going to do?--the
time--the place--an unknown and suspicious character?--Why, if he had
asked to see you in this house, your father sitting in the next room, and
within call, at such an hour, you should have refused to see him."

"My weird maun be fulfilled, Mr. Butler; my life and my safety are in
God's hands, but I'll not spare to risk either of them on the errand I am
gaun to do."

"Then, Jeanie," said Butler, much displeased, "we must indeed break short
off, and bid farewell. When there can be no confidence betwixt a man and
his plighted wife on such a momentous topic, it is a sign that she has no
longer the regard for him that makes their engagement safe and suitable."

Jeanie looked at him and sighed. "I thought," she said, "that I had
brought myself to bear this parting--but--but--I did not ken that we were
to part in unkindness. But I am a woman and you are a man--it may be
different wi' you--if your mind is made easier by thinking sae hardly of
me, I would not ask you to think otherwise."

"You are," said Butler, "what you have always been--wiser, better, and
less selfish in your native feelings, than I can be, with all the helps
philosophy can give to a Christian--But why--why will you persevere in an
undertaking so desperate? Why will you not let me be your assistant--your
protector, or at least your adviser?"

"Just because I cannot, and I dare not," answered Jeanie.--"But hark,
what's that? Surely my father is no weel?"

In fact, the voices in the next room became obstreperously loud of a
sudden, the cause of which vociferation it is necessary to explain before
we go farther.

When Jeanie and Butler retired, Mr. Saddletree entered upon the business
which chiefly interested the family. In the commencement of their
conversation he found old Deans, who in his usual state of mind, was no
granter of propositions, so much subdued by a deep sense of his
daughter's danger and disgrace, that he heard without replying to, or
perhaps without understanding, one or two learned disquisitions on the
nature of the crime imputed to her charge, and on the steps which ought
to be taken in consequence. His only answer at each pause was, "I am no
misdoubting that you wuss us weel--your wife's our far-awa cousin."

Encouraged by these symptoms of acquiescence, Saddletree, who, as an
amateur of the law, had a supreme deference for all constituted
authorities, again recurred to his other topic of interest, the murder,
na