may be starvation; and I have come here in sair sorrow and necessity to
ask when and whaur is to be the remeid?"

"When and where you may find it, woman!" said the lady, as she cast a
side-glance to her husband, probably by way of appeal for the truth of
what she thought it right to say. "Mr. Balgarnie never injured your
daughter. Let him who did the deed yield the remeid!"

"And do you stand by this?" said Mrs. Craig.

But the husband had been already claimed as free from blame by his wife,
who kept her eye fixed upon him; and the obligation to conscience, said
by sceptics to be an offspring of society, is sometimes weaker than what
is due to a wife, in the estimation of whom a man may wish to stand in a
certain degree of elevation.

"You must seek another father to the child of your daughter," said he
lightly. And not content with the denial, he supplemented it by a laugh
as he added, "When birds go to the greenwood, they must take the chance
of meeting the goshawk."

"And that is your answer?" said she.

"It is; and you need never trouble either my wife or me more on this
subject," was the reply.

"Then may the vengeance o' the God of justice light on the heads o'
baith o' ye!" added Mrs. Craig, as she went hurriedly away.

Nor was her threat intended as an empty one, for she held on her way
direct to the Lawnmarket, where she found George Davidson, to whom she
related as much as she had been able to get out of Mysie, and also what
had passed at the interview with Balgarnie and his lady. After hearing
which, the young writer shook his head.

"You will get a trifle of aliment," said he; "perhaps half-a-crown a
week, but no more; and Mysie could have made that in a day by her
beautiful work."

"And she will never work mair," said the mother, with a sigh.

"For a hundred years," rejoined he, more to himself than to her, and
probably in congratulation of himself for his perspicacity, "and since
ever there was a College of Justice, there never was a case where a man
pulled up on oath for a promise of marriage admitted the fact. It is a
good Scotch law, only we want a people to obey it. But what," he added
again, "if we were to try it, though it were only as a grim joke and a
revenge in so sad and terrible a case as that of poor Mysie Craig!"

Words which the mother understood no more than she did law Latin; and so
she was sent away as sorrowful as she had come, for Davidson did not
want to raise hopes whic