"Wonderful enough surely," repeated he, "_if true_"--the latter words
being pronounced with emphasis which made the rough liquid letter sound
like a hurling stone; "but," he continued, "the whole document, in its
terms of crimination and exposure, and not less the wild manner of its
application, is so unlike the act of a man not absolutely frantic, that
I cannot believe it to be genuine."

"But you know, Mr. Dallas," replied she, "that Mr. John Napier was a man
who, if he threw a stone, cared little whether it struck the kirk window
or the mill door."

"That is so far true; but, passionate and unforgiving as he was, he was
not so reckless as to be regardless whether the stone did not come back
on his own head."

"And it's no genuine!" she resumed, as, disregarding his latter words,
she relapsed into her more familiar dialect. "The Lord help ye! canna ye
look at first the ae paper and then the ither? and if they're no alike,
mustna the ither be the forgery?"

An example of the conditional syllogism which might have amused even a
writer to the signet, if he had not been at the very moment busy in the
examination of the handwriting of the funeral letter and that of the
paper of repudiation and malison--the resemblance, or rather the
identity of which was so striking, as to reduce all his theories to
confusion.

"By all that's good in heaven, the same," he muttered to himself; and
then addressing his visitor, "I confess, Mrs. Hislop," said he, "that
this paper has driven me somewhat off my point of confidence; but I