite see. Jacky, too, with those quick, sidelong glances, as she went jerking in and out at every possible opportunity, had commenced her study of the young stranger’s character, and quickened by admiration of the simple pretty face, was advancing in her study as quickly as her mistress. The minds of the stately old lady and the elfin girl came to conclusions strangely similar. There rose in them both an instinctive impulse of kindly protection, natural enough in Alice Aytoun’s aged kinswoman, but contrasting oddly with the age and position of Jacky Morison.

Anne and Lewis visited the Tower next day. In the Sutherlands, of whom Lewis brought tidings so unfavorable, Mrs. Catherine was deeply interested, and listened while he spoke of them, with many shakings of her head, and doubts and fears.

“Trysted to evil,” she exclaimed, as Lewis told her in his careless way, of Mrs. Duncombe’s Paris life. “Did I not say nothing good could come of the bairn that left the sick bed of her mother, for the sake of a strange man; ay, and made the sick-bed—a death-bed by the deed. Lewis, is’t the lad’s fault, think you, or is’t hers?”

“Oh, I don’t know that there is much fault in it,” said Lewis. “It’s not a formal separation, you know; only Isabel’s living with her brother, because it is, beyond dispute, pleasanter to live in Paris than in Gibraltar. You don’t know really—you can have no idea.”

“Think you so?” said Mrs. Catherine, quickly, “but maybe there are folk living who knew such places and things, before you were born! Why does Isabel Sutherland not return to the house of her fathers, if she cannot dwell with the man she left father and mother for?”

“There is no accounting for these things,” said Lewis, with a slight sneer.

“Lewis Ross,” said Mrs. Catherine, “hold your peace; you are but a boy, and should leave that to your elders. Anne, I am sore grieved for Archie Sutherland; if evil comes to the lad, it will be as hard to me, as if evil were coming upon you.”

CHAPTER III.

DURING the following week there were great preparations and much bustle in Merkland, for Lewis’s birthday was to be celebrated with unwonted festivities, and all Mrs. Ross’s energies were aroused to make an appearance worthy the occasion. All the Lairds’ families round about had received invitations to the solemn dinner-party, at which Lewis Ross was, for the first time, to take his father’s place. There was to be a dinner, too, in the Sutherland Arms, at Portoran, of the not very extensive tenantry of Merkland, at which the landlord and his underlings laughed in their sleeves, contrasting it secretly with the larger festivities which had hailed the majority of the youthful Sutherland of Strathoran, whose continued absence from his own home, gave occasion for so many surmisings. But yet, on a small scale, as they were, these same Merkland festivities were a matter of some moment in the quiet country-side. Alice Aytoun’s gay heart leaped breathlessly at the thought of them, and many anxious cogitations had risen under her fair curls, touching that pretty gown of light silk, which was her only gala dress. Whether it was good enough to shine in that assemblage of rural aristocracy, and how it would look beside the beautiful robes which, Bessie reported, the Misses Coulter, of Harrows, had ordered from Edinburgh for the occasion. Alice had serious doubts—her only consolation under which was Bessie’s genuine admiration; and thought within herself, with a sigh, that if she had to go to many parties, the same dress would not do always, and her mother, at home, could not afford to order beautiful robes for her, as Mrs. Coulter could; however, that was still in the future, and but a dim prospective evil.

Lewis Ross, in those busy days, had many errands to the Tower, and on his fine horse, looked, as Alice thought, the very impersonation of youthful strength, and courage, and gay spirits. And Merkland was a pretty house, with its deep bordering of woods, and its quiet home-landscape, of cultivated fields and scattered farm-houses. Alice almost thought she preferred its tamer beauty, to the wide expanse of hills and valleys, of wandering river, and broad sea, upon which she looked out, from the deepest window of her chamber in the eastern tower.

