as if it had been coiled up in her mind for all that length of time.

"There was a terrible stir in the house that night," she began. "The
nurse, wha is yet living in Lochend Close, and Mrs. Kemp the howdie, wha
is dead, were wi' my lady; and John Cowie, the butler, was busy
attending our master, who had been the haill day in ane o' his dark
fits, for we heard him calling for Cowie in a fierce voice ever and
again; and his step sounded ower our heads upon the floor as he walked
back and fore in his wrath. Then I was sent for you, and brought you,
and you'll mind how Cowie bade me go along; but I had mair sense, for I
listened at the door, and heard what the butler said to ye when he gied
ye the bairn; and think ye I didna see ye carry it along the passage as
ye left? Sae far I could understand; but when I heard nurse say the
bairn was dead, Mrs. Kemp say the bairn was still-born, and Cowie
declare it was better it was dead and awa, I couldna comprehend this
ava; nor do I weel yet; but we just thought that as there was something
wrang between master and my lady, he wanted us to believe that the bairn
was dead, for very shame o' being thought the father, when maybe he
wasna. And then he was so guid to me and my neighbour Anne Dickson,--ye
mind o' her--puir soul, she's dead too,--that we couldna, for the very
heart o' us, say a word o' what we knew. But now when Mr. Napier is
dead, and the brother o' that wicked Jezebel, Isbel Napier, may try to
take the property frae Henney, wha I aye kenned as a Napier, with the
very nose and een o' the father, I have spoken out; and may the Lord gie
the right to whom the right is due!"

"It's all right," said the writer, after he had jotted with a pencil the
evidence of Jean, as well as that of the nurse; "and if we could find
this John Cowie, we might so fortify the orphan's rights, as to defy
Miss Napier and her brother, and Mr. Dallas, and all the witnesses they