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114 some object on which it could yet repose and expand itself. She prophesied an hundred times, "that young Mr Henry would be the pride o' the family, and there had nae been sick 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 naething but fire-wood." Upon one occasion, when the child was ill, she lay all night below the window, chaunting 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, she could not walk abroad herself, the