All the parish was stirred to welcome Lewis, and other parishes surrounding Strathoran, added the pressure of their kindliness. He was in the greatest request everywhere. From gay Falcon’s Craig to the sober Manse, from drowsy Smoothlie to the bustling homestead of Mr. Coulter, of Harrows, everybody delighted to honor the youthful heir of Merkland. Lewis did all that goodwill and good horsemanship could do, to renew his acquaintance with them all. He gallopped to Falcon’s Craig, and spent a gay night with the bold Falconers. He met Ralph by appointment next day, to follow the hounds. He made a visit to Smoothlie, and curbed his horse into compulsory conformity to the sober paces of Mr. Ambler’s respectable pony, as that easy, quiet old gentleman, who was conjoined with Mrs. Ross in the guardianship of her son, accompanied him to Merkland. And Lewis inspected the stock at Harrows, and dropped in at the Manse, to chat awhile with Mrs. Bairn’s father; yet, with all these labors on his hand, did yet insist, in the excess of his brotherly solicitude, on accompanying his reluctant sister Anne to the Tower, the day before he became of age.

Mrs. Catherine sat in her library, that day, in grave deliberation—with young Walter Foreman, and Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, again beside her. The table was strewed with papers, and the two gentlemen were pressing something to which she objected, upon the firm old lady.

“The siller is mine,” she said, “be it so. The man (I will say no ill of him, seeing he was a kinsman of my own, but that he was a fool, which is in no manner uncommon) is dead, and his will can have no more changes; frail folk as we are, that can never be counted on for our steadfastness, till we are in our graves! But allowing that the siller is my own—is it a lawful purpose, I ask of you, Mr. Ferguson, to build up with it, the foolish pleasures of a prodigal—alack, that I should call his mother’s son so! while I may have other righteous errands to send it forth upon?”

“It is to build up the old house of Strathoran. It is to save your friend’s son,” said the factor, with an appealing motion of his hand.

Mrs. Catherine was moved, and did not answer for a moment.

“The lad was left well in this world’s goods,” she said, at last. “A fairer course was never before mortal man. An honorable name, a good inheritance, the house of his fathers over his head, and a country-side looking up to him. What could he seek more, I ask you, Mr. Ferguson? And where is the lad? Revelling in yon land of playactors, and flunkies, and knicknackets: consorting with a herd of buzzing things, that were worms yesterday, and will be nothing in the morn. Speak not to me; I have seen suchlike with my own eyes. He must have his feasts, and his flatterers, forsooth! and the good land, that God gave him, eaten up for it. Bonnie-dyes, and paintings, and statues said he? And if it were even so (and the youth, Lewis Ross, says otherwise,) should he take the poor man’s lamb for that, think ye?—the farmer’s honest gains, that he toils for, with the care of his mind, and the sweat of his brow?”

The lawyer and the factor exchanged glances.

“I beg you to do us justice, Mrs. Catherine,” said Mr. Ferguson, deprecatingly: “that was done in no case but in Mr. Ewing’s; and the land is really worth considerably more now than when he got his former lease.”

“And whose praise is that?” said Mrs. Catherine, sharply. “Not the laird’s, who never put a finger to the land. Do you not know well yourself, Robert Ferguson, that Andrew Ewing’s lease had but four years to run, when by the good hand of Providence, giving him a discreet wife, with siller, he was set on improving the land? Has he not spent his profits twice told upon it? And, before he has time to reap a just harvest, the prodigal must come in, to take a tithe off the gains of the honest man. I take ye to witness, that the welfare of the lad, Archie Sutherland, Isabel Balfour’s son, lies near my own heart, but I cannot shut my eyes to this evil.”

“It was done in no other case,” repeated Mr. Ferguson.

“Was there any other lease out,” retorted Mrs. Catherine, “that the hunger of siller could have its aliment on? You are a discreet man, Mr. Ferguson, and you, Walter Foreman, with your business-breeding, should have some notion of the value of siller. Is it not a deep sea that ye are asking me to throw this portion into? A hungry mouth that, the more ye fill it, will but gape and gaunt the more? So far as the siller is mine, have I not gotten it to use it well, as my light goes?—to succour the widow and fatherless, maybe—not to pamper the unnatural wants of a waster and a prodigal?”

