ho imitated the name--a
device of the yearning heart to save the girl of his affection from the
gallows, and clutched at by the mother and father as a means of their
daughter's redemption. One of those thinly-sown beings who are
cold-blooded by nature, who take on love slowly but surely, and seem
fitted to be martyrs, Lindsay defied all consequences, so that it might
be that Effie Carr should escape an ignominious death. Nor did he take
time for further deliberation: in less than half an hour he was in the
procurator-fiscal's office--the willing self-criminator; the man who did
the deed; the man who was ready to die for his young mistress and his
love. His story, too, was as ready as it was truth-seeming. He declared
that he had got Effie to write out the draft as if commissioned by John
Carr; that he took it away, and with his own hands added the name; that
he had returned the check to Effie to go with it to the bank, and had
received the money from her on her return. The consequence was his wish,
and it was inevitable. That same day George Lindsay was lodged also in
the Tolbooth, satisfied that he had made a sacrifice of his life for one
whom he had loved for years, and who yet had never shown him even a
symptom of hope that his love would be returned.

All which proceedings soon came on the wings of rumour to the ears of
Robert Stormonth, who was not formed to be a martyr even for a love
which was to him as true as his nature would permit. He saw his danger,
because he did not see the character of a faithful girl who would die
rather than compromise her lover. He fled--aided probably by that very
money he had wrung out of the hands of the devoted girl; nor was his
disappearance connected with the tragic transaction; for, as we have
said, the connection between him and Effie had been kept a secret, and
his flight could be sufficiently accounted for by his debt.

Meanwhile the precognitions or examination of the parties went on, and
with a result as strange as it was puzzling to the officials. Effie was
firm to her declaration, that she not only wrote the body of the cheque,
but attached to it the name of her father, and had appropriated the
money in a way which she declined to state. On the other hand, Lindsay
was equally staunch to his statement made to the procurator-fiscal, that
he had got Effie to write the draft, had forged the name to it, and got
the money from her. The authorities very soon saw that they had go