and gleeful
laugh, in which she ever and anon gave way to the promptings of a lively
and playful imagination. Let it not, however, be thought that all this
apparent levity of manner was the result of an unthinking or uncalculating
mind, or that it was in her case, as it frequently is in others, associated
with qualities which exclude the finer and better feelings of female
nature. It was by no means so. With all her gaiety and sportiveness, she
had a heart filled with all the tenderest sensibilities of a woman. Her
attachments were warm and ardent. In character, simple and sincere, Rosy
could have died for those she loved; and so finely strung were the
sympathies of her nature, that they were wrought on at will by either mirth
or pathos, and with each were found equally to accord.

Rosy's father, Mr Adair, although holding a considerable extent of land,
and paying a very handsome rental, was yet by no means in affluent
circumstances. Both his name and his credit in the country were on a fair
footing, and he was not encumbered with more debt than he could very easily
pay. But this was all; there was no surplus--nothing to spare; and the
less, that he had been liberal in his expenditure on the education of his
daughters. On this he had grudged no cost; they had both passed several
winters in Glasgow, and had there possessed themselves of some of the more
elegant accomplishments in female education.

In character, Robert Adair was something of an original. In speech, blunt,
plain, and humorous; but in disposition, kind, sincere, and generous. He
was, in short, in all respects an excellent and worthy man. On the score of
education, he had not much to boast of; but this deficiency was, in part at
any rate, compensated by great natural shrewdness and vigour of mind.

Such, then, were the inmates of the farm-house of West Mains, at the period
to which our story refers, and which is somewhere about the year 1788.

It was at the close of a day of incessant rain, in the month of September
of that year, or it may, perhaps, have been of the year following, that a
young man, of somewhere about five-and-twenty years of age, respectably
dressed, with a stick in his hand, and a small leathern bundle under his
arm, presented himself at the door of Robert Adair's house, and knocked for
admittance. The door was opened by Robert himself; and when it was so, the
person whom we have described stood before him. He was drenched with wet.
It