Thoughtfully fingering the key which locked up the record of his
wealth, he walked to the window and looked out. It was a dreary
prospect of brown moor and gray sea, but Crawford loved it. The bare
land and the barren mountains was the country of the Crawfords. He had
a fixed idea that it always had been theirs, and whenever he told
himself--as he did this night--that so many acres of old Scotland were
actually his own, he was aggressively a Scotchman.

"It is a bonnie bit o' land," he murmured, "and I hae done as my
father Laird Archibald told me. If we should meet in another warld
I'll be able to gie a good account o' Crawford and Traquare. It is
thirty years to-night since he gave me the ring off his finger, and
said, 'Alexander, I am going the way o' all flesh; be a good man, and
_grip tight_.' I hae done as he bid me; there is £80,000 in the
Bank o' Scotland, and every mortgage lifted. I am vera weel pleased
wi' mysel' to-night. I hae been a good holder o' Crawford and
Traquare."

His self-complacent reflections were cut short by the entrance of his
daughter. She stood beside him, and laid her hand upon his arm with a
caressing gesture. No other living creature durst have taken that
liberty with him; but to Crawford his daughter Helen was a being apart
from common humanity. She was small, but very lovely, with something
almost Puritanical in her dainty, precise dress and carefully snooded
golden hair.

"Father!"

"Helen, my bird."