the poor lassie in yon dungeon!--but I needna bid your kind heart--gie
her what comfort ye can as soon as they will let ye see her--tell
her--But I maunna speak mair about her, for I maunna take leave o' ye
wi' the tear in my ee, for that wouldna be canny.--God bless ye, Reuben!"

To avoid so ill an omen she left the room hastily, while her features yet
retained the mournful and affectionate smile which she had compelled them
to wear, in order to support Butler's spirits.

It seemed as if the power of sight, of speech, and of reflection, had
left him as she disappeared from the room, which she had entered and
retired from so like an apparition. Saddletree, who entered immediately
afterwards, overwhelmed him with questions, which he answered without
understanding them, and with legal disquisitions, which conveyed to him
no iota of meaning. At length the learned burgess recollected that there
was a Baron Court to be, held at Loanhead that day, and though it was
hardly worth while, "he might as weel go to see if there was onything
doing, as he was acquainted with the baron bailie, who was a decent man,
and would be glad of a word of legal advice."

So soon as he departed, Butler flew to the Bible, the last book which
Jeanie had touched. To his extreme surprise, a paper, containing two or
three pieces of gold, dropped from the book. With a black-lead pencil,
she had marked the sixteenth and twenty-fifth verses of the
thirty-seventh Psalm,--"A little that a righteous man hath, is better
than the riches of the wicked."--"I have been young and am now old, yet
have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging their
bread."

Deeply impressed with the affectionate delicacy which shrouded its own