no more miserable bickerings. It is
unworthy of us. This is my sister—I have
received you as such, dearest Katey, and
so has papa. You have come here with
his approval, and you must not be turned
away. Let all this end. It is really
un-christian."

Mrs. Leader could not reply: her lips
trembled, her foot pattered audibly on the
floor. It would have required a cleverer
head than hers to devise something to
meet the crisis. She felt she was
over-matched. She found herself helpless—
almost a stranger in that house—with every
one against her. So she had to retreat. Her
face broke into one of her usual temporising
smiles, and she said, as she left the room:

"I have no wish to do anything, but to
keep up the respect due to your family. I
have never had any view but that.
However, as you are here, I suppose you must
stay for the present. But Mr. Leader and
I will consult what is to be done for the
future."

At that moment was born in her soul
the bitterest and most ferocious hatred
towards her step-daughter that could
possibly be conceived. Katey, fluttering
joyfully to the sick-bed with news of this
happy accommodation, little dreamed what
a terrible and vindictive enemy had of a
sudden risen up against her.

What passed between Mr. and Mrs.
Leader was not very clearly ascertained.
But the result was the departure of a
messenger that very evening with a letter for
the Doctor from Mr. Leader himself.

RAIDS OVER THE BORDER.

THE LAND OF SCOTT. PART I.

"OVER the hills and far away!" beyond
pursuit of the arch enemy, Business, whom
I have left behind me, glad to get rid of
him for awhile, in order that I may
afterwards be able to tackle him with renewed
vigour. A friend accompanies me, who has
never been in Scotland, who has long
wished to go, who has studied its history,
and imbued his mind with its poetry and
romance, and who is fully prepared not
alone to admire the beauty and the grandeur
of the country, but to respect and love the
people. It is not my first, or even my
twentieth visit; for it has been my custom
from my youth upwards to take my annual
holiday among the well-beloved mountains
and straths, and on the winding lochs
that indent in multitudinous beauty all
the mazy nooks and corners of the
magnificent West. I know, as it were, every
foot of the land and every wimple of the
water; and my distinguished friend— a
great soldier, a ripe scholar, and a true
gentleman, whose home is on the other side of
the Atlantic— thinks himself as fortunate
in my companionship as I think myself in
his. We have not much time to spare, so
we resolve to make the most of the little;
and as we cannot traverse the whole of
Scotland in a month, unless we travel too
rapidly for mental and physical enjoyment,
I resolve (my friend acceding) to divide
our Raid over the Border into three parts,
and to take them leisurely. It is my fancy
to lay out the portions of Scotland which
we are to visit into three districts—
unknown to geographical nomenclature—and
to classify them under the names of the
poets with whose life and works they are
most intimately associated. The first is the
Land of Scott, including Edinburgh and
the Border, together with Glasgow and the
south-western Highlands of Loch Lomond
and Loch Katrine. The second is the Land
of Burns, including Ayr and Dumfries, and
all the lovely pastoral region over which
the fame of the Ayrshire peasant hangs like
a roseate cloud in the summer morning.
The third and last is the Land of Ossian,
a land which may be so called, whether
Ossian were a real or a mythological
personage; the "land of the brown heath and
shaggy wood, the land of the mountain and
the flood," of the grey cairn and the windy
corrie, of the mist and of the storm, the
land of the true-hearted children of the
Gael.

We take the steamer from London Bridge
to Leith, and being blessed with unusually
fine weather and an abnormally placid sea,
our time goes as happily as that of
Thalaba. On the second afternoon we catch
sight on our left of the once neutral city of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, and obtain the first
glimpse of the green hills of Scotland, not
yet huge enough to be dignified with the
name of mountains. Passing the fishing
village of Eyemouth, and the bold projecting
bluffs of St. Abb's Head, we enter the
Firth of Forth, and sailing within gunshot
of the land, feast our eyes upon as magnificent
a panorama as any traveller in search
of the picturesque can desire. We have
scarcely entered the Firth before reminiscences
of Sir Walter Scott begin to throng
upon us in rapid succession. The spirit of
the great magician seems to preside over
us wherever we go, and to say, "This land
is mine. My genius has sanctified it.