on in society, and their prospects in life, are undergoing
perpetual changes. Changeable as are the fortunes, so are the minds
and the emotions of men: one hour they laugh, another they weep; and,
perhaps, the very next hour they laugh again; while events the most
important and the most trifling, the most solemn and the most
ludicrous, mingle together, and follow each other by a law which fools
our powers of investigation, and baffles our understanding.

Eighteen years had nearly elapsed since the period at which the
former part of this history concludes; and _the Ghost of Howdycraigs_
was nearly forgotten. Betsy Braikens, who was then only a girl, was
now a full-grown woman, who, for the last eight or nine of the
above-mentioned years, would not have been irreconcilably offended
with a well-looking sweetheart for proposing to make her his wife. Her
brother James, who, in the same interval, had arrived at man's estate,
had been endeavouring, not very successfully, for some time past to
establish himself as a merchant in Perth; and his cousin, Sandy
Crawford, whom the reader will recollect as the herd laddie at
Howdycraigs, had, by the death of his father, been promoted to be
tacksman of Gairyburn; upon which place he resided with his mother.
Jenny Jervis, too, with whose birth the preceding story concludes, was
by this time a lass upon whom those who were neither too young nor too
old might have looked with as much interest at least as it is common
to bestow on a maiden in her eighteenth year. It is also probable that
she herself had begun to steal an occasional glance at the young men
of the district, as she saw them passing on the road, or assembled at
their rustic sports; and to recollect, when her mind was otherwise
unoccupied, that one was tall, that another had dark eyes, that a
third had a smiling countenance; and, perhaps, that a fourth united
all these charms in his proper person.

It was the middle of winter, or what is commonly called "the daft
days," which has long been a season of festivity to the rich, and, in
so far as circumstances will permit, to the poor also. The cottagers
were invited to each other's houses, to spend an evening in
forgetfulness of care. Cakes, cheese, and ale, supplied them with a
cheap, and, at the same time, a cheery repast. The old people talked
of bygone times, and the feats of dexterity or strength which they had
performed in their youth, with all the enthusiasm of heroes when