“Just an acknowledgement o' twa or three things that would gie me the power to hand ye ower to the sheriff's officer if ye should ever set foot on this land again.”

"Let me see her."

The paper, a sheet of foolscap pretty closely written on both sides, was handed to him. He stared at it vacantly upside down, and in every conceivable position; but he was none the wiser, for his educational acquirements were not extensive enough even to read writing.

"There's a lot o' her," he muttered. "It's just the form o' thae things." "When'll she get the siller? '

"The day after the morn.'

'Very coot; you'll give me the papers to clear the schooner at the port o' Ayr. I'll bring her up, and lie off the links the night after to-morrow's night. Then you'll bring the siller, and I'll make my cross on the paper like a man. She will, and may she be droont in whisky if you'll ever get the chance o' using her against Ivan Carrach. No-petam."

CHAPTER XXX.

SCANDAL.

"Preserve us a'! what shall we do,

Thir dark unhallowed times?

We're surely dreeing penance now,

For some most awfu' crimes."-J. Robertson.

ON quitting Girzie Todd's cot, Jeanie and her father had driven slowly away in the cart which had brought them from Cairnieford. At the corner of the road they waited for Boghaugh, and as soon as he joined them started again.

Adam was irritably indignant, uttering repeatedly fretful ejaculations against Robin. Jeanie, on the other hand, was calmer than she had been for a week past. The consciousness that she had done all she could do, all she aught to do, to place

her conduct in the proper light before her husband, and to dispel his doubts, supplied her with a fortitude which enabled her to look with steady eyes toward the future, now that she knew the worst of the present.

A strong feeling of pride, too, entered into the composition of this fortitude. She had been blamed and scorned without cause; unmerited reproaches had been heaped upon her until she had been distracted, and the natural reaction had followed. She would prove by the conduct of her life that she had been blameless; but she would never again stoop to defend herself against a charge so false. However much she might smart under the disgrace of the equivocal position in which she was placed, and the knowledge that the tongue of scandal was busy with her name, she was prepared now to submit to all without murmur. The consciousness of her innocence was like a coat of armour, against which all the slings and arrows of malice would strike harmlessly.

Of her husband she could already think more in sorrow than in anger. She pitied what appeared to her nothing short of wilful blindness in his persistent rejection of the truth, and she would have been glad if she could only have discovered some means of relieving him. But for all that, she was as sincerely determined that their separation should be final as he had been at the moment when in his frenzy he had cast her from him at Askaig.

If sickness or other calamity befell him, she would not refuse to tend him and to give him what assistance she might have in her power to give-this for a sad sweet reason of her own, apart from whatever affection she might bear him-but they should never again dwell together as man and wife. With that conviction had come the calm deep sorrow of a strong nature which accepts the inevitable, and, instead of wasting time in vain regrets, quietly gathers its forces to do the best that may be done under the circumstances.

Adam had declared his intention of quitting Cairnieford that night, and Jeanie had purposed carrying the intention into effect. But she took a more sensible view of what ought

to be done now; and in answer to one of his irritable ejaculations, she said quietly

“No, father, we canna win awa' frae the house this night.” "Hoo?-would ye bide a minute langer than was necessary after what he has said to ye? I'll no hear o't."

"No, father, I'll no bide a minute langer than is necessary; but ye ken that we daurna shift my mither the nicht when we hae nae place ready to take her to. Besides, I'll hae to put everything in order at the house, and leave it in charge o' somebody that winna take advantage o' the absence o' the master to waste his goods. I'll no rin awa' frae the place as though I was guilty o' a' he charges me wi'. wife should do on his account."

66

Do ye mean ye're gaun to bide there yet?"

I'll do what his

"No (shaking her head sadly); I hae told ye, only as long as may be necessary to put things in order, and to leave them in safety, and until we hae gotten some place for mither." "We'll get our auld house back again."

"That ye canna see about till the morn."

Adam grumbled, but Boghaugh interrupted him.

"Seems to me the guidwife takes a plain common-sense view o' the matter; and it would be still mair in accordance wi' my idea o' what she should do, if she was to jist bide in her ain hame until Robin bas time to come to himsel'-for he's no himsel' enow, or he never would hae said what he has done." "I canna do that."