“Mrs. Catherine,” said the factor, “hear me speak before you make this decision. I do not, by any means, defend Strathoran. I have taken it upon me, indeed, both to warn and to entreat him to give up this ruinous—I will not say criminal course, he is embarked on: and I have received from him, in return, letters that would melt your heart. Why he persists in what he acknowledges to be wrong, I cannot tell; and I do not defend him. He has got into the vortex, I suppose, and cannot extricate himself. But his father built up my fortunes, Mrs. Catherine, and so long as anything can be done, I will not forsake his son. This seasonable relief may save him: without this, his affairs are hopelessly entangled, and Strathoran must cease to be the home of the Sutherlands.”

Mrs. Catherine leaned her head upon her hand, and did not speak. At length, looking up, she saw, through the opposite window, Anne Ross and Lewis coming up the waterside, to the Tower.

“You will leave me a time, for further thought,” she said, slowly. “Put the papers out of yon keen gallant’s sight, or go into another room. You will hear tidings of your prodigal from Lewis, Mr. Ferguson; and doubtless you know him well enough, Walter, being birds of a feather. Euphan Morison, send lunch for the gentlemen into the dining-parlor, and tell Miss Ross I am waiting for her, in the little room.”

So speaking, Mrs. Catherine rose and left the library, her face shadowed with deeper gravity than was its wont—her step slow and heavy, and proceeded through many winding passages, to a locked door, in the furthest angle of the western wing. She opened it with a key which hung from her neck, and entered a small apartment furnished with the most meagre simplicity. It contained but two chairs and a small table, and from the deep diamond-paned window, you could only see the steep side of a hill, rough with whins and crags, which sprang sheer upward from the back of the Tower. Upon the wall hung a fine portrait—a noble, thoughtful, manly face, resembling Mrs. Catherine’s except in so far as its flush of strong manhood was different from the aspect of her declining years. It was her brother, whose untimely death had cast its heavy shadow over her own womanly maturity; and the room was Mrs. Catherine’s especial retirement, whither she was wont to come in her seasons of most solemn and secret prayerfulness, or at some crisis when her deliberations were grave enough to require the entire attention of her whole earnest mind. Upon the table lay a large Bible—other furniture or adornments there were none. In elder days, when the Douglases of the Tower professed the faith of Rome, it might have been called the lady’s oratory; in these plainer times it was only “the little room;” yet was surrounded with the awe, which must always environ the strugglings of a strong spirit, however faintly known to the weaker multitude around. Mrs. Catherine paced up and down its narrow limits, moved in her spirit, and expressing often her strong emotion aloud.

“Isabel Balfour,” she murmured to herself, stopping as she passed, to turn upon the picture a look of deep and sorrowful affection. “Ay, Sholto, it is her bairn, her firstborn, the son of her right hand. If ye were here, Sholto Douglas, where you should have been, but for God’s pleasure, what would you spare for Isabel’s son, that should have been yours also, and a Douglas? I envied you your bride and your bairns, Strathoran, for his sake that I left lying in foreign earth, and now your home is left to you desolate—woe’s me! woe’s me!”

Mrs. Catherine turned away and paced the room again, with quick and uneasy steps: “Unrighteous? I know it is unrighteous; but if he had been Sholto’s son, what would I not have done for him, short of sin? and he is Isabel’s—”

A footstep approached, through the passage, as she spoke, and controlling herself instantly, Mrs. Catherine opened the door to admit Anne Ross.

“What is the matter?” exclaimed Anne, as she entered. “What has happened, Mrs. Catherine, that you are here?”

“Nothing, but that I am in a sore strait, and am needing counsel,” said Mrs. Catherine, closing the door; “sit down upon that seat, child, that I may speak to you.”

Anne silently took the chair, and Mrs. Catherine seated herself at the other side of the small table, with her dead brother’s picture looking down upon her from the wall.

“Anne,” she said, gravely, “you have heard the history of Sholto Douglas, and I need not begin and tell it here again. Look upon him there, in the picture, and see what manner of man he was. And you have heard of Isabel Balfour, the trysted bride of the dead, and how, when he had been in his grave but two twelvemonths, she was wedded to Strathoran. I blamed her not, Anne, though I myself was truer to the memory of my one brother; but wherefore am I speaking thus? There are two lads, Anne, to whom I may do service. One is, as I have heard, an honorable and upright young man, born to better fortune than he has inherited, and toiling manfully, as becomes the son of a good house; besides that, there is a kindred of blood between us. And the other is a rioter, wasting his substance, and dishonoring his name in a strange country. I am in a strait between, the two, which will I help, and which will I pass by?”

