ness.

Neither quite so picturesque in attire as they might have been fifty years before, or even fifty years afterwards, for the hoops were half out and the kilts had not been introduced afresh for gentlemen; Mary in her long habit, Finralia in his trews and cambric frills; but both of them comely enough to have warranted the appellation of nymph and swain in the mock-classic, mock-pastoral nomenclature of those days, but alack! widely different in expression. Mary with the severe gravity that sat a little comically on her young face, and yet it was a just, good expression, even in its rigour; Finralia with the palpable sneer borrowed from Lucifer. Well said Macaulay, that supercilious scorn is the most unmanly, the farthest removed from true humanity of all the contortions that can disfigure a face.. Alas! alas! Finralia, who would have guessed how tenderly you had lifted Ussie from her bed to her chair that morning, how magnanimously you had forgiven the lying dog-boy! So they looked, passed, and parted, believing in their two stubborn hearts that their paths in life lay as far apart as light from darkness.

C

CHAPTER II.

THE GATHERING AFTER THE CHAPEL AT CHOILLEAN.

HE little homely English chapel of Choillean was reared on consecrated ground, in a hollow of weeping birches, where an old religious house had once challenged the devotion of the rugged

north country, several miles from Inverluig; and in the chapel at stated intervals a clergyman in orders officiated for the benefit of the scattered population belonging to the Episcopal Church in the glens and straths around. Between these services the bigoted, or the careless and cold abstained from public worship altogether; but conscientious, pious, humble-minded, liberal-tempered people, like Mary Aldour, in the main attended the parish kirk, where the good priests were, in a measure, hereditary, often retaining their several livings in individual families for 'four generations,' and where they were frequently connexions as well as familiar friends of the surrounding lairds, who swallowed the long Presbyterian sermon the more readily that it was delivered in Gaelic.

However, when there was service at Choillean, there was a great gathering, not only in the chapel, but afterwards in the little inn a hundred yards distant, for the congregation came from such distances. that baiting and refreshment were absolutely necessary alike for man and beast; and whether the meeting was strictly profitable or held in the spirit of the previous religious observances, it was welcome as the kindly crack in the kirkyard,' guttural and emphatic here, to simple parish worthies.

The inn was little better than a 'clay biggin,' and if long kail did not spring from its walls, house-leeks flourished abundantly on its roof. Earthen floors, a 'but and a ben,' the one for the gentry crowded pell mell, the other where the salmon speared the preceding night, the venison ham, the cakes and milk, the claret and usquebagh were prepared to be set before the guests, with a long shed for the few curricles, a longer stable for the many horses, completed the accommodation.

Yet for this lowly stage rather than for the chapel, where it is to be hoped her thoughts were better employed, many a lass wore her unsuitable peach or primrose lutestring, and her lace mittens, and some lads mounted smarter cocked hats, coats with more glittering cuffs, shoes with more massive buckles. A motley assembly, where all were of one degreemotley as minds, manners, and purses varied. Lairds surly and ill-conditioned as Balmawhapple, clownish as the low country Dumbiedykes, or-rare exceptions

pedantic and quaint as Baron Bradwardine, or polished men of the world, like the great Duke of Gordon himself; old ladies, who had prayed in their flower for the young Chevalier-withered bodies now with silk calêches over cambric curches, and ivory handled sticks in their stiff trembling hands; and portly matrons with flocks of shy or bouncing daughters, who span still of a morning and danced reels every night.

The Robertsons of Croclune, a half-pay officer's family, very well known, for they were constantly paying or receiving visits even in snow storms; very lightly held, for they were that grasping family in narrow circumstances, of mean ends and aims and foolish and flighty conduct, existing everywhere, and everywhere both tolerated and reprobated. Captain Robertson was a cunning, sharp man, active in his bigness and stoutness, not without a species of good humour, mixed up with every affair in the Country-in request because he did dirty work, but carelessly treated even by these courteous brother Celts, and they were more gracious than Saxons. Captain Robertson did not heed if he gained his object-got the hope of a commission in the Fencibles for his idle son Finlay, married his wildest girl Christie to the sottish, doting commandant of the neighbouring fort, or even sold his hay a few pence the stone higher, or secured an invitation to Flora from the young English lady of Pitfadden, pining in what she considered a dreary solitude. Captain Robertson had the tact of good company,

but he was pushing and brazen enough for any set. Mrs. Robertson was a peevish nonentity-a counterpoise to the exceeding buoyancy of her spouse. Dr. Johnson once blamed a lady for her censure of a neighbour. 'Madam,' said he, 'why do you blame the woman for the only sensible thing she could do— talking of her family and her affairs-for how could a woman who is as empty as a drum talk of anything else? As an example of Mrs. Robertson, she could not even talk of her family unless to reflect upon Christie for never coming to see her, and to complain of Nancy for still growing away from her clothes. Mrs. Robertson was now thrown completely into the shade by her daughter Flora, who, though a matron, continued to reside in her father's house, and united her father's vivacity to her mother's helpless spleen. Flora had been, if not the giddiest of the black-eyed, high-complexioned girls of Croclune, certainly the most undutiful and defiant in act.. Flora had married off-hand and clandestinely a subaltern starting with his regiment for America. Captain Robertson had discovered the offence, but had been unable to despatch his self-willed daughter to the colonies with the partner, young and reckless as herself, whom she had summarily chosen. Thus Flora remained in the parental house in the debateable position of an unclaimed bride awaiting the return of her husband, frequently ignorant of his stations, and apparently dropped out of his consideration and his very consciousness; and years passed, and the younger mem