found himself on the road to the small burgh where the feast of the
popinjay had been celebrated. He journeyed in a state of mind sad indeed
and dejected, yet relieved from its earlier and more intolerable state of
anguish; for virtuous resolution and manly disinterestedness seldom fail
to restore tranquillity even where they cannot create happiness. He
turned his thoughts with strong effort upon the means of discovering
Burley, and the chance there was of extracting from him any knowledge
which he might possess favourable to her in whose cause he interested
himself; and at length formed the resolution of guiding himself by the
circumstances in which he might discover the object of his quest,
trusting that, from Cuddie's account of a schism betwixt Burley and his
brethren of the Presbyterian persuasion, he might find him less
rancorously disposed against Miss Bellenden, and inclined to exert the
power which he asserted himself to possess over her fortunes, more
favourably than heretofore.

Noontide had passed away when our traveller found himself in the
neighbourhood of his deceased uncle's habitation of Milnwood. It rose
among glades and groves that were chequered with a thousand early
recollections of joy and sorrow, and made upon Morton that mournful
impression, soft and affecting, yet, withal, soothing, which the
sensitive mind usually receives from a return to the haunts of childhood
and early youth, after having experienced the vicissitudes and tempests
of public life. A strong desire came upon him to visit the house itself.
"Old Alison," he thought, "will not know me, more than the honest couple
whom I saw yesterday. I may indulge my curiosity, and proceed on my
journey, without her having any knowledge of my existence. I think they
said my uncle had bequeathed to her my family mansion,--well, be it so. I
have enough to sorrow for, to enable me to dispense with lamenting such a
disappointment as that; and yet methinks he has chosen an odd successor
in my grumbling old dame, to a line of respectable, if not distinguished,
ancestry. Let it be as it may, I will visit the old mansion at least once
more."

The house of Milnwood, even in its best days, had nothing cheerful about
it; but its gloom appeared to be doubled under the auspices of the old
housekeeper. Everything, indeed, was in repair; there were no slates
deficient upon the steep grey roof, and no panes broken in the narrow
windows. But the grass in the cou