e, he, Godfrey Bertram of Ellangowan, was
not upon his Majesty's commission of the peace for the county. Jealousy
had kept him off--among other things the ill-will of the sitting member.
Besides which--after all a gentleman must have his cognac, and his lady
her tea and silks. Only smuggled articles came into the country. It was
a pity, of course, but he was not more to blame than others.

Thus the Laird maundered on, and Mannering, glad to escape being asked
about the doubtful fortune which the stars had predicted for the young
heir, did not interrupt him. On the next day, however, before he mounted
his horse, he put the written horoscope into a sealed envelope, and,
having strictly charged Bertram that it should not be opened till his
son reached the age of five years, he took his departure with many
expressions of regret.

The next five years were outwardly prosperous ones for Godfrey Bertram
of Ellangowan. As the result of an election where he had been of much
service to the winning candidate, he was again made a Justice of the
Peace, and immediately he set about proving to his brothers of the bench
that he could be both a determined and an active magistrate. But this
apparent good, brought as usual much of evil with it. Many old kindly
customs and courtesies had endeared Godfrey Bertram to his poorer
neighbours. He was, they said, no man's enemy, and even the gipsies of
the little settlement would have cut off their right hands before they
touched a pennyworth belonging to the Laird, their patron and protector.
But the other landlords twitted him with pretending to be an active
magistrate, and yet harbouring a gang of gipsies at his own door-cheek.
Whereupon the Laird went slowly and somewhat sadly home, revolving
schemes for getting rid of the colony of Derncleugh, at the head of
which was the old witch-wife Meg Merrilies.

Occasions of quarrel were easy to find. The sloe-eyed gipsy children
swinging on his gates were whipped down. The rough-coated donkeys
forbidden to eat their bite of grass in peace by the roadside. The men
were imprisoned for poaching, and matters went so far that one stout
young fellow was handed over to the press-gang at Dumfries and sent to
foreign parts to serve on board a man-of-war.

The gipsies, on their side, robbed the Ellangowan hen-roosts, stole the
linen from my lady's bleaching-green, cut down and barked the young
trees--though all the while scarce believing that their ancient f