Late as it was, I ca'd her up, and she gar'd me ca' up your brother"-- "My brother ?" "Yes, Lord Geraldin, e'en your brother, that some said she aye wished to be her heir.

At ony rate, he was the person maist concerned in the succession and heritance of the house of Glenallan." "And is it possible to believe, then, that my brother, out of avarice to grasp at my inheritance, would lend himself to such a base and dreadful stratagem ?" "Your mother believed it," said the old beldam with a fiendish laugh--"it was nae plot of my making; but what they did or said I will not say, because I did not hear.

Lang and sair they consulted in the black wainscot dressing-room; and when your brother passed through the room where I was waiting, it seemed to me (and I have often thought sae since syne) that the fire of hell was in his cheek and een.

But he had left some of it with his mother, at ony rate.

She entered the room like a woman demented, and the first words she spoke were, Elspeth Cheyne, did you ever pull a new-budded flower ?' I answered, as ye may believe, that I often had.