e boy,
and scarcely had the young gentleman--Ronald Morton he was to be
called--given notice of his arrival in the world by a lusty fit of
crying, and had been exhibited in due form to his father, than the wise
woman who attended on such occasions was now moving in hot haste to the
castle of Lunnasting, to afford her aid to Donna Hilda, who was, it is
said, in sore pain and distress. Alas! she had no fond husband to cheer
and console her; no one to whom she could show with pride and joy the
little creature about to be born into the world. Bertha Eswick had
expressed her hopes that the child would be a girl. A lassie, she
observed, would be a comfort and a companion to the poor lady, who would
herself be able to instruct her, and would ever keep her by her side;
whereas a boy must be sent away to school, and would then have to go
into the world, where he would again see little or nothing of his poor
mother.

Father Mendez and Pedro Alvarez were walking up and down, but not
together, on the sunny side of the court-yard. It was the only spot,
they declared, in the whole island where they could be sheltered from
the biting keenness of the wind, and feel any of the warmth to which
they were accustomed in their own country. Both were anxious to hear
whether a son or daughter was born to the lady of the mansion. Pedro
Alvarez was certainly the least anxious.

While the two foreigners were thus engaged, Moggie Druster, the cook,
put her head out of a window and shouted--

"It's a braw laddie, sirs--a fine strapping bairn. It's like to do
weel, and so is it's mother, poor lady."

"A what do you say it is, Mistress Moggie?" asked Father Mendez.

"A braw laddie; a big bouncing boy, ye would ca' him in English,"
answered Moggie, with a slight touch of scorn in her tone.

"A boy!" exclaimed the priest and the lieutenant almost at the same
moment.

The priest took several rapid turns up and down the courtyard with
compressed lips and knitted brow, but said nothing.

"And how goes the poor lady?" inquired Pedro Alvarez. "And good
Mistress Moggie," he continued, going up to her and whispering, "I tell
her that her husband's warmest friend is ready and at hand to assist and
comfort her, as far as he has the power."

"Ay, that will I, Mr Pedro; ye are a kind-hearted gentleman, that ye
are," answered Moggie, whose heart the honest lieutenant had completely
won, in return for the culinary instruction he had afforded her.