and caps, "Staneholme's son's a braw bairn, well worthy Lady
Carnegie's coral and bells."

"'Deed is he," Nanny assented. "He'll grow up a stately man like his
grandsire;" and recurring naturally to forbidden memories, she went on:
"He'll be the marrow of Master Hugh. Ye dinna mind Master Hugh, Lady
Staneholme?--the picture o' auld Lady Carnegie. That I sud call her
auld!"

Nelly's brow contracted with something of its old indignation. "There's
never a look of the Carnegies in my son; he has his father's brow and
lip and hair, and you're but a gowk, Nanny Swinton!" and Nelly lay back
and closed her eyes, and after a season opened them again, to tell Nanny
Swinton that "she had been dreaming of a strange foreign city, full of
pictures and carved woodwork, and of a high-road traversing a rich
plain, shaded by apple and chestnut trees, and of something winding and
glittering through the branches," leaving Nanny, who could not stand the
sight of two magpies, or of a cuckoo, of a morning before she had broken
her fast, sorely troubled to account for the vision.

The gloaming of a night in June was on the Canongate and the silent
palace of the gallant, gentle King James. Lady Carnegie was gracing some
rout or drum; Nanny Swinton was in her kitchen, burnishing her
superannuated treasures, and crooning to herself as she worked; Nelly,
in her solitary, shadowy room, lay plaiting and pinching the cambric and
muslin gear whose manufacture was her daily occupation, with her child's
clumsy cradle drawn within reach of her hand. Through the dim light, she
distinguished a man's figure at the door. Nelly knew full well those
lineaments, with their mingled fire and gloom. They did not exasperate
her as they had once done; they appalled her with great shuddering; and
sinking back, Nelly gasped--

"Are you dead and gone, Staneholme? Do you walk to seek my love that ye
prigget for, but which canna gladden you now? Gae back to the bottom of
the sea, or the bloody battle-field, and in the Lord's name rest there."

The figure stepped nearer; and Nelly, even in her blinding terror,
distinguished that it was no shadowy apparition, but mortal like
herself. The curdling blood rushed back to Nelly's face, flooding the
colourless cheek, and firing her with a new impulse. She snatched her
child from its slumber, and clasped it to her breast with her thin
transparent hands.

"Have you come back to claim your son, Adam Home? But you'll have to