to them she paid constant attention.

It happened a day or two after Butler's departure that, while she was
engaged in some domestic duties, she heard a dispute among the young
folk, which, being maintained with obstinacy, appeared to call for her
interference. All came to their natural umpire with their complaints.
Femie, not yet ten years old, charged Davie and Reubie with an attempt to
take away her book by force; and David and Reuben replied, the elder,
"That it was not a book for Femie to read," and Reuben, "That it was
about a bad woman."

"Where did you get the book, ye little hempie?" said Mrs. Butler. "How
dare ye touch papa's books when he is away?" But the little lady, holding
fast a sheet of crumpled paper, declared "It was nane o' papa's books,
and May Hettly had taken it off the muckle cheese which came from
Inverara;" for, as was very natural to suppose, a friendly intercourse,
with interchange of mutual civilities, was kept up from time to time
between Mrs. Dolly Dutton, now Mrs. MacCorkindale, and her former
friends.

Jeanie took the subject of contention out of the child's hand, to satisfy
herself of the propriety of her studies; but how much was she struck when
she read upon the title of the broadside-sheet, "The Last Speech,
Confession, and Dying Words of Margaret MacCraw, or Murdockson, executed
on Harabee Hill, near Carlisle, the day of 1737." It was, indeed, one
of those papers which Archibald had bought at Longtown, when he
monopolised the pedlar's stock, which Dolly had thrust into her trunk out
of sheer economy. One or two copies, it seems, had remained in her
repositories at Inverary, till she chanced to need them in packing a
cheese, which, as a very superior production, was sent, in the way of
civil challenge, to the dairy at Knocktarlitie.

The title of this paper, so strangely fallen into the very hands from
which, in well-meant respect to her feelings, it had been so long
detained, was of itself sufficiently startling; but the narrative itself
was so interesting, that Jeanie, shaking herself loose from the children,
ran upstairs to her own apartment, and bolted the door, to peruse it
without interruption.

The narrative, which appeared to have been drawn up, or at least
corrected, by the clergyman who attended this unhappy woman, stated the
crime for which she suffered to have been "her active part in that
atrocious robbery and murder, committed near two years since near
Haltwhist