supposed to be from the French _Bas, la le
loup_--"Lie still, the wolf is coming."

[B] The "dear deceiver" was said to have been her cousin, the Hon.
Alexander Erskine, brother to the earl of Mar. He came to a violent
death, although not in the manner suggested in the ballad. While
stationed at Dunglass Castle, engaged in collecting levies for the army
of the Covenanters, an angry page thrust a red-hot poker into the
powder-magazine, and blew him up with a number of others, so that there
was "never bone nor hyre seen of them again."

A LAW UNTO HERSELF.

CHAPTER I.

On a raw, cloudy afternoon in early spring a few years ago a
family-carriage was driven slowly down a lonely road in one of the
outlying suburbs of Philadelphia, stopping at last in front of an
apparently vacant house. This house was built of gray stone, and stood
back from the road, surrounded by a few sombre pines and much rank
shrubbery: shrubbery and trees, and the house itself, had long been
abandoned to decay.

"Heah am de place, sah," said the footman, opening the carriage-door.

An old gentleman in shabby clothes, embellished dramatically by a red
necktie, an empty sleeve pinned to his breast, sprang out briskly; a
lady followed, and stood beside him: then a younger man, his head
muffled in a close fur cap, a yellow shawl wrapped about his neck,
looked feebly out of the window. His face, which a pair of pale,
unkindled eyes had never lighted since he was born, had been incomplete
of meaning in his best days, and long illness had only emphasized its
weakness. He half rose, sat down again, stared uncertainly at the house,
yawned nervously, quite indifferent to the fact that the lady stood
waiting his pleasure. His money and his bodily sufferings--for he was
weighted heavily with both--were quite enough, in his view, to give him
the right to engross the common air and the service of other men and
women. Indeed, a certain indomitable conceit thrust itself into view in
his snub nose and retreating chin, which made it highly probable that if
he had been a stout day-laborer in the road yonder, he would have been
just as complacent as now, and have patronized his fellows in the ditch.

"Will you take my arm, William?" said the old man waiting in the road.
"This is the house."

"No. I have half a mind to drop the whole matter. Why should I drag out
the secrets of the grave? God knows, I shall find them out soon enough!"

"Just so. Precise