when I tell you that
there--under my nose--were a dozen apples of a sort which grows
nowhere within twenty miles of Ardlaugh but in my own Manse garden.
The tree was a new one, obtained from Herefordshire, and planted
three seasons before as an experiment. I had watched it, therefore,
particularly; and on that very morning had counted the fruit, and been
dismayed to find twelve apples missing. Further, I am a pretty good
judge of wine (though I taste it rarely), and could there and then
have taken my oath that the claret our host set before us was the very
wine I had tasted at the table of his neighbour Mr. Gillespie. As for
the venison--I had already heard whispers that deer and all game were
not safe within a mile or two of Ardlaugh. These were injurious tales,
sir, which I had no mind to believe; for, bating his religion, I saw
everything in Mr. Mackenzie which disposed me to like him. But I knew
(as neighbours must) of the shortness of his purse; and the multiplied
evidence (particularly my own Goodrich pippins staring me in the face)
overwhelmed me for a moment.

"So then, I listened to this woman's tale with more patience--or,
let me say, more curiosity--than you, sir, might have given it. She
persisted, I say, that her master was in trouble; and that the trouble
had something to do with a game of cards, but that Mr. Mackenzie had
been innocent of deceit, and the real culprit was this spirit I tell
of--"

Here the woman herself broke in upon Mr. Saul. "He had nae
conscience--he had nae conscience. He was just a poor luck-child, born
by mischance and put away without baptism. He had nae conscience. How
should he?"

I looked from her to Mr. Saul in perplexity.

"Whist!" said he; "we'll talk of that anon."

"We will not," said she. "We will talk of it now. He was my own child,
sir, by the young Laird's own father. That was before he was married
upon the wife he took later--"

Here Mr. Saul nudged me, and whispered: "The old Laird--had her
married to that daunderin' old half-wit Duncan, to cover things up.
This part of the tale is true enough, to my knowledge."

"My bairn was overlaid, sir," the woman went on; "not by purpose,
I will swear before you and God. They buried his poor body without
baptism; but not his poor soul. Only when the young Laird came, and
my own bairn clave to him as Mackenzie to Mackenzie, and wrought and
hunted and mended for him--it was not to be thought that the poor
innocent, withou