fe, that of
a Christian home. Not only the outward observances, but the inner
spiritual vitality of religion, were there, while unselfish devotion
to all within the range of her influence or authority marked the
character of her who was at the head of this little family kingdom.
The present head of the house, a Hay to the backbone, has triumphantly
carried on the martial traditions of his ancestry, and on the roll of
England's victorious sons at the battle of the Alma his name is to be
found. He was there disabled by a wound that shattered his right arm
and cut short his military career. Domestic happiness, however, is
no bad substitute for a brilliant public life, and there are duties,
higher yet than a soldier's, that go far toward making up that
background of rural prosperity which alone ensures the grand effect of
military successes. After having done one's duty in the field, it
is to the full as noble, and perhaps more patriotic, to turn to the
duties of the glebe, thereby finishing as a landlord the work begun as
a soldier.

It is a touching custom, hardly yet obliterated in the district over
which my reminiscences have led me, for one peasant, when coming upon
another employed in his lawful calling, thus to salute him: "Guid
speed the wark!" the rejoinder being, in the same broad Buchan
dialect, "Thank ye: I wish ye weel."

I can end these pages with no more fitting sentiment. As a tribute of
grateful recollection to those who made my days at Slains a happiness
to me, and in the first fresh sorrow of a deep bereavement offered
me distractions the more alluring because the more associated with
Nature's changeless, silent grandeur, I pen these lines, crowning them
with the homely Scottish wish that wherever they are and whatever they
do, "Guid speed the wark!"

LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.

[Footnote A: There is another version of her courtship, and this a
metrical one. This old ballad was not much known beyond the district
round Slains, and the old servants and farmers on the estate were the
chief depositaries of the tradition. I have failed to secure more than
a very small fragment of it, which is itself only written down from
memory by one of these old women. The rhyme and rhythm are both
_original_:

Lady Mary Hay went to a wedding
Near the famous town of Reading:
There a gentleman she saw
That belonged to the law....

Here evidently there occurs a hiatus, during which some account is
probably begun