said Butler, "is, I believe, no witch, but a cheat: and it
is only on that head that she is summoned to the kirk-session, to cause
her to desist in future from practising her impostures upon ignorant
persons."

"I do not know," replied the gracious Duncan, "what her practices or
postures are, but I pelieve that if the poys take hould on her to duck
her in the Clachan purn, it will be a very sorry practice--and I pelieve,
moreover, that if I come in thirdsman among you at the kirk-sessions, you
will be all in a tamn'd pad posture indeed."

Without noticing this threat, Mr. Butler replied, "That he had not
attended to the risk of ill-usage which the poor woman might undergo at
the hands of the rabble, and that he would give her the necessary
admonition in private, instead of bringing her before the assembled
session."

"This," Duncan said, "was speaking like a reasonable shentleman;" and so
the evening passed peaceably off.

Next morning, after the Captain had swallowed his morning draught of
Athole brose, and departed in his coach and six, Mrs. Butler anew
deliberated upon communicating to her husband her sister's letter. But
she was deterred by the recollection, that, in doing so, she would unveil
to him the whole of a dreadful secret, of which, perhaps, his public
character might render him an unfit depositary. Butler already had reason
to believe that Effie had eloped with that same Robertson who had been a
leader in the Porteous mob, and who lay under sentence of death for the
robbery at Kirkcaldy. But he did not know his identity with George
Staunton, a man of birth and fortune, who had now apparently reassumed
his natural rank in society. Jeanie had respected Staunton's own
confession as sacred, and upon reflection she considered the letter of
her sisteras equally so, and resolved to mention the contents to no one.

On reperusing the letter, she could not help observing the staggering and
unsatisfactory condition of those who have risen to distinction by undue
paths, and the outworks and bulwarks of fiction and falsehood, by which
they are under the necessity of surrounding and defending their
precarious advantages. But she was not called upon, she thought, to
unveil her sister's original history--it would restore no right to any
one, for she was usurping none--it would only destroy her happiness, and
degrade her in the public estimation. Had she been wise, Jeanie thought
she would have chosen seclusion and p