er, my hopes rose high, and I told
the story, together with her "Comandmence," to Hugh Pitcairn for his
admiration and approval.

He was as unmoved, however, at the end of my narration as at the
beginning of it.

"She's no a woman yet; she's just a wee bit bairn; but as soon as she
begins to sigh for joes and bawbees she'll be just like the rest.
They're all of them elemental things," he said with conviction, "and ye
can't change their natures any more than ye can stop fire from
burning."

Later he began to alter his opinion of her, however, and it fell, I
think, largely through his own vanity. I have told of the scene in the
court which resulted in Jeanie Henderlin and her two children coming to
be Burn-folk, and from that time Nancy would turn back every little
while to her interest in the law. There were some compilations of
celebrated cases among my books, and for a while her talk ran of the
trials for murder and poisoning and the scuttling of ships, until I
wondered where the thing would lead. Part of these accounts were
briefed; others contained the evidence entire, indictments, questions
and answers, the judges' instructions, and the verdict rendered, all
with much legal verbiage and twisting.

One night, in her twelfth year, she asked Hugh Pitcairn some questions
concerning a poison case, which happened to be one he had studied with
interest himself, and he denounced the verdict as one unlawful and
obtained by sentiment rather than from the evidence itself, promising
to send another book to her containing his own view of the matter. Here
was a ground in which a friendship with Hugh could take firm root, and
from that time on there were heavy volumes coming to Nancy from the
great barrister constantly, and to hear her quizzed by him concerning
the law on certain points was one of the most humorous bits of my life.
I never rightly understood this trend of Nancy's mind. In her talks
with me I found it was never to discover the naked law on a point, but
how punishment might be evaded, that interested her. "If he'd said
this," or "had he left that unsaid," or "if the defense had proven,"
was the burden of her remarks, and I thought at times that if Hugh saw
the thing as I did he would find at bottom of all her lawing only a
woman's desire to discover how people could be got out of trouble,
whether deserving punishment or not.

In her fifteenth year, when I was obliged to go to London concerning
the Forfeited E