aunt—the fair-haired, small-waisted, blue-
eyed female—which had hung by a silk ribbon
so long about his neck, and which was still
preserved in a very secret drawer of his
escritoire, and occasionally looked at when he
wanted to recal the air, the features, the
expression of Nancy Cleghorn.

Impatient to visit his purchases in Lanarkshire;
impatient to see once more the Falder
Hill—in sight of which his broken fortunes
had been restored—Sir Douglas Brand
posted down from London, and after sleeping
on the previous night at Moffat, proceeded
along the road towards his newly acquired
property on this very clay, the anniversary of
that in seventeen hundred and eighty, to
which he always looked back as the foundation
of his fortune. He got out of the
carriage, which he ordered to go slowly on, and
walked along the footpath for several miles.
Looking on the right hand, looking on the
left, he thought at last he identified the very
spot where the men had robbed him, where
his whole possessions lay in fragments at his
feet, and where the young horseman had
restored him to wealth and hope. To verify it
still more, he paused at what he considered
the identical scene; there was a hedge-row
there as before; he stept quietly off the road,
and sat down on the grassy bank. He sank
into himself, and buried his face in his hands,
giving himself up to the contemplation of the
years that had passed since then. He heard
nothing, saw nothing, but sat immoveable
with his hands over his face.

"I hope you're not unwell, sir," said a kind
voice at the side of the road.

"Not at all," said Sir Douglas Brand, rising
up, as if ashamed of his emotion. "I was
only resting after having walked a few miles
to see the beautiful scenery. My carriage is
gone on."

"It is waiting at the turn of the road,"
said Major Harburn, a little repelled by the
coldness of the stranger's tone, and his
ostentatious allusion to his carriage. He lifted
his hat and rode on. On this very day
appeared a second advertisement in the Times.
"The gentleman who in seventeen hundred
and eighty, gave his generous aid to a pedlar
boy, on the high road in Lanarkshire, is
probably dead; but if his son, if any, will address
Messrs. Dot and Carry, Broad Street, London,
and verify the incident, he will hear of
something very much to his advantage."

"I will pay over twenty thousand pounds to
him at once," said Sir Douglas, as he stepped
into his carriage, "and if he takes a fancy to
Mary—ah, well! there's no saying what might
be done."

Now I have forgot to tell you that in the
year eighteen hundred the rich contractor
married—for love. Yes, the bright flashing
eyes of Signora Estrella Nunez, the daughter
of a Spanish refugee from Cadiz, conquered
the susceptible heart of Douglas Brand. Her
father had had every farthing of his fortune
confiscated, and, certain bills on the Spanish
treasury were ignominiously repudiated, and
his estates, which were of considerable extent,
seized as the goods of a traitor, so that Don
Jacinto Nunez was very glad to convey all
these valueless documents and nominal
securities as a portion to his only child, receiving
from his generous son-in-law, in the meantime,
an annuity of one hundred a year. It
is so good, and sometimes so politic, to be
generous. When a few years had passed, and
Don Jacinto had died, and Trafalgar had been
fought, and Holy Juntas were established in
the Peninsula, the bills upon the Spanish
treasury were acknowledged by the liberating
government, and paid for out of the English
subsidies advanced by Brand, Bustle, and
others. The lands were restored, and sold
for ready money, and Mrs. Brand's allowance
increased to a thousand a year, in
consequence of her turning out an heiress. Her
enjoyment of this sum was, however, very
short, and the widower turned all his affection
upon his only child—christened, out
of compliment to Don Jacinto, Marie de
Compostella, but known by the father's
heart, only as his little Mary. Deep foundations
were dug, high strong walls were raised,
fences were thrown down, whole farms were
turned into a park, and thousands of acres of
valuable land; and millions, I was going to
say, of mountain and heath, formed the
domain round Falder Castle. Other lands were
added. Small proprietors bought out—or
their tenures made uncomfortable by quarrels
about boundaries, and law-suits about manorial
rights. And among the rest, persecution
raged fierce and hot against poor old Major
Harburn, who declined to part with his little
estate of Glen Bara, though he was invited
to fix his own price. He liked the place, his
son liked it. It had been in their family four
hundred years—so they said and believed—
and no amount of money that an honest man
could ask, would repay them for the loss of
the hereditary soil. Sir Douglas Brand had
distanced all competitors in making money
by an inadequate supply of beef and ham to
the British army. His efforts had put at
least twenty thousand gallant men to death,
who might have lived long and happily, if the
stores had been of prime quality, or properly
distributed where required; and he was not
to be defeated now by a proud old major,
whose worldly substance would not have
purchased the bristles of the pigs on whose
carcases Sir Douglas had grown so fat, and the
Walcheren expedition so lean. So he bullied
and threatened, and fortunately discovered
that not many years before this, the proprietor
of Glen Bara had mortgaged his estate to
enable him to lend some money to a friend, for
the purchase of his step, which money had
never been repaid, for his friend had perished
in battle, and the noble and paternal British
government had kept the money he had paid
for his promotion. The army contractor was