“Mrs. Catherine,” said Anne, anxiously, “what can I say? I fear that I can see whom you mean; but how can I advise?”

“The well-doing lad is James Aytoun, the brother of the bairn Alice,” said Mrs. Catherine, “who is working an honorable and just work to win back the inheritance of his fathers. The rioter is Isabel Balfour’s one son—that might have been your first-born, Sholto Douglas! and I am in a sore struggle between my reason and my liking. The boy has gotten in to my inmost heart, as if he had been truly Sholto’s son, and I cannot see him fall.”

There was a long silence—for many motives deterred Anne from attempting, what at any time she would have done with reluctance, to offer counsel to the clear and mature judgment of Mrs. Catherine; and she rightly judged that her ancient friend had all the strength of secretly-formed resolution to combat the scruples which Anne could not help sympathizing with, though in her also, so many kindly feelings pleaded for Archibald Sutherland—a prodigal, indeed, but still the frank and joyous comrade of her childish days, the “young Strathoran” of her native district.

At last, Mrs. Catherine rose.

“It must be done,” she exclaimed. “Bear me witness, Anne, that I do it against my judgment. I take the siller to feed the false wants of the waster, that should help the honorable man in his travail. I do it, knowing it is ill, but I cannot see the lad a ruined man. Let us away. I will blind myself with no more false reasonings; the thing is wrong, but we must do it—come!”

Anne followed without speaking. Mrs. Catherine locked the door, and, leaning on her heavily, led her up stairs. Alice Aytoun was in the drawing-room; Mrs. Catherine sent Anne thither, and went herself to seek for something in her own room. She had intended offering substantial help to James Aytoun, and now, when the warmth of her feelings for Archibald Sutherland baulked her benevolent intent, she turned with an involuntary impulse to make some atonement to Alice.

It had been a very dull morning for Alice—Mrs. Catherine was unusually grave at breakfast, and since breakfast Alice had been alone—then she saw Lewis and Anne walking arm-in-arm up Oranside to the Tower, and for a long half-hour had waited and wondered in tantalising loneliness, vainly expecting that they would join her, or she be summoned to them. But they did not come, and Alice, wearied and disappointed, was venting some girlish impatience on the piano, and indulging in a sort of fretful wish for home—quiet, affectionate home, where such slight neglects and forgetfulness never could take place—but, while the thought was being formed, Anne stood beside her.

“Oh! Miss Ross,” exclaimed Alice, “I thought you were never coming,” and through the fair curls the slightest side-glance was thrown to the closed door, which testified that Anne now came alone. “I saw you coming up by the water, and I have waited so long.”

“Mrs. Catherine had some business with me,” said Anne: “and Lewis, I think, is detained below with other visitors. And what do you think of our Strathoran now, Miss Aytoun?”

“Oh! a great deal,” said Alice; “only I have not seen Strathoran itself—Mr. Sutherland’s house—yet. I am to go to Falcon’s Craig, Mrs. Catherine says, after to-morrow. Miss Falconer was here yesterday—riding.”

“And you liked her, did you not?” said Anne, smiling.

Alice looked dubious.

“Yes, very well. But is she not more like a gentleman than a lady, Miss Ross?”

“Tell her so yourself to-morrow,” said Anne, “and she will think you pay her a high compliment.”

Alice shook her head.

“I should not mean it for that, Miss Ross; but Mrs. Catherine said you would perhaps go with me to Falcon’s Craig. Will you? I should be half afraid if I went alone.”

“Feared for Marjory Falconer!” said Mrs. Catherine, entering the room. “If once she knew her own spirit, it is not an ill one; and I see not wherefore she should scare folk. I know well you are not feared, Anne. See, bairns, here are some bonnie dyes to look at, while I am away. Ye are to wear them the morn’s night, Alison Aytoun, according to your pleasure. They belong to yourself. And see you go not away, Anne, till I come back again. I will send Lewis up to hold you in mirth. For myself, I have things to make me up, other than mirthful.”

