, a
solid stone bridge, with a pointed arch, was to lead across the burn
to a like landing in the new house--a close passage, with an oriel
window on each side, looking up and down the stream, and a steep
roof. And while these works were going on below, two masons, high
on the mountain, were adding to the cottage a warm bedroom for Janet
and Robert.

The architect was an honest man, and kept Gibbie's secret, so that,
although he was constantly about the place, nothing disturbed the
general belief that Glashruach had been bought, and was being made
habitable, by a certain magnate of the county adjoining.

CHAPTER LV.

TEN AULD HOOSE O' GALBRAITH.

One cold afternoon in the end of October, when Mistress Croale was
shutting up her shop in the market, and a tumbler of something hot
was haunting her imagination, Gibbie came walking up the long
gallery with the light hill-step which he never lost, and startled
her with a hand on her shoulder, making signs that she must come
with him. She made haste to lock her door, and they walked side by
side to the Widdiehill. As they crossed the end of it she cast a
look down Jink Lane, and thought of her altered condition with a
sigh. Then the memory of the awful time amongst the sailors, in
which poor Sambo's frightful death was ever prominent, came back
like a fog from hell. But so far gone were those times now, that,
seeing their events more as they really were, she looked upon them
with incredulous horror, as things in which she could hardly have
had any part or lot. Then returned her wanderings and homeless
miseries, when often a haystack or a heap of straw in a shed was her
only joy--whisky always excepted. Last of all came the dread
perils, the hairbreadth escapes of her too adventurous voyage on the
brander;--and after all these things, here she was, walking in peace
by the side of wee Sir Gibbie, a friend as strong now as he had
always been true! She asked herself, or some power within asked
her, whence came the troubles that had haunted her life. Why had
she been marked out for such misfortunes? Her conscience
answered--from her persistence in living by the sale of drink after
she had begun to feel it was wrong. Thence it was that she had
learned to drink, and that she was even now liable, if not to be
found drunk in the streets, yet to go to bed drunk as any of her
former customers. The cold crept into her bones; the air seemed
full of blue points and