he elements of his unalluring character. But the only ancestor
of marked temperament was the festive Logan of Restalrig, who conspired
over his cups to kidnap a king, laid out his plot on the lines of an
Italian novel, and died without being detected. This heroic ancestor
admitted that he hated 'arguments derived from religion,' and, so far,
the Marquis of Restalrig was quite with him, if the arguments bore on
giving to the poor, or, indeed, to any one.

In fact the marquis was that unpopular character, a miser. Your miser
may be looked up to, in a way, as an ideal votary of Mammon, but he is
never loved. On his vast possessions, mainly in coal-fields, he was even
more detested than the ordinary run of capitalists. The cottages and
farmhouses on his estates were dilapidated and insanitary beyond what is
endurable. Of his many mansions, some were kept in decent repair,
because he drew many shillings from tourists admitted to view them. But
his favourite abode was almost as ruinous as his cottages, and an artist
in search of a model for the domestic interior of the Master of
Ravenswood might have found what he wanted at Kirkburn, the usual lair of
this avaricious nobleman. It was a keep of the sixteenth century, and
looked as if it had never been papered or painted since Queen Mary's
time. But it was near the collieries; and within its blackened walls,
and among its bleak fields and grimy trees, Lord Restalrig chose to live
alone, with an old man and an old woman for his attendants. The woman
had been his nurse; it was whispered in the district that she was also
his illegal-aunt, or perhaps even, so to speak, his illegal stepmother.
At all events, she endured more than anybody but a Scotch woman who had
been his nurse in childhood would have tolerated. To keep her in his
service saved him the cost of a pension, which even the marquis, people
thought, could hardly refuse to allow her. The other old servitor was
her husband, and entirely under her domination. Both might be reckoned
staunch, in the old fashion, 'to the name,' which Logan only bore by
accident, his grandmother having wedded a kinless Logan who had no
demonstrable connection with the house of Restalrig. Any mortal but the
marquis would probably have brought Logan up as his heir, for the
churlish peer had no nearer connection. But the marquis did more than
sympathise with the Roman emperor who quoted 'after me the Last Day.' The
emperor only mean