"Ye sha'na do that- -no though I should hae to drag ye out o' the house by the hair o' the head," said Adam sternly. “It shall never be said that while I lived my dochter bode aneath the same roof wi' a man that has cast black shame on us a'."

His irritation was made all the keener by the remembrance of his own share in bringing the marriage about. How proud he had been of his son-in-law! how proud he had been of his daughter's home! And, now that his pride had been humiliated -dragged in the mire as it were he felt as if he had been personally injured, and was resentful accordingly. It was not so much a comprehension of his daughter's suffering that

moved him, as a bitter feeling that he, a man who had walked uprightly in the eyes of his neighbours all his life, was degraded in his old age.

On arriving at Cairnieford, there was another reason discovered for delaying the departure, stronger than any Jeanie had advanced to him. Her mother, who had been excited in the early part of the day by the vague rumours she had caught of what was passing, had been still more affected by the distorted narrative of the events which she had received from the servants since Jeanie had been absent; and she was now so ill that she required all her daughter's attention throughout the night.

They had to send for the doctor, for indeed they began to fear that the shock she had received might prove fatal. He came at a late hour, and his report of her condition was so unfavourable that a new source of alarm was added to Jeanie's already too numerous troubles.

A potion the doctor had administered, by-and-by soothed the invalid to sleep. Through the weary night Jeanie watched beside the bed, obtaining only a few minutes' sleep at intervals on the chair, from which she would start up in the terror of some wretched dream the disturbed state of her mind induced.

When the morning came at last, the patient, who suffered everything with that meek resignation her long illness had cultivated, was better-that is, she was less feverish-but she was still so enfeebled that she could scarcely raise her hand to her head. The doctor had cautioned Jeanie to be very careful to keep every possible cause of excitement away from her; and on that account she dared not tell her that they were to quit Cairnieford. Even Adam, with all his stubbornness, when he looked at the ghastly face of his wife, had not courage to harass her with the account of the misery which had befallen their daughter.

He, however, went off shortly after breakfast to see about the cottage and arrange for its speedy occupation. This he expected would be an easy matter, as it had not been let since he had left it. Rest and reflection had not in any degree

softened the feelings with which he regarded Robin. His sullen wrath was undiminished, and what he heard in the town tended rather to increase his spleen than to subdue it.

The girl whom Jeanie had sent with the cart for Rob Keith's wife had, after discharging her mission, taken advantage of being in the town to call on her acquaintance, Miss M'Claver, the mantua-maker. To her as an interesting secret, the girl had communicated an account of the singular doings at Cairnieford, which were undoubtedly caused by the unlooked-for return of James Falcon. That was enough to enable Miss M'Claver to settle in her own mind all the ins and outs of the story.

"Deed it's nae mair nor I or onybody expeckit," she exclaimed with much apparent self-satisfaction in her own foresight; "it couldna be possible that she could hae cared for Falcon or she wouldna hae married an auld man like your maister-though it's no but he's a stout chiel' yet, an' a worthy But if she didna care for the puir lad Falcon, then she had been makin' a fule o' him: an' they wha can mak' a full o' ane will be like to mak' a fule o' anither."

man.

"Hech, sirs, but it's ower true," exclaimed the sympathetic domestic.

"But if she did care for her auld lad and yet married Cairnieford, wha could look for onything but that whan the auld love turned up she would be awa' wi' him, let her honest guidman dae what he liked? Sae that, tak' it ony gate ye like, she was fuling a dacent man, and it's just a burnin' shame still. Eh, puir man, what'll he dae wi' a rinawa wife, and no able to marry ony sensible woman that micht console him?"

And Miss M'Claver's virtuous indignation was much heightened by this melancholy view of the case. Whether or not she regretted the loss of the opportunity to prove herself a particularly sensible woman, she took the earliest occasion, which was in about five minutes after her informant had retired, to visit her friend the flesher's wife, and convey to her the intelligence she had just received. Mrs. Gabbock was