ad,
hoping this might bring her to confession. But the news had quite an
opposite effect.

"Dead!" cried Elspeth, aroused as ever by the sound of her mistress's
name, "then, if she be gone before, the servant must follow. All must
ride when she is in the saddle. Bring my scarf and hood! Ye wadna hae me
gang in the carriage with my lady, and my hair all abroad in this
fashion!"

She raised her withered arms, and her hands seemed busied like those of
a woman who puts on a cloak to go a journey.

"Call Miss Neville," she continued; "what do you mean by Lady Geraldin?
I said Eveline Neville. There's no Lady Geraldin. But tell her to change
her wet gown and not to look so pale. Bairn--what should she do wi' a
bairn? She has nane, I trow! Teresa--Teresa--my lady calls us! Bring a
candle! The grand staircase is as black before me as a Yule midnight!
Coming, my lady, we are coming!"

With these words, and as if following in the train of her mistress, old
Elspeth, once of the Craigburnfoot, sunk back on the settle, and from
thence sidelong to the floor.

III. THE HEIR OF GLENALLAN

Meanwhile doom was coming fast upon poor Sir Arthur Wardour. He seemed
to be utterly ruined. The treachery of Dousterswivel, the pressing and
extortionate demands of a firm called Goldiebirds, who held a claim over
his estate, the time-serving of his own lawyers, at last brought the
officers of the law down upon him. He found himself arrested for debt in
his own house. He was about to be sent to prison, when Edie Ochiltree,
who in his day had been deep in many plots, begged that he might be
allowed to drive over to Tannanburgh, and promised that he would
certainly bring back some good news from the post-office there.

It was all that Oldbuck, with his best tact and wisdom, could do to keep
Hector MacIntyre from assaulting the officers of the law during the
absence of Edie. Two long hours they waited. The carriage had already
been ordered round to the door to convey Sir Arthur to prison. Miss
Wardour was in agony, her father desperate with shame and grief, when
Edie arrived triumphantly grasping a packet. He delivered it forthwith
to the Antiquary. For Sir Arthur, knowing his own weakness, had put
himself unreservedly into the hands of his abler friend. The packet,
being opened, was found to contain a writ stopping the proceedings, a
letter of apology from the lawyers who had been most troublesome, and a
note from Captain Wardour, Sir Arthur