ct. It was the laird. They lifted their caps, but
in return he only stared, or rather tried to stare, for his eyes
seemed able to fix themselves on nothing. He was now at length a
thoroughly ruined man, and had come to the city to end his days in a
cottage belonging to his daughter. Already Mr. Sclater, who was
unweariedly on the watch over the material interests of his ward,
had, through his lawyer, and without permitting his name to appear,
purchased the whole of the Glashruach property. For the present,
however, he kept Sir Gilbert in ignorance of the fact.

CHAPTER L

A WALK.

The cottage to which Mr. Galbraith had taken Ginevra, stood in a
suburban street--one of those small, well-built stone houses common,
I fancy, throughout Scotland, with three rooms and a kitchen on its
one floor, and a large attic with dormer windows. It was low and
wide-roofed, and had a tiny garden between it and the quiet street.
This garden was full of flowers in summer and autumn, but the tops
of a few gaunt stems of hollyhocks, and the wiry straggling creepers
of the honeysuckle about the eaves, was all that now showed from the
pavement. It had a dwarf wall of granite, with an iron railing on
the top, through which, in the season, its glorious colours used to
attract many eyes, but Mr. Galbraith had had the railing and the
gate lined to the very spikes with boards: the first day of his
abode he had discovered that the passers-by--not to say those who
stood to stare admiringly at the flowers, came much too near his
faded but none the less conscious dignity. He had also put a lock
on the gate, and so made of the garden a sort of propylon to the
house. For he had of late developed a tendency towards taking to
earth, like the creatures that seem to have been created ashamed of
themselves, and are always burrowing. But it was not that the late
laird was ashamed of himself in any proper sense. Of the dishonesty
of his doings he was as yet scarcely half conscious, for the proud
man shrinks from repentance, regarding it as disgrace. To wash is
to acknowledge the need of washing. He avoided the eyes of men for
the mean reason that he could no longer appear in dignity as laird
of Glashruach and chairman of a grand company; while he felt as if
something must have gone wrong with the laws of nature that it had
become possible for Thomas Galbraith, of Glashruach, Esq., to live
in a dumpy cottage. He had thought seriously of r