not."

"For what purpose was it then?"

"For no purpose."

"How is it that you chance to remember the day and hour so minutely, if
you met that woman, whom you have accused, merely by chance, and for no
manner of purpose, as you must have met others that night, perhaps to
the amount of hundreds, in the same way?"

"I have good cause to remember it, my lord."

"What was that cause?--No answer?--You don't choose to say what that
cause was?"

"I am not at liberty to tell."

The Sheriff then descended to other particulars, all of which tended to
prove that the fellow was an accomplished villain, and that the
principal share of the atrocities had been committed by him. Indeed the
Sheriff hinted that he suspected the only share Mrs. Calvert had in
them was in being too much in his company, and too true to him. The
case was remitted to the Court of Justiciary; but Mrs. Logan had heard
enough to convince her that the culprits first met at the very spot,
and the very hour, on which George Colwan was slain; and she had no
doubt that they were incendiaries set on by his mother, to forward her
own and her darling son's way to opulence. Mrs. Logan was wrong, as
will appear in the sequel; but her antipathy to Mrs. Colwan made her
watch the event with all care. She never quitted Peebles as long as
Bell Calvert remained there, and, when she was removed to Edinburgh,
the other followed. When the trial came on, Mrs. Logan and her maid
were again summoned as witnesses before the jury, and compelled by the
prosecutor for the Crown to appear.

The maid was first called; and, when she came into the witness box, the
anxious and hopeless looks of the prisoner were manifest to all. But
the girl, whose name, she said, was Bessy Gillies, answered in so
flippant and fearless a way that the auditors were much amused. After a
number of routine questions, the depute-advocate asked her if she was
at home on the morning of the fifth of September last, when her
mistress's house was robbed.

"Was I at hame, say ye? Na, faith-ye, lad! An' I had been at hame,
there had been mair to dee. I wad hae raised sic a yelloch!"

"Where were you that morning?"

"Where was I, say you? I was in the house where my mistress was,
sitting dozing an' half sleeping in the kitchen. I thought aye she
would be setting out every minute, for twa hours."

"And, when you went home, what did you find?"

"What found we? Be my sooth, we found a broken lock, an' toom