his offences by securing, through his influence with the Duke of Argyle, with whom he was in great favour, a certain farm which the M'Dougals had made some strenuous efforts to obtain.

Soonart, again, or the Laird of Soonart, as he was called,-was also a neighbour, although not a very near one, his residence being about five miles distant from those of the M'Dougals and Kilmorans, which were within a quarter of a mile of each other.

Having mentioned these particulars, we proceed with our tale. Agreeably to the resolution which he had expressed to his brother, Norman, shortly after the conversation with the former which we recorded at the outset of our story, mounted his horse, and set off for Soonart; the merry-making to which he had been invited, and to which we formerly alluded, being to take place on the afternoon of the day on which our tale opens.

Soonart, or Castle Soonart, as it was sometimes called, although scarcely deserving so dignified a title, was an ancient building in the style of the sixteenth century, turreted and battlemented, with steep grey roofs and deeply-indented ledges. It stood on the summit of a rugged, precipitous cliff, whose base was washed by the sea; its white-crested waves, in stormy weather, howling around, and leaping upon the majestic rock, like a flock of hungry wolves. On the land side, however, the house was of easy access, being connected with the main land by a broad natural mound or isthmus. In ancient times, this neck of land was intersected by a deep moat at a short distance from the building; but it had been allowed to fill up, and was at the time of which we write but just discernible by faint outlines.

The greater number of the party invited to Soonart had already arrived, when Norman M'Dougal presented himself in the large dining-hall of the mansion; and amongst those assembled there was Kilmoran. On Norman's entrance, the latter, who was a good-natured, kind-hearted man, and who had always anxiously desired to be at peace with his neighbours the M'Dougals, instantly made up to him, and offered him the hand of friendship. "It was readily accepted by his treacherous enemy, and apparently with as much cordiality as it was given. The ready but quiet smile of Norman replied to the half-jocular, half-serious remonstrances of Kilmoran on the subject of their ancient enmity; and a significant shrug of the shoulders, accompanied by words of kindness, expressed-or were meant to express-his perfect willingness to entertain Kilmoran's proposal that they should forget the past, and live in friendship for the future.

Soon after, the guests having all assembled, the party sat down to table, to partake of the good things provided for them by their host. Leaving them thus agreeably employed, we shall return for a time to the residence of the M‘Dougals, and take up the part about to be enacted by Hector in the tragical drama of the evening. Brooding over the grudge he bore Kilmoran, and which had been stirred into fresh activity by the incident of their common invitation to Soonart, and in part also by the late conversation he had had with his brother on the subject, Hector M'Dougal was suddenly struck with one of those atrocious ideas that so frequently present themselves to desperate and revengeful men, and fill the world with crime. He determined on that very night to waylay and murder Kilmoran on his return from Soonart, which he calculated would be somewhere about midnight. Having come to this hellish resolution, he armed himself with his rifle-with which he was an unerring shot, as the deer of his native mountains knew by fatal experience, and hasted away to seek a favourable situation for executing the dreadful deed he contemplated.

Stealing secretly out of the house, and afterwards taking a quiet and circuitous route, he made for a certain copse on the face of a rising ground, that overlooked the road by which Kilmoran must return home; this road iying between the rising ground alluded to and a beautiful lake that slept in the hollow of the hills. Entering the copse, M'Dougal pushed through it until he reached the skirt nearest the way by which Kilmoran would pass, and which brought him to within fifty or sixty yards of it. Here con

cealing himself amongst the thick underwood, and with a paling in front on which to lean his rifle, M'Dougal awaited the appearance of his victim. It was a bright moonlight night, and as the horse Kilmoran always rode was a very light grey, approaching almost to white, and in this respect somewhat remarkable, there would be no difficulty in at once recognising him.

Leaving the assassin thus watching for his prey, we shall return to Soonart, to see how the evening was passing with the festive party there assembled. It was passing pleasantly: the banquetroom of the old mansion rung with the burst of hilarious merriment which the facetious jest and humorous song were ever and anon eliciting, and the wine-flagon was pacing it merrily round the festal board.

The time came, however, when the jest and the song were heard more rarely, and when the wine-flagon began to make its rounds with a more tardy motion. It was getting late; the spirits of the party were flagging, and a general movement amongst the guests to break up the party was the result. It did break up; when, hurrying out of the apartment in merry and somewhat obstreperous confusion, the guests sought the stables for their horses, all of them having come from a distance. Kilmoran was amongst the party who sallied out in quest of their steeds, but it was merely to see his friends mounted he accompanied them, as he had been prevailed upon by his host to remain with him all night, in order to join him in a hunting-party which had been made up for an early hour of the following morning. This was altogether an unexpected circumstance on the part of Kilmoran, who had originally intended to return home that night.

