And he began to dig with a great semblance of assiduity.

“What is Miss Vernon, Andrew? I am a friend of the family, and should like to know.”

“Other than a gude ane, I’m fearing,” said Andrew, closing one eye hard, and shaking his head with a grave and mysterious look—“something glee’d—your honour understands me?”

“I cannot say I do,” said I, “Andrew; but I should like to hear you explain yourself;” and therewithal I slipped a crown-piece into Andrew’s horn-hard hand. The touch of the silver made him grin a ghastly smile, as he nodded slowly, and thrust it into his breeches pocket; and then, like a man who well understood that there was value to be returned, stood up, and rested his arms on his spade, with his features composed into the most important gravity, as for some serious communication.

“Ye maun ken, then, young gentleman, since it imports you to know, that Miss Vernon is——”

Here breaking off, he sucked in both his cheeks, till his lantern jaws and long chin assumed the appearance of a pair of nut-crackers; winked hard once more, frowned, shook his head, and seemed to think his physiognomy had completed the information which his tongue had not fully told.

“Good God!” said I, “so young, so beautiful, so early lost!”

“Troth, ye may say sae—she’s in a manner lost, body and saul; forby being a Papist, I’se uphaud her for”—and his northern caution prevailed, and he was again silent.

“For what, sir?” said I sternly. “I insist on knowing the plain meaning of all this.”

“Ou, just for the bitterest Jacobite in the haill shire.”

“Pshaw! a Jacobite?—is that all?”

Andrew looked at me with some astonishment, at hearing his information treated so lightly; and then muttering, “Aweel, it’s the warst thing I ken aboot the lassie, howsoe’er,” he resumed his spade, like the King of the Vandals in Marmontel’s late novel.