for buying it under the value. My respectful compliments to Mr Mervyn, and I will trust you, though you boast to be so lively a young gentleman, to kiss Julia for me.-Adieu, dear Mervyn.—Thine ever, "GUY MANNERING." Mr Mac-Morlan now entered the room. The well-known character of Colonel Mannering at once disposed this gentleman, who was a man of intelligence and probity, to be open and confidential. He expined the advantages and disadvantages of the property. "It was settled," he said," "the greater part of it at least, upon heirsmale, and the purchaser would have the privilege of retaining in his hands a large proportion of the price, in case of the reappearance, within a certain limited term, of the child who had disappeared." "To what purpose, then, force forward a sale?" said Mannering. Mac-Morlan smiled. "Ostensibly," he said, "to substitute the interest of money, instead of the ill-paid and precarious rents of an unimproved estate; but chiefly, it was supposed, to suit the wishes and views of a certain intended purchaser, who had be come a principal creditor, and forced himself into the management of the affairs, by means best known to himself, and who, it was thought, would find it very convenient to purchase the estate without paying down the price." Mannering consulted with Mr MacMorlan upon the steps for thwarting this unprincipled attempt. They then conversed long upon the singular disappearance of Harry Bertram upon his fifth birth-day, verifying thus the random prediction of Mannering, of which, however, it will readily be supposed he made no boast. Mr Mac-Morlan was not himself in office when that incident took place; but he was well acquainted with all the circumstances, and promised that our hero should have them detailed by the sheriff depute himself, if, as he proposed, he should become a settler in that part of Scotland. With this assurance, they parted well satisfied with each other, and with the evening's conference. On the Sunday following, Colonel Mannering attended the parish church with great decorum. None of the Ellangowan family were present; and it was understood that the old Laird was rather worse than better. Jock Jabos, once more dispatched for him, returned once more without his errand. Next day Miss Bertram hoped he might be removed. CHAPTER XIII. They told me, by the sentence of the law, OTWAY. EARLY next morning, Mannering mounted his horse, and, accompanied by his servant, took the road to Ellangowan. He had no need to enquire the way. A sale in the country is a place of public resort and amusement, and people of various descriptions streamed to it from all quar ters. After a pleasant ride of about an hour, the old towers of the ruin presented them selves in the landscape. The thoughts with what different feelings he had lost sight of them so many years before, thronged upon the mind of the traveller. The landscape was the same; but how changed the feelings, hopes, and views, of the spectator! Then, life and love were new, and all the prospect was gilded by their rays. And now, disappointed in affection, sated with fame, and what the world calls success, his mind goaded by bitter and repentant recollection, his best hope was to find a retirement in which he might nurse the melancholy that was to accompany him to his grave. "Yet why should an individual mourn over the instability of his hopes, and the vanity of his prospects? The ancient chiefs, who erected these enormous and massive towers to be the fortress of their race, and the seat of their power, could they have dreamed the day was to come, when the last of their descendants should be expelled, a ruined wanderer, from his posses |