"You don't mean it, father?"

"I do mean it. His mother and yours were first cousins."

"That is not a connection; it's a close kinship!"

"Is it?" said the laird, dryly.

"Anyhow," pursued Alexa, "I give you my word you shall hear nothing more
of the expense."

She bade her father good-night, and returning to the bedside of her
patient, released Meg.




CHAPTER VI.


ABOUT THE LAIRD.

Thomas Fordyce was a sucker from the root of a very old family tree,
born in poverty, and, with great pinching of father and mother, brothers
and sisters, educated for the Church. But from pleasure in scholarship,
from archaeological tastes, a passion for the arcana of history, and a
love of literature, strong, although not of the highest kind, he had
settled down as a school-master, and in his calling had excelled. By all
who knew him he was regarded as an accomplished, amiable, and worthy