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 like fools, for love, and lippent to guid fortune for the plenishing. Ye see what we have been able to mak o’t! No, that I wad yet change her for ony ane, na—na, guidwife, hooever, I'm no speaking aboot that at present. Ye see, Jeanie my dear, the state to which we are reduced;—everything gaun back wi’ us—empty barns and horseless stables,—naething but cauld poverty,—and me, wi’ my broken arm, every day in the fear o’ being thrown into the jail. I wush my dear Jeanie, ye could help us.”

“Me! how can I help ye,” said Jeanie, dighting away the tears, that had started in her een, wi’ the corner of her apron, as she stoppit her spinning-wheel. “Ay faither, if it lay in my power, if it lay between me and the end of the world, to help ye. I would na weary o’ the way.”

“Deed, Jeanie, it is in your ain power–and ye maun tak him. Ye wad nay doubt like a young man if he offered: but mak hay, my dear, when the sun shines; and when auceance [sic] ye’r the leddy of Stanedykes, ye may smirk in your sleeve at them a’.”

“Stanedykes!—but, faither,” askit Jeanie, innocently “hoo can ye ca’ Jamie Gray an auld man? or, tho’ I were to get him, hoo could either I, or ony ither body, be leddy o’ Stanedykes when the auid laird is living?”

“Young Jamie?” quo Walter, gieing a lauch, na, na, lass, that were a kettle of fish to fry. Wha kens about that scape grace? I’se warrant he’s married abroad; or may be wha kens, dead and buried long ago. It’s the laird himsell I’m speaking aboot. “The laird his faither!!” cried Jeanie, while her heart flaffed as if it would hae loupit thro her stays. “Never speak in that way. Do ye think the laird wad marry me, that might be his grandchild; and she gaed a wild lauch that sounded hardly canny.

“Take ye, Jeanie!” said Walter, kindly patting her