every other direction, seemed to rejoice in having some object on
which it could yet repose and expand itself. She prophesied a
hundred times, 'that young Mr. Harry would be the pride o' the
family, and there hadna been sic a sprout frae the auld aik since
the death of Arthur Mac-Dingawaie, that was killed in the battle
o' the Bloody Bay; as for the present stick, it was good for
nothing but fire-wood.' On one occasion, when the child was ill,
she lay all night below the window, chanting a rhyme which she
believed sovereign as a febrifuge, and could neither be prevailed
upon to enter the house nor to leave the station she had chosen
till she was informed that the crisis was over.

The affection of this woman became matter of suspicion, not indeed
to the Laird, who was never hasty in suspecting evil, but to his
wife, who had indifferent health and poor spirits. She was now far
advanced in a second pregnancy, and, as she could not walk abroad
herself, and the woman who attended upon Harry was young and
thoughtless, she prayed Dominie Sampson to undertake the task of
watching the boy in his rambles, when he should not be otherwise
accompanied. The Dominie loved his young charge, and was
enraptured with his own success in having already brought him so
far in his learning as to spell words of three syllables. The idea
of this early prodigy of erudition being carried off by the
gipsies, like a second Adam Smith,[Footnote: The father of
Economical Philosophy was, when a child, actually carried off by
gipsies, and remained some hours in their possession.] was not to
be tolerated; and accordingly, though the charge was contrary to
all his habits of life, he readily undertook it, and might be seen
stalking about with a mathematical problem in his head, and his
eye upon a child of five years old, whose rambles led him into a