she had married. She and her husband had struggled and striven, but
to no seeming purpose; poverty had drawn its meshes closer and
closer around them. They had but one son, the present laird, and he
had succeeded to an estate yet smaller and more heavily encumbered.
To all appearance he must leave it to Cosmo, if indeed he left it,
in no better condition. From the growing fear of its final loss, he
loved the place more than any of his ancestors had loved it, and
his attachment to it had descended yet stronger to his son.

But although Cosmo the elder wrestled and fought against
encroaching poverty, and with little success, he had never forgot
small rights in anxiety to be rid of large claims. What man could
he did to keep his poverty from bearing hard on his dependents, and
never master or landlord was more beloved. Such being his character
and the condition of his affairs, it is not very surprising that he
should have passed middle age before thinking seriously of
marriage. Nor did he then fall in love, in the ordinary sense of
the phrase; he reflected with himself that it would be cowardice so
far to fear poverty as to run the boat of the Warlocks aground, and
leave the scrag end of a property and a history without a man to
take them up, and possibly bear them on to redemption; for who
could tell what life might be in the stock yet! Anyhow, it would be
better to leave an heir to take the remnant in charge, and at least
carry the name a generation farther, even should it be into yet
deeper poverty than hitherto. A Warlock could face his fate.
Thereupon, with a sense of the fitness of things not always
manifested on such occasions, he had paid his addresses to a woman
of five and thirty, the daughter of the last clergyman of the
parish, and had by her been accepted with little hesitation. She
was a capable and brave woman, and, fully informed of the state of