Alice advanced timidly to the table as Mrs. Catherine left the room. What might be within that mysterious enclosure of morocco? Anne smilingly anticipated her. Rich ornaments of pearls, more beautiful than any thing the simple, girlish eyes had ever looked upon before. Alice did not know how to look, or what to say; only her heart made one great leap of delight—all these were her own! How pleased and proud, not for the gift alone, but for the kindness that gave it, would be the mother’s heart at home!

Mrs. Catherine descended slowly, and, resuming her seat in the library, called the young lawyer and the factor to her presence, and dismissed Lewis to the pleasanter company up stairs. Mr. Ferguson, one of those acute, sagacious, well-informed men, who are to be met with so frequently in the middle class of rural Scotland, came with looks of anxious expectation, and Walter Foreman, of whom his independent client did not deign to ask counsel, took his place again, with secret pique, fancying himself at least as good an adviser as the plain and quiet stepdaughter of Mrs. Ross, of Merkland.

“Mr. Ferguson,” said Mrs. Catherine, “I have made up my mind. You shall have the siller. Thank me not. I do that which I know is wrong, and which I would have done for no mortal but Isabel Balfour’s son. You can get the papers made out at your convenience, and tell me the name of his dwelling. I will write to the ill-doer myself.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Ferguson, eagerly, “I beg you will not give yourself so much trouble, Mrs. Catherine. I will myself write to Strathoran immediately, and tell him of your kindness.”

“Doubtless,” said Mrs. Catherine: “but wherefore should I not have my word of exhortation, as well as another? Write me down Archie Sutherland’s address. I could get it from Lewis Ross, but I do not choose that; and let the siller be paid to Mr. Ferguson, Walter Foreman—that is, when the papers are ready—for mind that I do not give this siller, I only lend it.”

“On the lands of Lochend and Loelyin,” said Mr. Ferguson. “Of course, Mrs. Catherine.”

A slight smile of triumph hovered about the factor’s mouth.—Mrs. Catherine perceived it.

“On which I will have the annual rent paid to a day,” she said, with some sternness, “as if I were the coldest stranger that ever heard of Archie Sutherland’s needs or ill-doings, and, I trow, that is a wide word. If I had not purposed so, I might have given him the siller, for what is it to a woman of years like me? Truly, my own spirit bears me witness, that I would give that threefold, if it were mine to give, with a light heart, to restore the prodigal to the house of his fathers, as innocent as he went away. Let the business be done, Walter Foreman; doubtless, you will be taken up with the ploy to-morrow, and will be putting it off till after that.”

“We can get it done immediately,” said Walter, somewhat sullenly.

“What ails you, sir?” said Mrs. Catherine. “Should I have taken counsel with you on the secrets of my own spirit, think you?—I that am given to take counsel of no man. Be content, Walter Foreman—you are not an ill gallant, but have overmuch favor for your own wisdom, as is common at your years. If you live to count threescore, you will be an humbler man.”

“Our success is a most fortunate thing for Strathoran,” said Mr. Ferguson, as they left the Tower. “But the letter—I would not receive such a letter as Mrs. Catherine will write, on such a subject, for the half of his estate.”

Walter Foreman shrugged his shoulders.

“And yet she has the greatest regard for him. Mrs. Sutherland was betrothed to Mrs. Catherine’s brother, when he died, people say; and it is her strange adoration of his memory that makes her so fond of young Strathoran. A singular consequent, one would think.”

“Mrs. Catherine is altogether singular,” said Mr. Ferguson, “and not to be judged as people of the world are.”