On the party reaching the stable, it was found that Norman M'Dougal's horse was dead lame in two of his legs, and consequently unable to walk a single step. How this had happened could not be at the moment ascertained; some sinews strained, it was supposed, or some injury sustained in the feet. But whatever might be wrong with the animal, or in whatever way he might have come by his injuries, it was clear he was quite unable to carry his master home that night. Seeing this, Kilmoran, in the same spirit in which he had made up to M'Dougal on his first arrival at Soonart, pressed him to take the use of his horse; adding, goodhumouredly, that if he did not think he could presume to take a horse of his to his father's house, seeing the ancient enmity that was between them, he might ride him to Kilmoran, leave him there, and walk home, a distance of only about half a mile.

M'Dougal would have refused to accept the proffered kindness; but, besides his own wish to deceive Kilmoran with regard to his feelings towards him, there were too many witnesses present for him to feel safe in exhibiting any, the slightest, symptom of the dislike he bore that person; and his rejection of his offered civility on the present occasion, he feared, might be looked upon in that light, and be remembered afterwards if anything should happen to Kilmoran. Reasoning thus, and reasoning as quick as thought, M'Dougal, with many expressions of thanks, accepted the offer of Kilmoran's horse, mounted him, and rode off. Fifteen minutes' smart riding brought him to the margin of the lake formerly alluded to; a few minutes more saw him enter on and proceed along the road that skirted it.

Unconscious of peril, M'Dougal rode on, and had attained somewhere about half the length of the lake, when the sharp report of a rifle rung in the copse, and in the same instant Norman M'Dougal fell from his horse a dead man-a rifle-ball having passed right through his head. Deceived by the horse he rode, his brother had directed against him that shot which he intended for Kilmoran.

Unaware of the dreadful mistake he had committed, M'Dougal hastened home, and, unperceived by any one, entered the house and retired to bed. Morning came, and with it much surprise to the midnight assassin that his brother had not returned. Leaving his couch, on which he had spent but a restless night, he approached the window of his bedchamber to look abroad on the morning. He had not done so for many seconds, when he saw a

crowd of people slowly approaching the house, and bearing along what appeared to be a heavy burden. In a few minutes he made out that it was a human body they were carrying, and, not doubting that it was the corpse of Kilmoran, he summoned his utmost resolution to meet the report of that gentleman's murder with as unmoved and unconscious a manner as possible. But why bring the body of the murdered man to his house? Why not take it to Kilmoran? The proceeding confounded him, and filled his guilty bosom with a thousand indefinable terrors. In the mean time, the persons bearing the corpse approached; they passed beneath the window at which M'Dougal was standing, and in the livid and ghastly upturned face of the murdered man he recognised the face of his brother. Suspicions of the dreadful truth flashed across his mind, and he sank into a chair, powerless and all but insensible.

In a few minutes, one of the men who had brought the body home entered his apartment, and with a sorrowful countenanceand not aware that he had seen the body pass-informed him that his brother had been killed.

"How?" said M'Dougal in a sepulchral voice. "Shot through the head," replied the man.

nineteen at his father's death, after which event he retired to Holland, where he continued till he returned with the Prince of Orange at the Revolution.

Lady Grissel Baillie, the eldest daughter of Sir Patrick Home of Polwarth, afterwards Earl of Marchmont, was born at Redbraes Castle on the 25th of December, 1665. Her early trials, and admirable bearing under them, have thrown a romantic cast over a character in which so much of strength and gentleness were combined; and the beautiful sketch given of her career in the "Metrical Legends" of Joanna Baillie, who, we believe, claims kindred with her heroine, rendered her merits more generally and highly estimated. Lady Grissel's daughter, Lady Murray of Stanhope, left behind her in manuscript a memoir of her mother, which, although one of the most beautiful memorials ever raised by a child to the virtues of a parent, was not published entire until the year 1822. It is to this work that we are indebted for our materials.

Sir Patrick Home, who possessed the same principles with Baillie, lived in the strictest friendship with him, and was exposed to the same dangers, although, more happy than his friend, he was enabled to surmount them. "In the troubles of King Charles

44

man.

