degraded brother. The lower classes, seeing nothing enviable in
his situation, marked his embarrassments with more compassion. He
was even a kind of favourite with them, and upon the division of a
common, or the holding of a black-fishing, or poaching court, or
any similar occasion, when they conceived themselves, oppressed by
the gentry, they were in the habit of saying to each other, "Ah, if
Ellangowan, honest man, had his ain that his forebears had afore
him, he wadna see the puir folk trodden down this gait." Meanwhile,
this general good opinion never prevented their taking the
advantage of him on all possible occasions, turning their cattle
into his parks, stealing his wood, shooting his game, and so forth,
"for the laird, honest man, he'll never find it,--he never minds
what a puir body does."--Pedlars, gipsies, tinkers, vagrants of all
descriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or harboured in his
kitchen; and the laird, who was "nae nice body," but a thorough
gossip, like most weak men, found recompense for his hospitality in
the pleasure of questioning them on the news of the country-side.

A circumstance arrested Ellangowan's progress on the high-road to
ruin. This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about
four thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive
why she married him, and endowed him with her wealth, unless
because he had a tall, handsome figure, a good set of features, a
genteel address, and the most perfect good-humour. It might be
some additional consideration, that she was herself at the
reflecting age of twenty-eight, and had no near relations to
control her actions or choice.

It was in this lady's behalf (confined for the first time after her
marriage) that the speedy and active express, mentioned by the old