a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty
matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and
inconsistency of speech, and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra,
as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy Madam Margaret Bertram of
Singleside?'

All this, I say, the Dominie THOUGHT to himself; for had he uttered half
the sentence, his jaws would have ached for a month under the unusual
fatigue of such a continued exertion. The result of these cogitations was
a resolution to go and visit the scene of the tragedy at Warroch Point,
where he had not been for many years; not, indeed, since the fatal
accident had happened. The walk was a long one, for the Point of Warroch
lay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property, which was interposed
between it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie went astray more than
once, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by the melting of the snow,
where he, honest man, had only the summer recollection of little
trickling rills.

At length, however, he reached the woods which he had made the object of
his excursion, and traversed them with care, muddling his disturbed
brains with vague efforts to recall every circumstance of the
catastrophe. It will readily be supposed that the influence of local
situation and association was inadequate to produce conclusions different
from those which he had formed under the immediate pressure of the
occurrences themselves. 'With many a weary sigh, therefore, and many a
groan,' the poor Dominie returned from his hopeless pilgrimage, and
weariedly plodded his way towards Woodbourne, debating at times in his
altered mind a question which was forced upon him by the cravings of an
appetite rather of the keenest, namely, whether he had breakfasted that
morning or no? It was in this twilight humour, now thinking of the loss
of the child, then involuntarily compelled to meditate upon the somewhat
incongruous subject of hung beef, rolls, and butter, that his route,
which was different from that which he had taken in the morning,
conducted him past the small ruined tower, or rather vestige of a tower,
called by the country people the Kaim of Derncleugh.

The reader may recollect the description of this ruin in the
twenty-seventh chapter, as the vault in which young Bertram, under the
auspices of Meg Merrilies, witnessed the death of Hatteraick's
lieutenant. The tradition of the country added ghostly terrors to the
natural awe inspired