e weakened by time. It was on the occasion of the
flitting that Annie had to rummage an old trunk which Menelaws, long
after the marriage, had brought from the house of his father, the dealer
in pelts. There at the bottom, covered over by a piece of brown paper,
she found--what? The very slipper which matched the one she still
secretly retained in her possession. _Verbum sapienti_. You may now see
where the strange land lies; nor was Annie blind. She concluded in an
instant, and with a horror that thrilled through her whole body, that
Menelaws had murdered his rival. She had lain for ten years in the arms
of a murderer. She had borne to him five children. Nay, she loved him
with all the force of an ardent temperament. The thought was terrible,
and she recoiled from the very possibility of living with him a moment
longer. She took the fatal memorial and secreted it along with its
neighbour; and having a friend at a little distance from Edinburgh, she
hurried thither, taking with her her children. Her father had left in
her own power a sufficiency for her support, and she afterwards returned
to town. All the requests of her husband for an explanation she
resisted, and indeed they were not long persisted in, for Menelaws no
doubt gauged the reason of her obduracy--a conclusion the more likely
that he subsequently left Scotland. I have reason to believe that some
of the existing Menelaws' are descended from this strange union.

THE FAITHFUL WIFE

There is very prevalent, along the Borders, an opinion that the arms of
the town of Selkirk represent an incident which occurred there at the
time of the battle of Flodden. The device, it is well known, consists of
a female bearing a child in her arms, seated on a tomb, on which is also
placed the Scottish lion. Antiquaries tell us that this device was
adopted in consequence of the melancholy circumstance of the wife of an
inhabitant of the town having been found, by a party returning from the
battle, lying dead at the place called Ladywood-edge, with a child
sucking at her breast.

We have not the slightest wish to disturb this venerable legend. It
commemorates, with striking force, the desolation of one of Scotland's
greatest calamities; and though the device is rudely and coarsely
imagined, there is a graphic strength in the conception, which,
independently of the truth of the story, recommends it to the lover of
the bold and fervid genius of our countrymen. We must, a