lived much retired, this circumstance fortunately had not reached Woodbourne. A letter had already made Miss Bertram acquainted with the downfall of the expectations which had been formed upon the bequest of her kinswoman. Whatever hopes that news might have dispelled, the disappointment did not prevent her from joining her friend in affording a cheerful reception to the Colonel, to whom she thus endeavoured to express the deep sense she entertained of his paternal kindness. She touched on her regret, that at such a season of the year he should have made, upon her account, a journey so fruitless.

}

Siff That it was fruitless to you, my dear,” said the Colonel, "I do most deeply regret; but for my own share, I have made some valuable acquaintances, and have spent the time I have been absent in Edinburgh with peculiar satisfaction; so that, on that score, there is nothing to be re

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gretted. Even our friend the Dominie is returned thrice the man he was, from having sharpened his wits in controversy with the geniuses of the northern metropolis."

"Of a surety," said the Dominie with great complacency, "I did wrestle, and was not overcome, though my adversary was cunning in his art."

I presume," said Miss Mannering, the contest was somewhat fatiguing, Mr Sampson ?"

- Very much, young lady-howbeit I girded up my loins and strove against him."

"I can bear witness," said the Colonel, "I never saw an affair better contested. The enemy was like the Mahratta cavalryg he assailed on all sides, and presented no fair mark for artillery; but Mr Sampson stood to his guns notwithstanding, and fired away, now upon the enemy, and now upon the dust which he had raised. But we must not fight our battles over again

to-night to-morrow we shall have the whole at breakfast."

Upon the next day at breakfast, however, the Dominie did not make his appearance. He had walked out, a servant said, early in the morning. It was so common for him to forget his meals, that his absence never deranged the family. The housekeeper, a decent old-fashioned presbyterian matron, having, as such, the highest respect for Sampson's theological acquisitions, had it in charge upon these occasions to take care that he was no sufferer by his absence of mind, and therefore usually waylaid him upon his return, to remind him of his sublunary wants, and to minister for their relief. It seldom, however, happened that he was absent from two meals together, as was the case in the present instance. We must explain the cause of this unusual occurrence.

The conversation which Mr Pleydell har held with Mannering upon the sub

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ject of the loss of Harry Bertram, had awakened all the painful sensations which that event had inflicted upon Sampson. The affectionate heart of the poor Dominie had always reproached him, that his negligence in leaving the child in the care of Frank Kennedy had been the proximate cause of the murder of the one, the loss of the other, the death of Mrs Bertram, and the ruin of the family of his patron. It was a subject which he never spoke upon, if indeed his mode of conversation could be called speaking at any time; but which was often present to his imagination. The sort of hope so strongly affirmed and asserted in Mrs Bertram's last settlement, had excited a corresponding feeling in the Dominie's bosom, which was exasperated into a sort of sickening anxiety, by the discredit with which Pleydell had treated it. "Assuredly," thought

Sampson to himself, to himself," he is a man of

erudition, and well skilled in the weighty

matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and inconstancy of speech; and wherefore should he pronounce er cathedra, as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy Madam Margaret Bertram of Singleside?" All this, I say, the Dominie thought to himself; for had he uttered half the sentence, his jaws would have ached for a month under the unusual fatigue of such a continued excrtion. The result of these cogitations was a resolution to go and visit the scene of the tragedy at Warroch Point, where he had not been for many years—not, indeed, since the fatal accident had happened. The walk was a long one, for the Point of Warroch lay on the farther side of the Ellangowan property, which was interposed between it and Woodbourne. Besides, the Dominie went astray more than once, and met with brooks swoln into torrents by the melting of the snow, where he, honest man, had only the summer-recollection of little trickling rills.