And when the night was far spent, and Alice had carried her bounding heart, and her new possessions, into her own bright apartment, and was electrifying little Bessie there, with a glimpse of the wonderous beauty of those pearls, and trying them on before the mirror on the walls, and listening with bursts of gay laughter to Bessie’s guesses of their value—sums immense and fabulous to the simplicity of both, yet, nevertheless, in truth, not greatly exceeding their true worth—Mrs. Catherine sat in the library alone, writing her letter, her strong features swept by deep emotion often, and her steady hand shaken. The course which the young man was pursuing, was in every way the most repulsive to her feelings. Sin it appeared in the eyes of her strong, unswerving, pure religion—dishonor to her nice sense of uprightness and independence. His foreign residence and likings shocked her warm, home-affections, her entire nationality, and the possible alienation of his lands from the name and family in whose possession they had been so long, alarmed alike fear and prejudice; for Mrs. Catherine, boasting her own pure descent from the “dark-grey man,” was no enemy to the law of entail. His sister, too, and her separation from the husband for whom she had left her mother’s sick-bed—all these things poured in upon Mrs. Catherine’s mind, increasing her agitation, and hallowed, as all her fears were, by that strange visionary tenderness, so thoroughly in unison with her strong character, despite its romance, which clung around those who might have been the children of that dearest brother Sholto, whose mortality, so much as remained of it, lay treasured in yon lone burying-ground in far Madeira, upon whose sunny shore he died.

“Archibald Sutherland,” wrote Mrs. Catherine, “I have been hearing tidings of you, which have carried a sword into my inmost heart; and though I might well write in anger, seeing that though I am not of your kin, you were in my arms a helpless bairn, before you were in the arms of any mortal—it is in grief rather that I speak to you. Wherefore is there neither firelight nor candlelight in the house of Strathoran? Is the home of your fathers not good enough for a son that puts in jeopardy their good fame? Is the roof that sheltered Isabel Balfour in her bridal days, too mean for Isabel Sutherland? or wherefore is it, that with your fair lands and good possessions you are dwelling in a strange and ungodly country? Father and mother you have none to warn you. Answer to me, Archie Sutherland, who have known you all your days, wherefore it should be so. Think you that among the flattering fools that are about you, there is one that would lose a night’s sleep, if Strathoran and all belonging to it, were swept into the sea? Come back to your own dwelling-place: witless and prodigal as you have been, there is not a hind in the parish but would lament over the desolate house of your fathers. Think you that it is a small thing, the leal liking and respect of a whole countryside, come down to you as a heritage? or is it your will to give up that for the antics of a papistical and alien race? I say to you, come back to your own house, Archie Sutherland. There is neither healthfulness nor safety—let alone good fame and godliness, a man’s best plenishing for this world and the next—in the course you are running now.

“Think not that I write this because I have served you with siller. Over the son of Isabel Balfour, the sister of Sholto Douglas has a right of succor and counsel, warning and reproof. Boy! if you had been my own—if in God’s good pleasure you had borne the name of my own brother—the dearest name upon this earth to me—what is there that you might not have claimed at my hands? What is there now, that would be for your own good, that I would hesitate to do?—but far be it from me, who mind your mother’s travail for the new birth in you, the which in all mortal seeming has not yet been granted to her prayers—to prop up your goings in a way of ill-doing. Of what good is it to the world, I ask you, Archie Sutherland, that you have been made upon it, a living man with a mind within you, and a heaven over you? Who is the better for the light that God has put into your earthen vessel? A crowd of dancing, singing fools, that know not either the right honor, or the grave errand of a man into this world. Shame upon you, the son of a stalwart and good house, to be wasting in bairnly diversion, the days you will never see again, till you meet them before the Throne. Listen to me, Archie Sutherland—return to your own house, and to such a manner of life as becomes an honorable and upright man, and I give you my word—the worth of which, you may be known—that for disentangling you from the unhealthful meshes of borrowed siller, the means shall not be to seek.

“Unto your sister Isabel, I have ever been a prophet of evil; nevertheless, she bears the name, and, in a measure, the countenance, of Sholto’s Isabel and mine. If she will not return to the lawful shelter and rule of her own house, let her come to Strathoran, or, if it likes her, to the Tower. Do you think, or does she think, that the very winged things that are about you, their own sillie selves, honor the wife for disregarding her natural right? The bond was of her own tieing; she liked him better than father and mother once—does she like him less now than she likes ill-fame, and slight esteem? If it is so, let her come home to me, her mother’s earliest and oldest friend. Bairns!—bairns! there is more to provide for than the pleasure of the quick hours that are speeding over ye. Purity before God, honor in the sight of men: are your spirits blinded within ye, that you cannot perceive the two?

Catherine Douglas.”

