Every attempt has been made to replicate the original as printed. Some
typographical errors have been corrected; a list follows the text.
Archaic spellings (i.e. rebelious, rebelion, contemn, gallopping,
tryste, knawing, bideing...) have been preserved. (etext transcriber's
note)
[Illustration: The Prodigal's Solemn Pledge in Mrs. Catherine's little
room.
See page 92]
MERKLAND,
OR,
SELF-SACRIFICE.
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"MARGARET MAITLAND."
[Illustration]
"Lord, look upon mine offering--I bring thee back seven-fold. Lord
of Mercy! cast me not away for evermore!--See page 292.
[Illustration: decoration]
STRINGER & TOWNSEND, NEW YORK.
MERKLAND,
OR,
SELF SACRIFICE.
BY
THE AUTHOR OF
"PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF MRS. MARGARET MAITLAND," &C.
NEW YORK:
STRINGER & TOWNSEND.
1854.
MERKLAND;
OR,
SELF-SACRIFICE.
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!"