sight of this token
produced a strange and instantaneous effect upon the old woman. The
palsy of fear was immediately added to that of age, and she began
instantly to search her pockets with the tremulous and hasty agitation
of one who becomes first apprehensive of having lost something of great
importance;--then, as if convinced of the reality of her fears, she
turned to the Earl, and demanded, "And how came ye by it then?--how came
ye by it? I thought I had kept it sae securely--what will the Countess
say?"

"You know," said the Earl, "at least you must have heard, that my mother
is dead."

"Dead! are ye no imposing upon me? has she left a' at last, lands and
lordship and lineages?"

"All, all," said the Earl, "as mortals must leave all human vanities."

"I mind now," answered Elspeth--"I heard of it before but there has been
sic distress in our house since, and my memory is sae muckle impaired--
But ye are sure your mother, the Lady Countess, is gane hame?"

The Earl again assured her that her former mistress was no more.

"Then," said Elspeth, "it shall burden my mind nae langer!--When she
lived, wha dared to speak what it would hae displeased her to hae had
noised abroad? But she's gane--and I will confess all."

Then turning to her son and daughter-in-law, she commanded them
imperatively to quit the house, and leave Lord Geraldin (for so she
still called him) alone with her. But Maggie Mucklebackit, her first
burst of grief being over, was by no means disposed in her own house to
pay passive obedience to the commands of her mother-in-law, an authority
which is peculiarly obnoxious to persons in her rank of life, and which
she was the more astonished at hearing revived, when it seemed to have
been so long relinquished and forgotten.

"It was an unco thing," she said, in a grumbling tone of voice,--for the
rank of Lord Glenallan was somewhat imposing--"it was an unco thing to
bid a mother leave her ain house wi' the tear in her ee, the moment her
eldest son had been carried a corpse out at the door o't."

The fisherman, in a stubborn and sullen tone, added to the same purpose.
"This is nae day for your auld-warld stories, mother. My lord, if he be
a lord, may ca' some other day--or he may speak out what he has gotten to
say if he likes it; there's nane here will think it worth their while
to listen to him or you either. But neither for laird or loon, gentle or
semple, will I leave my ain house to pleasure