CHAPTER IV.

THE festive morning dawned at last, a vigorous, red October day, and all about and around Merkland was bustle and preparation.

“Duncan,” cried Bell the cook, her face looming, already red and full, through a mist; “when was that weary man, Bob Partan, to send up the turbot?”

“Punctual at eleven,” said the laconic Duncan.

“Eh! man, Duncan,” said May, “have ye tried on your new livery yet?—isn’t it grand?”

“Hout, you silly fool,” responded Duncan, “has the like o’ me leisure, think you, to be minding about coats and breeks?”

“Eh!” exclaimed Bell, “what has possessed me! There’s no clove in a’ the house and they need to be in—I kenna how mony things. You maun off to Portoran, Duncan, gallopping; there’s not a minute to be lost.”

“Duncan,” cried Johnnie Halflin, the boy at the Tower, who, with sundry other articles, had been lent for the occasion, “I’ve casten doun a jar o’ the Smoothlie honey, and it’s broken twa o’ the bottles. Man, come afore the leddy sees’t.”

“Duncan,” said Barbara Genty, Mrs. Ross’s own especial attendant. “You are to go up to the parlor, this minute. You were sent for half an hour ago.”

“Conscience!” exclaimed the overwhelmed Duncan, “is there two of us, that ye are rugging and riving at a man in that gate? Get out o’ my road, ye young sinner, or there shall be mair things broken than bottles! I’m coming, Bauby. Woman Bell, could ye no hae minded a’thing at once?”

Above stairs, Mr. Lewis’s servant, who had left Merkland a loutish lad, and returned glistening in Parisian polish and refinement, a superfine gentleman, was condescendingly advising with Mrs. Ross, as to the garniture of the dinner-table. Things were so arranged in the Hotel de ——, John said; for Monsieur Charles, Mr. Sutherland’s major-domo, had a style of his own. But for the country, John fancied this would do very well. Mrs. Ross had dismissed Anne, an hour before, to her own room, as useless; and half-offended with the airs of her son’s dignified servant, was yet not above hearing the style of the Hotel de ——, and in some degree making it her model, certain that Parisian fashion had not penetrated to any other house in the district, and well-pleased to take the lead. For the gay parties at Falcon’s Craig, and the stately festivities at the Tower, had an individuality about them which had always been wanting in Merkland, and Mrs. Ross had resolved to outshine all to-day.

Anne, meanwhile, sat up stairs, busied with her ordinary work. She was the seamstress of the family, and the post was not by any means a sinecure.

The guests began to arrive, at last. Mr. Ambler, of Smoothlie, emerged from his dressing-room, neat as elderly, finical gentleman could be, with his carefully arranged dress, and wig, savoring of olden times. Mr. Ambler had been in India once, and alluded to the fact on all occasions; albeit, an indulged only son, with the snug enough of his lairdship to fall back upon, he had returned in the same vessel which took him out. But though Mr. Ambler was too fond of slippered ease to try his fortune under the burning sun of the East, his voyage supplied him with an inexhaustible fund of conversation, innocently self-complacent, in which India and its wonders had a place all incompatible with his brief experience of them.

Dashing in, full gallop, came the Falconers—the gay, bold brother and sister, fatherless and motherless, and entirely unrestrained in any way, whose wild freaks afforded so much material for gossip to the countryside. Then in a methodical, business-like trot, came in the sleek horses and respectable vehicle of Mr. Coulter, of Harrows; the Manse gig; the stately carriage of Mrs. Catherine, and other conveyances, whose occupants we need not specify by name. The room was filled. Alice Aytoun had never in her life been at so great a party.

She could distinguish on yonder sofa, in the corner, Mrs. Bairnsfather’s black satin gown, side by side with the strong thrifty hued silk of Mrs. Coulter, of Harrows. The Misses Coulter, in their Edinburgh robes, were near their mamma. They were very well-looking, well-dressed girls; but Alice’s own silk gown bore a comparison with theirs, and their ornaments were nothing like those delicate pearls. The discovery emboldened little Alice Aytoun, and took away her sole existing heaviness. She was fully prepared to enjoy herself.

