in particular. This, therefore,
excited no suspicion; but true it is, and of verity, these two similar and
affianced beings were cousins-german. Helen Graham, the sister of the Lord
of Middlefield having married beneath her rank, was abandoned by her
brother and family, and her name was never mentioned in Middlefield House.
An old servant, however, of the family had made the young heir master of
the fact of the marriage, and of the death of his old aunt; but he could
not tell what had become of the father or the child; he supposed that they
had either died or gone to the plantations abroad; and there the matter
rested till this sudden and unexpected discovery. Peter Palmer, the father
of Helen, was altogether unacquainted with William Graham, as he was a mere
child when Peter left Cumberland; and his father had used him so cruelly as
to make him avoid his residence and presence as carefully as possible.

Would to heaven we could stop here, and gratify the reader with a wedding,
and as much matrimonial happiness as poor mortality can possibly
inherit!--But it may not be. As Lockhart says beautifully of Sir Walter, we
hear "the sound of the muffled drum."

Sir Roger and all the friends of Mr William Graham were opposed to his
union with Miss Palmer, as Graham always called her. Her own father, too,
was opposed to her forming a connection with the son of one who had treated
him so cruelly, and, as he thought, unjustly--and it became manifest to
William, as he was in every sense of the word his own master, that had he
his fair betrothed in the leas of Middlefield, he might set them all at
defiance, and effect their union peaceably, according to the rules of the
church. In an evil hour, Helen consented to leave her father's house by
night, along with her William, and on horseback, to take their way across
the Border for Cumberland. They had reached the parish of Kirkconnel about
two o'clock in the morning, and were giving their horses a mouthful of
water in the little stream called Kirtle, when a shot was heard in the
immediate neighbourhood--it was heard, alas! by two only, for the third was
dying, and in the act of falling from her seat in the saddle. She was
caught by a servant, and by her lover; but she could only say--"I am
gone--I am gone!" before breathing her last. Oh, curse upon the hand that
fired the shot? It was, indeed, an accursed hand, but a fatal mistake. It
was one of the bloody persecutors of Lag's troop, wh