"Every mother is a judge who sentences the children for the sins of
the father."




CHAPTER I

I


It was not because life was not good enough that Ellen Melville was
crying as she sat by the window. The world, indeed, even so much of it
as could be seen from her window, was extravagantly beautiful. The
office of Mr. Mactavish James, Writer to the Signet, was in one of those
decent grey streets that lie high on the northward slope of Edinburgh
New Town, and Ellen was looking up the side-street that opened just
opposite and revealed, menacing as the rattle of spears, the black rock
and bastions of the Castle against the white beamless glare of the
southern sky. And it was the hour of the clear Edinburgh twilight, that
strange time when the world seems to have forgotten the sun though it
keeps its colour; it could still be seen that the moss between the
cobblestones was a wet bright green, and that a red autumn had been busy
with the wind-nipped trees, yet these things were not gay, but cold and
remote as brightness might be on the bed of a deep stream, fathoms
beneath the visitation of the sun. At this time all the town was
ghostly, and she loved it so. She took her mind by the arm and marched