more continuity, his eye straying ever and again to the chimney,
and his voice changing to another key, but without check of delivery.
The pane, however, was not replaced; and I believe he counted it a great
defeat.

Whether he was stout enough or no, God knows he was kind enough. Mrs.
Henry had a manner of condescension with him, such as (in a wife) would
have pricked my vanity into an ulcer; he took it like a favour. She held
him at the staff's end; forgot and then remembered and unbent to him, as
we do to children; burthened him with cold kindness; reproved him with a
change of colour and a bitten lip, like one shamed by his disgrace:
ordered him with a look of the eye when she was off her guard; when she
was on the watch, pleaded with him for the most natural attentions, as
though they were unheard-of favours. And to all this he replied with the
most unwearied service; loving, as folk say, the very ground she trod
on, and carrying that love in his eyes as bright as a lamp. When Miss
Katharine was to be born, nothing would serve but he must stay in the
room behind the head of the bed. There he sat, as white (they tell me)
as a sheet, and the sweat dropping from his brow; and the handkerchief
he had in his hand was crushed into a little ball no bigger than a
musket-bullet. Nor could he bear the sight of Miss Katharine for many a
day; indeed, I doubt if he was ever what he should have been to my young
lady; for the which want of natural feeling he was loudly blamed.

Such was the state of this family down to the 7th April 1749, when there
befell the first of that series of events which were to break so many
hearts and lose so many lives.

* * * * *

On that day I was sitting in my room a little before supper, when John
Paul burst open the door with no civility of knocking, and told me there
was one below that wished to speak with the steward; sneering at the
name of my office.

I asked what manner of man, and what his name was; and this disclosed
the cause of John's ill-humour; for it appeared the visitor refused to
name himself except to me, a sore affront to the major-domo's
consequence.

"Well," said I, smiling a little, "I will see what he wants."

I found in the entrance-hall a big man, very plainly habited, and
wrapped in a sea-cloak, like one new landed, as indeed he was. Not far
off Macconochie was standing, with his tongue out of his mouth and his
hand upon his chin, lik