(no matter how rich the young
lady may be) is a combination not often witnessed in any country on the
civilized earth. Either the money is always spent, or the money has
been forgotten on the toilet-table at home. Blanche's purse contained a
sovereign and some six or seven shillings in silver. As pocket-money for
an heiress it was contemptible. But as a gratuity to Bishopriggs it was
magnificent. The old rascal put the money into his pocket with one hand,
and dashed away the tears of sensibility, which he had _not_ shed, with
the other.

"Cast yer bread on the waters," cried Mr. Bishopriggs, with his one eye
raised devotionally to the sky, "and ye sall find it again after monny
days! Heeh! hech! didna I say when I first set eyes on that puir leddy,
'I feel like a fether to ye?' It's seemply mairvelous to see hoo a man's
ain gude deeds find him oot in this lower warld o' ours. If ever I heard
the voice o' naitural affection speaking in my ain breast," pursued Mr.
Bishopriggs, with his eye fixed in uneasy expectation on Blanche, "it
joost spak' trumpet-tongued when that winsome creature first lookit at
me. Will it be she now that told ye of the wee bit sairvice I rendered
to her in the time when I was in bondage at the hottle?"

"Yes--she told me herself."

"Might I mak' sae bauld as to ask whar' she may be at the present time?"

"I don't know, Mr. Bishopriggs. I am more miserable about it than I can
say. She has gone away--and I don't know where."

"Ow! ow! that's bad. And the bit husband-creature danglin' at her
petticoat's tail one day, and awa' wi' the sunrise next mornin'--have
they baith taken leg-bail together?"

"I know nothing of him; I never saw him. You saw him. Tell me--what was
he like?"

"Eh! he was joost a puir weak creature. Didn't know a glass o' good
sherry-wine when he'd got it. Free wi' the siller--that's a' ye can say
for him--free wi' the siller!"

Finding it impossible to extract from Mr. Bishopriggs any clearer
description of the man who had been with Anne at the inn than this,
Blanche approached the main object of the interview. Too anxious to
waste time in circumlocution, she turned the conversation at once to the
delicate and doubtful subject of the lost letter.

"There is something else that I want to say to you," she resumed. "My
friend had a loss while she was staying at the inn."

The clouds of doubt rolled off the mind of Mr. Bishopriggs. The lady's
friend knew of the lost lette