made any useful progress in the study of
the olden times.

I owed this turn of study, in part, to the conversation of my kind man
of business, Mr. Fairscribe, whom I mentioned as having seconded the
efforts of my invaluable friend in bringing the cause on which my
liberty and the remnant of my property depended to a favourable
decision. He had given me a most kind reception on my return. He was
too much engaged in his profession for me to intrude on him often, and
perhaps his mind was too much trammelled with its details to permit his
being willingly withdrawn from them. In short, he was not a person of
my poor friend Sommerville's expanded spirit, and rather a lawyer of the
ordinary class of formalists; but a most able and excellent man. When
my estate was sold! he retained some of the older title-deeds, arguing,
from his own feelings, that they would be of more consequence to the
heir of the old family than to the new purchaser. And when I returned
to Edinburgh, and found him still in the exercise of the profession to
which he was an honour, he sent to my lodgings the old family Bible,
which lay always on my father's table, two or three other mouldy
volumes, and a couple of sheepskin bags full of parchments and papers,
whose appearance was by no means inviting.

The next time I shared Mr. Fairscribe's hospitable dinner, I failed not
to return him due thanks for his kindness, which acknowledgment, indeed,
I proportioned rather to the idea which I knew he entertained of the
value of such things, than to the interest with which I myself
regarded them. But the conversation turning on my family, who were old
proprietors in the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, gradually excited some
interest in my mind and when I retired to my solitary parlour, the first
thing I did was to look for a pedigree or sort of history of the family
or House of Croftangry, once of that Ilk, latterly of Glentanner. The
discoveries which I made shall enrich the next chapter.

CHAPTER II. IN WHICH MR. CROFTANGRY CONTINUES HIS STORY.

"What's property, dear Swift? I see it alter
From you to me, from me to Peter Walter."

"Croftangry--Croftandrew--Croftanridge--Croftandgrey for sa mony wise
hath the name been spellit--is weel known to be ane house of grit
antiquity; and it is said that King Milcolumb, or Malcolm, being the
first of our Scottish princes quha removit across the Firth of Forth,
did reside and occupy ane palace at Edinburgh, and ha