The stately dinner, and all its solemnities, were over at last. The real pleasure of the evening was commencing; the company forming into gay knots; and Lewis doing the honors, with so rare a grace, that his mother almost forgot her own duties in admiration of her son. Alice Aytoun admired him, too. The pretty little stranger had become a sort of centre already, with the gayest and most attractive of all those varied groups, about her—and Lewis let no opportunity pass of offering his homage. Even on Mrs. Catherine’s strong features, as she sat near her charge, there hovered a mirthful smile. Mrs. Catherine herself was not displeased that the debut of her little stranger should be so much a triumph.

“A pretty girl—there is no doubt of that,” said the good-humored Mrs. Coulter. “James, do you not think she is like our Ada? See, the heads of the two are together, and Jeanie is behind them, with young Walter Foreman. I declare that lad is constantly hovering about Jeanie. Ah, Mrs. Bairnsfather, we have many cares who have a family!”

“No doubt,” said the little, fat, round-about Mrs. Bairnsfather, the childless minister’s wife, whose cares, diverted from the usual channel of children-loving, expended themselves upon the many comforts of herself, and her easy, comfortable husband. “You must be troubled in various ways now that the young people have got to man’s estate, and woman’s. But what were you calling Miss Adamina, Mrs. Coulter? I noticed a change in the name.”

Mrs. Coulter looked slightly confused.

“You see, Mrs. Bairnsfather, it is a cumbrous name—four syllables—and we must have some contraction. When they were all bairns, they used to call her Edie, poor thing; but that would not do now; and at school she got Ada, and it really is a prettier name, and quite a good diminutive: so we just adopted it.”

“Dear me! is that it?” said Mrs. Bairnsfather. “When I got the last note from Harrows I saw it was ‘A. M. Coulter.’ And that’s it!”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Coulter. “Ada Mina—they are two very pretty names.”

Mrs. Bairnsfather coughed a short sarcastic cough of wonder, and Mrs. Coulter continued:

“Oh! there is John beside little Miss Aytoun. Is he not like his father, Mrs. Bairnsfather? James, did you not say that Miss Aytoun was a relative of Mrs. Catherine’s?”

“Ay, my dear,” said Mr. Coulter. “Mrs. Catherine told us so herself—you recollect? or was it to me she said it? So it was—when she was looking at yon new patent plough of John’s.”

“I wonder,” said Mrs. Bairnsfather, “who is likely to get the Tower? In the course of nature, it cannot be very long in Mrs. Catherine’s hands, and it’s a good estate.”

“Wonderfully improved in my time,” said Mr. Coulter. “Mrs. Catherine is not without a notion of the science of agriculture, which, to the shame of landed proprietors, is generally so much neglected. The low lands at Oran Point were but moor and heather in my memory, but they grow as fine barley now as any in the country.”

“Well, I suppose no one can say that Mrs. Catherine neglects her carnal interests,” said Mrs. Bairnsfather, with a professional sigh. Her husband was known among his shrewd parishioners to be greatly more observant of temporal than spiritual matters, and his wife, conscious of a failing in that respect, was wont to assume at times a technical solemnity.

“I believe Mrs. Catherine is a very excellent woman in every respect,” said the good-humored and uncensorious Mrs. Coulter, “and cares as little about money, for money’s sake, as any one can possibly do; but she thinks it a duty to use well and improve what Providence has given her, as you do yourself, James, though, to be sure, we have more motive, with a young family rising round us.”

“I was very much struck yesterday,” said Mr. Coulter, “with the contrast between the Tower fields, and the adjoining lands within the bounds of Strathoran. There is a place where the three estates meet—Mrs. Catherine’s, Mr. Sutherland’s and mine. You recollect the little burn, my dear, which that silly maid of yours fell into last Hallow-e’en? well, it is there. Mrs. Catherine’s stubble-fields stretch to the very burnside—mine are turnips—uncommonly fine Swedes; but, on the other side, spreading away as far as you can see, is the brown moor of Strathoran, miles of good land wastefully lost, besides breeding by the thousand these small cattle of game, to destroy our corn.”

“Ay,” said Mrs. Bairnsfather, mysteriously, “I hear the Sutherlands are not in the best way.”