ey suffered a long imprisonment, and much ill
usage. On the Restoration, the old Countess Marischal,
founding upon the story Mrs. Ogilvie had told to screen her
husband, obtained for her own son, John Keith, the earldom
of Kintore, and the post of Knight Marischal, with L400 a
year, as if he had been in truth the preserver of the
Regalia. It soon proved that this reward had been too
hastily given, for Ogilvie of Barra {p.212} produced the
Regalia, the honest clergyman refusing to deliver them to
any one but those from whom he received them. Ogilvie was
made a Knight Baronet, however, and got a new charter of the
lands, acknowledging the good service. Thus it happened
oddly enough, that Keith, who was abroad during the
transaction, and had nothing to do with it, got the earldom,
pension, etc., Ogilvie only inferior honors, and the poor
clergyman nothing whatever, or, as we say, _the hare's foot
to lick_. As for Ogilvie's lady, she died before the
Restoration, her health being ruined by the hardships she
endured from the Cromwellian satellites. She was a Douglas,
with all the high spirit of that proud family. On her
deathbed, and not till then, she told her husband where the
honors were concealed, charging him to suffer death rather
than betray them. Popular tradition says, not very probably,
that Grainger and his wife were _booted_ (that is, tortured
with the engine called the boots). I think that the Knight
Marischal's office rested in the Kintore family until 1715,
when it was resumed on account of the bearded Earl's
accession to the Insurrection of that year. He escaped well,
for they might have taken his estate and his earldom. I must
save post, however, and conclude abruptly. Yours ever,

Walter SCOTT.

On the 5th, after the foregoing letter had been written at the Clerk's
table, Scott and several of his brother Commissioners revisited the
Castle, accompanied by some of the ladies of their families. His
daughter tells me that her father's conversation had worked her
feelings up to such a pitch, that when the lid was again removed, she
nearly fainted, and drew back from the circle. As she was retiring,
she was startled by his voice exclaiming, in a tone of the deepest
emotion, "something between anger and despair," as she expresses