horter than that followed by the foresaid Astolpho, we know
not; but certain it is, that she recovered the powers of both her eyes
and her tongue in much less time than the writer expected, and in a
manner, too, very different from that for which he was probably
prepared.

"Weel," replied she, smiling, "it would just seem that even the haggis
has not pleased you, Mr. Dallas;" and, putting her hand into a big
side-pocket, that might have served a gaberlunzie for a wallet, she
extracted a small piece of paper. She continued: "But ye see a guid,
honest Scotchwoman's no to be suspected of being shabby at her own
table; so read ye that, which you may take for the bread-pudding."

And the writer, having taken the paper, and held it before his face for
so long a time that it might have suggested the suspicion that the words
therein written stuck in his eyes, and would not submit to that strange
process whereby, unknown to ourselves, we transfer written vocables to
the ear before we can understand them, turned a look upon the woman of
dark suspicion--

"Where, in God's name, got you this?" he said.

"Just read it out first," replied she. "Ye read yer ain paper, and why
no mine?"

And the writer read, perhaps more easily than he could understand, the
strange words:

"This child, born of my wife, and yet neither of my blood nor my
lineage, I repudiate, and, unable to push it back into the dark world of
nothing from which it came, I leave it with a scowl to the mercy which
countervaileth the terrible decree whereby the sins of the parent shall
be visited on the child. This I do on the 15th of June 17--. JOHN NAPIER
of Eastleys, in the county of Mid-Lothian."

After reading this extraordinary denunciation, Mr. Dallas sat and
considered, as if at a loss what to say; but whether it was that
scepticism was at the root of his thoughts, or that he assumed it as a
mask to conceal misgivings to which he did not like to confess, he put a
question:

"Where got you this notable piece of evidence?"

"Ay," replied Mrs. Hislop, "you are getting reasonable on the last dish.
That bit of paper, which to me and my dear Henney is werth the haill
estate of Eastleys, was found by me carefully pinned to the flannel in
which the child was wrapt."

"Wonderful enough surely," repeated he, "_if true_"--the latter words
being pronounced with emphasis which made the rough liquid letter sound
like a hurling stone; "but," he continued, "the whole