starting from the rug.

"I do not ken," answered her mistress, shaking her head. "But he is not
speeritually minded, my dear."

"Here, sit down with ye! Godsake, what ails the wife?" cried Kirstie,
and helped and forced her into my lord's own chair by the cheek of the

hearth.
"Keep me, what's this?" she gasped. "Kirstie, what's this? I'm

frich'ened."
They were her last words.

It was the lowering nightfall when my lord returned. He had the sunset
in his back, all clouds and glory; and before him, by the wayside, spied

Kirstie Elliott waiting. She was dissolved in tears, and addressed him
in the high, false note of barbarousmourning, such as still lingers

modified among Scots heather.
"The Lord peety ye, Hermiston! the Lord prepare ye!" she keened out.

"Weary upon me, that I should have to tell it!"
He reined in his horse and looked upon her with the hanging face.

"Has the French landit?" cried he.
"Man, man," she said, "is that a' ye can think of? The Lord prepare ye:

the Lord comfort and support ye!"
"Is onybody deid?" said his lordship. "It's no Erchie?"

"Bethankit, no!" exclaimed the woman, startled into a more natural tone.
"Na, na, it's no sae bad as that. It's the mistress, my lord; she just

fair flittit before my e'en. She just gi'ed a sab and was by wi' it.
Eh, my bonny Miss Jeannie, that I mind sae weel!" And forth again upon

that pouring tide of lamentation in which women of her class excel and
over-abound.

Lord Hermiston sat in the saddle beholding her. Then he seemed to
recover command upon himself.

"Well, it's something of the suddenest," said he. "But she was a
dwaibly body from the first."

And he rode home at a precipitate amble with Kirstie at his horse's
heels.

Dressed as she was for her last walk, they had laid the dead lady on her
bed. She was never interesting in life; in death she was not

impressive; and as her husband stood before her, with his hands crossed
behind his powerful back, that which he looked upon was the very image

of the insignificant.
"Her and me were never cut out for one another," he remarked at last.

"It was a daft-like marriage." And then, with a most unusualgentleness
of tone, "Puir bitch," said he, "puir bitch!" Then suddenly: "Where's

Erchie?"
Kirstie had decoyed him to her room and given him "a jeely-piece."

"Ye have some kind of gumption, too," observed the judge, and considered
his housekeepergrimly. "When all's said," he added, "I micht have done

waur - I micht have been marriet upon a skirting Jezebel like you!"
"There's naebody thinking of you, Hermiston!" cried the offended woman.

"We think of her that's out of her sorrows. And could SHE have done
waur? Tell me that, Hermiston - tell me that before her clay-cauld

corp!"
"Weel, there's some of them gey an' ill to please," observed his

lordship.
CHAPTER II - FATHER AND SON

MY Lord Justice-Clerk was known to many; the man Adam Weir perhaps to
none. He had nothing to explain or to conceal; he sufficed wholly and

silently to himself; and that part of our nature which goes out (too
often with false coin) to acquire glory or love, seemed in him to be

omitted. He did not try to be loved, he did not care to be; it is
probable the very thought of it was a stranger to his mind. He was an

admired lawyer, a highly unpopular judge; and he looked down upon those
who were his inferiors in either distinction, who were lawyers of less

grasp or judges not so much detested. In all the rest of his days and
doings, not one trace of vanity appeared; and he went on through life

with a mechanicalmovement, as of the unconscious; that was almost
august.

He saw little of his son. In the childish maladies with which the boy
was troubled, he would make daily inquiries and daily pay him a visit,

entering the sick-room with a facetious and appallingcountenance,
letting off a few perfunctory jests, and going again swiftly, to the

patient's relief. Once, a court holiday falling opportunely, my lord
had his carriage, and drove the child himself to Hermiston, the

customary place of convalescence. It is conceivable he had been more
than usually anxious, for that journey always remained in Archie's

memory as a thing apart, his father having related to him from beginning
to end, and with much detail, three authentic murder cases. Archie went

the usual round of other Edinburgh boys, the high school and the
college; and Hermiston looked on, or rather looked away, with scarce an

affectation of interest in his progress. Daily, indeed, upon a signal
after dinner, he was brought in, given nuts and a glass of port,

regarded sardonically, sarcastically questioned. "Well, sir, and what
have you donn with your book to-day?" my lord might begin, and set him

posers in law Latin. To a child just stumbling into Corderius, Papinian
and Paul proved quite invincible. But papa had memory of no other. He

was not harsh to the little scholar, having a vast fund of patience
learned upon the bench, and was at no pains whether to conceal or to

express his disappointment. "Well, ye have a long jaunt before ye yet!"
he might observe, yawning, and fall back on his own thoughts (as like as

not) until the time came for separation, and my lord would take the
decanter and the glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the

Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours were small. There
was no "fuller man" on the bench; his memory was marvellous, though

wholly legal; if he had to "advise" extempore, none did it better; yet
there was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the

night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but
he tasted deeply of recondite pleasures. To be whollydevoted to some

intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life; and perhaps only in
law and the higher mathematics may this devotion be maintained, suffice

to itself without reaction, and find continual rewards without
excitement. This atmosphere of his father's sterling industry was the

best of Archie's education. Assuredly it did not attract him; assuredly
it rather rebutted and depressed. Yet it was still present, unobserved

like the ticking of a clock, an arid ideal, a tasteless stimulant in the
boy's life.

But Hermiston was not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty
toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from

the table to the bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the
third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross

accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less
formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited

from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with
potential violence. In the playing-fields, and amongst his own

companions, he repaid a coarse expression with a blow; at his father's
table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale

and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he
had toleration for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond.

Lord Glenalmond was tall and emaciated, with long features and long
delicate hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of

Culloden in the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty,
preserved some of the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any

of his fellow-guests, his appearance as of an artist and an aristocrat
stranded in rude company, riveted the boy's attention; and as curiosity

and interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately
and certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted by the boy.

"And so this is your son, Hermiston?" he asked, laying his hand on
Archie's shoulder. "He's getting a big lad."

"Hout!" said the gracious father, "just his mother over again - daurna
say boo to a goose!"

But the stranger retained the boy, talked to him, drew him out, found in
him a taste for letters, and a fine, ardent, modest, youthful soul; and

encouraged him to be a visitor on Sunday evenings in his bare, cold,
lonely dining-room, where he sat and read in the isolation of a bachelor

grown old in refinement. The beautiful gentleness and grace of the old
judge, and the delicacy of his person, thoughts, and language, spoke to

Archie's heart in its own tongue. He conceived the ambition to be such
another; and, when the day came for him to choose a profession, it was