ould do nothing more for her, and to have
impressed her with the necessity of watching her parent would have
created additional alarm, without increasing her zeal in a cause that
concerned too nearly her own heart. I told her, therefore, that I
required to depart, and was in the act of leaving to go to the door,
when, in a paroxysm of terror, she started up, and seized me,
clutching me firmly, and crying loudly--

"Will you leave me alone wi' him in this house, and throughout the
dark night! He will do it when you are gone. Heaven preserve me frae
the sight o' a father's blood!"

I tried to calm her, and to reason with her; but it was in vain. She
still clung to me; and I found myself necessitated either to use some
gentle force to detach myself from her grasp, or remain all night. I
adopted the former expedient, and rushing out, shut the door after me,
mounted my horse, and proceeded home. She had come out after me; for I
heard her cries for some time as I rode forward in the dark.

Though soon out of sight of the house, I felt myself unconsciously
turning my head once or twice in the direction of the deserted
mansion. With all my efforts to think of some other subject--and my
own safety among these wild hills might have been sufficient to occupy
my attention--I could not, for some time, take my mind off the scene I
had witnessed, and the prospective misery that, in such different
forms, waited these two individuals. When I had gone about a mile and
a-half on my journey, I was accosted by a man, who asked me familiarly
how George B---- was. I recognised in him at once the individual who
had asked me to call for him. I told him that he was well enough in
his body, but had taken some wild and distorted views of life, which
might place him in danger of his own hands, while there was nobody in
the house to watch him but his daughter, who did not seem to me to be
well fitted for the task, seeing she was weakly, hysterical, and
timid. He told me he knew all I had stated; that his name was James
H----; that he was a cousin of the young woman's, George B---- having
been married on his mother's sister; that he had resided in the house,
and had discovered the tendency of his uncle's mind; and that, on one
occasion, he had snatched out of his hands a razor with which he
intended to destroy himself--an act for which he was expelled the
house, though he was the acknowledged suitor of the young woman, whom
he intended to wed. I t