All that day M'Dougal kept his apartment, and would neither himself come forth, nor would he allow any one to enter. When the morning came, he was missing; he had disappeared through the night, and none could then, or ever after, tell whither he had gone. It was supposed by some that he had thrown himself into the lake; by others, that he had left the country and gone abroad: this last rumour being followed up by a report, some years after, that he had fallen in the American war--it was said, in the battle of Bunker's Hill.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.

LADY GRISSEL BAILLIE.

THE name of Robert Baillie, of Jerviswood, is familiar as that of one of the victims of the unjustifiable measures pursued by the government of Charles II. in the persecution of all who were suspected of offering opposition to their schemes for establishing arbitrary power.

Baillie, who had long been a marked man as a stanch friend of civil liberty and the Protestant cause, had more than once suffered imprisonment on account of his opinions, when he and two other gentlemen were sent up to London by the Scottish malcontents to concert measures with Monmouth, Russell, Sidney, and the other English leaders implicated in what is called the Rye-house plot, for a simultaneous rising in the North, to support the proposed insurrection in London and other places in England. When the conspiracy was discovered, Baillie was immediately seized and sent to Scotland, although not a tittle of evidence could be found against him; and on his refusing to answer, on oath, any questions the Privy Council might please to propound, a fine of six thousand pounds was imposed upon him, and he was kept in such a cruel confinement in the prison on the Bass rock and elsewhere, that his health was utterly broken; and when at length, by the examination of other prisoners under torture, evidence of the share he had taken in the conspiracy was procured, and sentence pronounced upon him, he was in so weak a condition that the judges ordered it to be carried into execution the same day, lest their victim should escape them. Yet even this was not the limit of their vindictive fury; for, with unexampled barbarity, his two sons were compelled to be present on the scaffold, and even placed so near the block that their clothes were covered with the blood of the father.

The eldest of these sons, George, who afterwards became the husband of Lady Grissel, the subject of this sketch, was only

twelve she was sent by her father from their country-house to Edinburgh, a long journey, when Mr. Baillie was first imprisoned, to try if, by her age, she could get admittance into the prison unsuspected, and slip a letter into his hand, of advice and information, and bring back what intelligence she could. She succeeded so well in both, that from that time I reckon her hardships began, from the confidence that was put in her, and the activity she naturally had far beyond her age, in executing whatever she was entrusted with.

"After the persecution began afresh, and Mr. Baillie again in prison, her father thought it necessary to keep concealed; and soon found he had too good reason for so doing, parties being continually sent out in search of him, and often to his own house, to the terror of all in it, though not from any fear for his safety, whom they imagined at a great distance from home; for no soul knew where he was but my grandmother and my mother, except one man, a carpenter called Jamie Winter, who used to work in the house, and lived a mile off, on whose fidelity they thought they could depend, and were not deceived. The frequent examination and oaths put to servants, in order to make discoveries, were so strict, they durst not run the risk by trusting any of them. By the assistance of this man, they got a bed and bed-clothes carried in the night to the burying-place—a vault under ground at Polwarth Church, a mile from the house-where he was concealed for a month, and had only for light an open slit at one end, through which nobody could see what was below. She went every night at midnight to carry him victuals and drink, and stayed with him as long as she could to get home before day. In all this time my grandfather showed the same constant composure and cheerfulness of mind that he continued to possess to his death, which was at the age of eighty-four; all which good qualities she inherited from him in a high degree. Often did they laugh heartily in that doleful habitation at different accidents that happened. She at that time had a terror for a church-yard, especially in the dark, as is not uncommon at her age, by idle nursery stories; but when engaged by concern for her father, she stumbled over the graves every night alone, without fear of any kind entering her thoughts but for soldiers and parties in search of him, which the least noise or motion of a leaf put her in terror for. The minister's house was near the church; the first night she went, his dogs kept such a barking as put her in the utmost fear of a discovery; my grandmother sent for the minister next day, and upon pretence of a mad dog, got him to hang up all his dogs. There was also difficulty of getting victuals to carry him without the servants suspecting. The only way it was done was by stealing it off her plate at dinner into

their manner of living there, without thinking it a miracle: they had no want, but plenty of everything they desired, and much contentment, and always declared it the most pleasing part of her life; though they were not without their little distresses-but to them they were rather jokes than grievances.

At length the Revolution put an end to their exile, and all the party returned to their native land, except Christian, who died within a short time of their departure. "I have," says Lady Murray in relating this melancholy event, "heard my mother say, she had no notion of any other cause of sorrow, but the death and affliction of those she loved; and of that she was sensible to her last, in the most tender manner. She had tried many hardships without being depressed by them; on the contrary, her spirits and activity increased the more she had occasion for it; but the death of her friends was always a load too heavy for her. She had strong and tender passions, though she never gave way to them but in what was commendable and praiseworthy."

