re
despondency than hope, what he knows to be the bitter truth--the truth
that must be told, to the misery of those dear children.

Faint and weak though she appeared, Jeanie Mackie's waning life
spirited up for the occasion; her dim eye kindled; her feeble frame was
straight and strong; energy nerved her as she spoke; this hour is the
errand of her being.

Long she spoke, and loudly, in her broad Scotch way; and the general
objected many things, but was answered to them all; and there was close
cross-questioning, slow-caution, keen examination of documents and
letters: catechisms, solecisms, Scottisms; reminiscences rubbed up,
mistakes corrected; and the grand result of all, Emily a Stuart, and the
general not her father! I am only enabled to give a brief account of
that important colloquy.

It appears, that when Captain Tracy's company was quartered to the west
of the Gwalior, sent thither to guard the Begum Dowlia against sundry of
her disaffected subjects, a certain Lieutenant James Stuart was one
among those welcome brave allies. That our gallant Tracy was the
beautiful Begum's favourite soon became notorious to all; and not less
so, that the Begum herself was precisely in the same interesting
situation as Mrs. James Stuart. The two ladies, Pagan and Christian,
were, technically speaking, running a race together. Well, just as times
drew nigh, poor Lieutenant Stuart was unfortunately killed in an
insurrection headed by some fanatics, who disapproved of foreign
friends, and perhaps of their princess's situation. His death proved
fatal also to that kind and faithful wife of his--a dark Italian lady of
high family, whose love for James had led her to follow him even into
Central Hindoostan: she died in giving birth to a babe; and Jeanie
Mackie, the lieutenant's own foster-mother, who waited on his wife
through all their travels, assisted the poor orphan into this bleak
world, and loved it as her own.

Two days after all this, the Begum herself had need of Mrs. Mackie: for
it was prudent to conceal some things, if she could, from certain
Brahmins, who were to her what John Knox had erstwhile been to Mary: and
Jeanie Mackie, burdened with her little Amy Stuart, aided in the birth
of a female Tracy-Begum. So, the nurse tended both babes; and more than
once had marvelled at their general resemblance; Amy's mother looked out
again from those dark eyes; there was not a shade between the children.

Now, Mrs. Mackie per