eanour of those
coming out, my grandfather said to me with his hand on my shoulder, "I
fear, Duncan lad, we shall sleep in Dumfries Tolbooth this night for
making so bauld with one of a house like this!"

And from this moment I began to regard our captive Mr. Poole with a far
greater respect, in spite of his pistols--which, after all, he might
deem necessary when travelling into such a wild smuggling region as, at
that day and date, most townsbodies pictured our Galloway to be.

We had a long time to wait in a kind of antechamber, where a man in a
livery of canary and black stripes, with black satin knee-breeches and
paste buckles to his shoes took our names, or at least my grandfather's
and the name of the estate about which we wanted to speak to the firm.

For, you see, there being so many to attend to on market day, they had
parted them among themselves, so many to each. And when it came to our
turn it was old Mr. Smart we saw. The grand man in canary and black
ushered us ben, told our name, adding, "of Marnhoul estate," as if we
had been the owners thereof.

We had looked to see a fine, noble-appearing man sitting on a kind of
throne, receiving homage, but there was nobody in the room but an old
man in a dressing-gown and soft felt slippers, stirring the
fire--though, indeed, it was hot enough outside.

He turned towards us, the poker still in his hand, and with an eye like
a gimlet seemed to take us in at a single glance.

"What's wrong? What's wrong the day?" he cried in an odd sing-song;
"what news of the Holy Smugglers? More battle, murder, and sudden death
along the Solway shore?"

I had never seen my grandfather so visibly perturbed before. He actually
stammered in trying to open out his business--which, now I come to think
of it, was indeed of the delicatest.

"I have," he began, "the honour of speaking to Mr. Smart the elder?"

"It is an honour you share with every Moffat Tam that wants a new roof
to his pigstye," grumbled the old man in the dressing-gown, "but such as
it is, say on. My time is short! If ye want mainners ye must go next
door!"

"Mr. Smart," said my grandfather, "I have come all the way from the
house of Heathknowes on the estate of Marnhoul to announce to you a
misfortune."

"What?" cried the old fellow in the blanket dressing-gown briskly, "has
the dead come to life again, or is Lalor Maitland turned honest?"

But my grandfather shook his head, and with a lamentable voice open