Two years after their return home, when both Mr. Baillie and Sir Patrick Home had recovered their estates, and were both in honourable employments, the former in Parliament, the latter as Chancellor of Scotland, the lovers were "made happy;" and never was the phrase more justly applied to a marriage, for her daughter "often heard her declare, that they never had a shadow of a quarrel or misunderstanding-no, not for a moment, and that to the last of his life, she felt the same ardent and tender love and affection for him, and the same desire to please him in the smallest trifle, that she had at their first acquaintance. Indeed, her principal and sole delight was, to watch and attend to everything that could give him pleasure or make him easy. He never went abroad but she went to the window to look after him; and so she did the very day he fell ill, the last time he went abroad, never taking her eyes from him as long as he was in sight;" a beautiful picture of true love flourishing greenly after a union of forty-eight years'

duration.

What the conduct of such a woman as we have described Lady Grissel Baillie was towards her children, may be easily imagined; nor is it surprising that they loved and reverenced such a mother. After the death of her son-in-law, Lord Binning, who married her

younger daughter, her maternal cares were extended to his children, whose education she sedulously superintended. Nor were the talents for business so early displayed suffered to lie idle. Besides her household cares, to which, however occupied by other affairs, she always paid watchful attention, she was often called upon to assist her husband in the management of his business; and such was the reliance he had upon her judgment, that he seldom did anything without consulting her. Her amazing energy and activity enabled her to perform all her labours with such apparent ease as to asto"She went to Scotland every second nish those who beheld her.

year to see her father, and when he wanted assistance in his old age, and could not take the trouble of looking after his own affairs, she looked into and settled his steward's accounts; once at Kimmerghame, with a trouble and fatigue incredible, for two months, from five in the morning till twelve at night, that she scarce allowed herself time to eat or sleep, settling and taking them from one that had long had the charge of the business, till she half killed the whole family by attending her, though they kept not the hours

she did."

When her son-in-law Lord Binning fell ill, he was advised to try the air of Italy; and his father-in-law and his whole family accompanied him to Naples. On their way they passed through Utrecht, When Lady Grissel came there, says her daughter, she had the greatest pleasure in showing us every corner of the town, which seemed fresh in her memory, particularly the house she had lived in, which she had a great desire to see; but when she came there, they would not let her in, by no arguments either of words or money, for no reason but for fear of dirtying it. She offered to put off her shoes, but nothing could prevail, and she came away much mortified at her disappointment.

quickness of capacity and apprehension at any age, much more at hers. She knew not one word of Italian, and had servants of the country that as little understood one word she said; so that at first she was forced to call me to interpret betwixt them; but in a very little while, with only the help of a grammar and dictionary, she did the whole business of her family with her Italian servants_ went to shops, bought everything she had occasion for, and did it so well, that our acquaintances who had lived many years there, begged the favour of her to buy for them when she provided herself; thinking, and often saying, she did it to much better purpose than they could themselves."

The death of her husband, which happened in 1738, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, afflicted her deeply. "It threw her into a dangerous fit of illness; which with joy she would have allowed herself to sink under, had she not thought her life was still necessary for the happiness of her family." She often expressed her firm conviction that she and her husband should meet and know each other again in another world, and said that without that belief she could not support herself. Her expressions of grief for his loss throughout the remainder of her life, were frequent and most affecting. One day, visiting the family-house in Scotland, looking round and admiring the beauties of the place, she checked herself, burst out in tears, and said, "What is all this to me, since your father does not see and enjoy it!"

She survived him rather more than eight years, which were chiefly occupied in the care of her grandsons, the children of Lord Binning, and died in London, after an illness of a few days, on the 6th of December 1746, having nearly completed her eighty-first year. She expressed a wish to be buried by her husband at Mellerstein, and, thoughtful to the last, told her daughter that in a black silk purse in her cabinet, she would find money sufficient to do it, which she had kept by her for that use, that whenever it She added, "I have now no happened it might not straiten us. more to say or do ;" tenderly embraced her daughter; laid down her head upon the pillow, and spoke little after that. Her wishes were complied with, and she was buried at Mellerstein on her birthday, the 25th of December.

We have been obliged, by the limits of our sketch, to leave out numberless little touches which fill up the outline of the picture drawn by Lady Grissel's daughter. But we have preserved sufficient to render any laboured panegyric unnecessary; and we leave her character for the reader's judgment and imitation.