Morlan, the lawyer in charge
of the sale, defeated his intentions, so that Ellangowan became the
property of the traitor. So young Lucy Bertram and Dominie Sampson (who
refused to be separated from her) became for the moment inmates of Mr.
Mac-Morlan's house. The Dominie found a pupil or two in the
neighbourhood that he might not be chargeable to his dear Lucy or her
friend Mr. Mac-Morlan. And so, in the twenty-first year after the birth
of an heir, and after Mannering's prophecy concerning him, there seemed
an end to the ancient house of the Bertrams of Ellangowan.

During these years, Colonel Mannering also had a tale to tell. Wedded
early to the wife of his youth and his heart, he had gone to India in
the service of the Honourable, the East India Company. There by his
valour and talent he had rapidly acquired both wealth and position. But
during the twenty-first year an event occurred which gave him a distaste
for the land of his adoption, and he had come back to his native country
with the idea of settling down, far away from old memories and new
entanglements.

In a duel which he had fought in India with a young man named Brown--a
brave youth of no position, who had offended Mannering by his attentions
to his daughter, and by establishing himself in his house as a friend of
the family--he had left Brown for dead on the field, hardly escaping
himself with his life from a sudden attack of the armed banditti who, in
the India of that day, were always hovering round desert places. The
shock of that morning had so told on the health of Mannering's wife that
she died shortly afterwards, leaving him with one daughter, Julia--a
proud, sprightly, sentimental girl, whom he had brought home, and placed
under the care of a friend named Mervyn, whose house stood upon one of
the Cumberland lakes.

So it came about that when Mannering was in Scotland, he received a
letter from his friend which took him to Mervyn Hall as fast as
horse-flesh could carry him.

His friend wrote, as he was careful to say, without his wife's
knowledge. Mr. Mervyn told Colonel Mannering that he was certain that
his daughter Julia was receiving secret visits from some one whom she
did not dare to see openly. Not only were there long solitary walks and
hill-climbings, but on several occasions he had heard up the lake at
midnight, as if under her windows, a flageolet playing a little Indian
air to which Julia Mannering was partial. This was evidently a