brethren to perish in the cold. You shaIl
not fling insult and wrong on the head of the
gracious abbot: if you persist, I have secrets
which you would be loth to have revealed. I
know of deeds you would fain die rather than
to have published in the ears of men? In
the ears of men they shall be published.
These feeble limbs shall carry me to the
Council of the Lords; there, in the great
hall of Linlithgow, in the presence of all, I
will proclaim you murderer—traitor—"

"You will? Hark! the Naddersferry is
louder than usual to-night. So you will
betray my secrets, wife Sibylla? You will find
the journey long and toilsome—you will never
reach the walls of Lithgow town—"

"The secrets will uphold me; but if I fail,
there are ears even here into which I can
pour the tale—to all, to man-at-arms, to
serving-man, to hind, and shepherd, I will tell
all, unless you rescind that fatal order against
the holy men of Strathwoden—"

"Hush! here comes John of the Strong
Arm, who drove the drones forth, into the
night—"

"To him I will tell all! Come, John of
the Strong Arm, look well on your lord—"

"How loud the Neddersferry brawls! I
scarce can hear your sweet voice. See, from
this window we can look sheer down upon
the water black, pitch black. 'Tis twenty
fathoms down, and yet its noise is troublesome.
Look down, madam,— nay, shrink not, my
fingers don't hurt your lily shoulders; you
struggle; how foolish, when all I wish you to
do is to watch the torrent's course. 'Tis deep,
they say, just under this window; screams
can't be heard; white garments can't be
seen."

The window was closed again, and there was
silence in the hall. A tap came in a few
minutes to the door. John of the Strong
Arm entered. His master sat as before in
the arm-chair beside the fire. He was alone.

Now, gentle reader, here is a man more
ruthlessly cruel than the late Mr. Rush—
more unredeemably wicked than Mr.
Manning—more false and dishonest than any
ruffian described in the Newgate Calendar.
Yet, see what happens to us in our Iove of
the good old times! Oh! we are a generation
of snobs, and glory in our shame!

In a good old age the Knight of the Scawr
died. He was childless. His great estates
were scrambled for by the powerful men of
the day, and fell into many hands. A hundred
years after his death—in sixteen
hundred and seventy-five—the Black Scawr
Tower and its original domain had been
greatly modernised. A dwelling-house of
modest proportions was added to it; and as
woods had been planted round it, and roads
had been made, connecting it with other
parts of the country, and coal had been found
on the estate, the proprietor the third in
descent from the person who had bought it
of the executors of Sir Reinhold, was richer,
as regarded mere income, than Sir Reinhold
had been when he possessed the whole estate.
The man's name was Brown. He had got
the lands for little. A hundred years of
national progress, and the increase of wealth
and population, had done the rest.

Family pride grows by degrees. Brown
the first remembered his origin, and attended
to the business of his farm. Brown the
second looked back on fifty years' possession
in his family, and began to imagine that by
some intermarriage of ancestors four or five
generations back, he was connected with the
old line of the Knights of the Scawr Tower;
and Brown the third felt no doubt upon the
subject,—sealed with a seal impressed with
Sir Reinhold's arms, and talked with ill-
disguised gratification of the Tragedy of the
Scawr, and the death of one of his female
ancestors by being flung out of a window of
the castle into the river below. In another
hundred years—in seventeen hundred and
seventy-five—still further improvements had
taken place in the land. A town had sprung
up on a part of the estate; the houses had
been doubled in size, and the old tower was
still left at one side of the mansion, as a sort
of sentinel to keep off modern times.

The Bi'owns had gone to the dogs by
gambling and extravagance. A Smith, from
India, had bought the estate. He spoke of
rupees and pagodas, and had narrowly
escaped being put into the Black-hole of
Calcutta. Smith the second stood for the
county, on the Tory side, and said the country
was ruined by the increase of the mercantile
interest. The son of Smith the second took
higher ground still, and was heart-broken to
perceive that the old territorial aristocracy
were getting mixed up with a set of low
fellows, who came from no one knew where,
and brow-beat the men who had succeeded
to their estates in a direct line from the time
of Bruce and Wallace. Jones, an ironmaster,
from Wales, who had risen from the anvil
and hammer to great wealth, during the
American War, married the heiress of the
Smiths. The old house was deserted. A
splendid Grecian hall was built near the
remains of the ancient monastery. The Scawr
Tower was kept in repair (as a ruin), and the
country for miles and miles drained, planted,
fenced, manured, and beautified,—till, ten
years ago, the grandson of the original Jones,
who had put an h in his name, and claimed
to be descended from Slewellgr, was created
Sir Arthur Johnes Ranald, Baronet, of Speith
and Scawr. The "Ranald" he had assumed
by special permission, as lineal descendant—
through Smith, through Brown— of Sir
Reinhold of the Scawr, Knight, temp. Jac. V.,
who married the heiress of Sir Torquil of the
Scawr,—deceased fifteen hundred and thirty-
four.—Will anybody, in two thousand one
hundred and fifty, trace his descent from
Thurtell?