ence of a nearer heir could be established.
But the door of the court opened, and Lady Maitland and Louise Grecourt
stood before the inquest. They swore to the birth of the child on the
day mentioned, and that Jessie Maitland, who was presented to them in
court by Geordie Willison himself, was that child.

An objection was taken by Brodie's agents, that the child was
illegitimate, because it was born ten months, minus two days, after Sir
Marmaduke went to the continent; but the judge overruled the objection,
stating that it was the law of Scotland, that every child born within
ten months of the husband's departure, is a legal child.

Jessie Warriston was, therefore, served heir, according to the terms of
her brief. She went in her own carriage, in which sat Geordie Willison,
to take possession of her estates and titles. She was now Lady Jessie
Maitland of Castle Gower, and was soon afterwards united to William
Forbes, her old lover.

THE SNOW STORM OF 1825.

Our readers will recollect the dreadful snow storm that occurred in the
year 1825. Indeed, it is impossible that any one, who was above the
years of childhood at the time, can have forgot it, or can ever forget
it. It was the most tremendous with which this country has been visited
for a century. For nearly six weeks, and in some places for a much
longer period, every road, excepting those in the immediate vicinity of
large towns, was blocked up, and rendered impassable, by either horse
or foot; and one consequence was, that scores of travellers, of all
descriptions, were suddenly arrested in their several places of
temporary sojournment on the road, and held in durance during the whole
period of the storm, without the possibility of communicating with their
friends, or, in the case of mercantile travellers, with their employers.

It was a weary time, on the whole, to those who were thus laid under
embargo; but not without its pleasures either; for each house thus
situated, having perhaps a dozen strangers in it, from and going to
all parts of the kingdom, became a distinct and independent little
community, from which its local exclusion from the busy world had shut
out, also, for the time at any rate, much of its cares and troubles--a
philosophic spirit soon prevailing, after the first day or two's
confinement, to make the most of what could not be helped.

The writer of this sheet happened to be one of nine who were shut up in
the way alluded to, in