think o' the future. Dinna!"---- and she stopped, confused.

"Really, how strange you are. But go on. We'll have no more Christinas
nor Isobels."

Hurriedly, Elspie continued to relate the histories: of noble Jean
Rothesay, who died by an arrow aimed at her husband's heart; and Alison,
her sister, the beauty of James the Fifth's reckless court, who was "no
gude;" and Mistress Katharine Rothesay, who hid two of the "Prince's"
soldiers after Culloden, and stood with a pair of pistols before their
bolted door.

"Nay, I'll have none of these--they frighten me," said Sybilla, "I
wonder I ever had courage to marry the descendant of such awful women.
No! my sweet innocent! you shall not be christened after them," she
continued, stroking the baby cheek with her soft finger. "You shall
not be like them at all, except in their beauty. And they were all
handsome--were they, Elspie?"

"Ne'er a ane o' the Rothesay line, man or woman, that wasna fair to
see."

"Then so will my baby be!--like her father, I hope--or just a little
like her mother, who is not so very ugly, either; at least, Angus says
not." And Mrs. Rothesay drew up her tiny figure, patted one dainty
hand--the wedded one--with its fairy fellow; then--touched perhaps with
a passing melancholy that he who most prized her beauty, and for whose
sake she most prized it herself, was far away--she leaned back and
sighed.

However, in a few minutes, she cried out, her words showing how light
and wandering was the reverie, "Elspie, I have a thought! The baby shall
be christened Olive!"

"It's a strange, heathen name, Mrs. Rothesay."

"Not at all. Listen how I chanced to think of it. This very morning,
just before you came to waken me, I had such a queer, delicious dream."

"Dream! Are ye sure it was i' the morning-tide?" cried Elspie, aroused
into interest.

"Yes; and so it certainly means something, you will say, Elspie? Well,
it was about my baby. She was then lying fast asleep in my bosom,
and her warm, soft breathing soon sent me to sleep too. I dreamt that
somehow I had gradually let her go from me, so that I felt her in my
arms no more, and I was very sad, and cried out how cruel it was for any
one to steal my child, until I found I had let her go of my own accord.
Then I looked up, after awhile, and saw standing at the foot of the bed
a little angel--a child-angel--with a green olive-branch in its hand.
It told me to follow; so I rose up, and followed it over