and that its cruelty was enhanced by the circumstance of the
sale being advertised in the same paper which contained the intelligence
of the death of Hector's young wife. Another listener might have replied
that God's ways are just; but Dame Scott, if she thought at the time of
her daughter, considered also that Hayston had supported her for many
years.

"Good dame," added the agent, "it might have been well for my young
friend if he had remained at Whitecraigs. I never saw the wife he
married, and has just lost in the bloom of youth; but she must have been
fair indeed, if she was fairer than she whom he left. Yet Hector's
better principles did not, I am satisfied, entirely forsake him. The
disinclination he has shown to visit his paternal property, was the
result of a clinging remembrance of her he left mourning in the midst of
its glens; nor do I wonder at it, for even I have turned aside to avoid
the sight of Alice Scott. Misfortunes, however, are sometimes mercies;
and the change of residence you will be now driven to, may aid in the
cure of a disease that is only fed by these scenes of Whitecraigs."

He here paused, and, putting his hand in his pocket, took out some
money.

"This may be the last gift," he said, as he presented it to her, "that
Hector Hayston may ever send you. These are his words. His fortunes are
ruined, his wife is dead, and, worse than all, his peace of mind is
fled."

"Heaven have mercy on him!" replied the widow. "One word of reproach has
never escaped the lips of me or my daughter. I have suffered in this
cottage without murmuring, and the glens and hollows of Whitecraigs have
alone heard the complainings of Alice Scott. She will cling to these
places to the last; but were the windows of the deserted house again
opened, with strange faces there, and maybe the lights of the
entertainments of the happy shining through them, she might feel less
pleasure in sitting by the pond from which she now so often surveys the
deserted mansion. This last gift, sir, moves my tears--yea, for all I
and mine have suffered from Hector Hayston."

The agent had performed his duty, and departed with the promise that he
would, of his own accord, endeavour to prevail upon some of his
employers to grant her a cottage, if the purchaser of Whitecraigs should
resist an appeal for her to remain. He had no sooner gone, than the
stranger Wallace, who had heard the conversation, entered. He asked her
how much money Hec