a violent fit of weeping. For such depravity she was not prepared.
What a terrible curse hung over her family! Surely they were all
reprobate from the womb, not one elected for salvation from the
guilt of Adam's fall, and therefore abandoned to Satan as his
natural prey, to be led captive of him at his will. She threw
herself on her knees at the side of the bed, and prayed
heart-brokenly. Betty heard her as she limped past the door on her
way back to her kitchen.

Meantime Shargar had rushed across the next street on his bare feet
into the Crookit Wynd, terrifying poor old Kirstan Peerie, the
divisions betwixt the compartments of whose memory had broken down,
into the exclamation to her next neighbour, Tam Rhin, with whom she
was trying to gossip:

'Eh, Tammas! that'll be ane o' the slauchtert at Culloden.'

He never stopped till he reached his mother's deserted
abode--strange instinct! There he ran to earth like a hunted fox.
Rushing at the door, forgetful of everything but refuge, he found
it unlocked, and closing it behind him, stood panting like the hart
that has found the water-brooks. The owner had looked in one day to
see whether the place was worth repairing, for it was a mere
outhouse, and had forgotten to turn the key when he left it. Poor
Shargar! Was it more or less of a refuge that the mother that bore
him was not there either to curse or welcome his return? Less--if
we may judge from a remark he once made in my hearing many long
years after:

'For, ye see,' he said, 'a mither's a mither, be she the verra