he same with well-sounding chords, and sang, as she played,
with a very droll expression and broad accent--

"Haena I got just the lilt of it?
Isna this the tune that ye whustled?

"You see," she says, "I can do the poetry too, only it won't rhyme. And
then again:

"I am Miss Grant, sib to the Advocate:
You, I believe, are Dauvit Balfour."

I told her how much astonished I was by her genius.

"And what do you call the name of it?" she asked.

"I do not know the real name," said I. "I just call it 'Alan's air.'"

She looked at me directly in the face. "I shall call it 'David's air,'"
said she; "though if it's the least like what your namesake of Israel
played to Saul I would never wonder that the king got little good by it,
for it's but melancholy music. Your other name I do not like; so if you
was ever wishing to hear your tune again you are to ask for it by mine."

This was said with a significance that gave my heart a jog. "Why that,
Miss Grant?" I asked.

"Why," says she, "if ever you should come to get hanged, I will set your
last dying speech and confession to that tune and sing it."

This put it beyond a doubt that she was partly informed of my story and
peril. How, or just how much, it was more difficult to guess. It was
plain she knew there was something of danger in the name of Alan, and
thus warned me to leave it out of reference; and plain she knew that I
stood under some criminal suspicion. I judged besides that the harshness
of her last speech (which besides she had followed up immediately with a
very noisy piece of music) was to put an end to the present
conversation. I stood beside her, affecting to listen and admire, but
truly whirled away by my own thoughts. I have always found this young
lady to be a lover of the mysterious; and certainly this first interview
made a mystery that was beyond my plummet. One thing I learned long
after: the hours of Sunday had been well employed, the bank-porter had
been found and examined, my visit to Charles Stewart was discovered, and
the deduction made that I was pretty deep with James and Alan, and most
likely in a continued correspondence with the last. Hence this broad
hint that was given me across the harpsichord.

In the midst of the piece of music one of the younger misses, who was at
a window over the close, cried on her sisters to come quick, for there
was "_Grey eyes_ again." The whole family trooped there at once, and
crowded one anothe