shooting on the moor, and fishing in a lake which belonged to the
estate, and about twenty pounds a year which appertained to Mrs.
Margaret, from which it was supposed she had made some savings.

Shanty had succeeded in forcing the Laird to listen to the dictates of
prudence, and to act with sufficient caution, till it came to what he
called the dirty part of the work, to wit, the valuation of small
articles, and then was the blood of the Dymocks all up; nor would he
hear of requiring a bond for the payment of this last sum, such a
document, in fact, as should bind the purchaser down to payment without
dispute. He contented himself only with such a note from the old man as
ought he asserted to be quite sufficient, and it was utterly useless for
Shanty to expostulate. The Laird had got on his high horse and was
prancing and capering beyond all the controul of his honest friend,
whilst Mr. Salmon, no doubt, laughed in his sleeve, and only lamented
that he had not known Dymock better from the first, for in that case he
would have used his cunning to have obtained a better bargain of the
castle and lands. It was not one nor two visits to Hexham which
completed these arrangements; however Mr. Dymock, after the first
visit, no longer refused to permit Shanty to open out every thing to his
aunt, and to prepare her to descend into a cottage, on an income of
forty or fifty pounds a year.

Mrs. Margaret bore the information better than Shanty had expected; she
had long anticipated some such blow, and her piety enabled her to bear
it with cheerfulness. "I now," she said, "know the worst, and I see not
wherefore, though I am a Dymock, I should not be happy in a cottage, I
am only sorry for Tamar; poor Tamar! what will become of her?"

"Oh mother! dear mother!" said Tamar weeping, "why are you sorry for me,