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Rh his wood, shooting his game, and so forth, "for the laird, honest man, he'll never find it,—he never minds what a puir body does."—Pedlars, gypsies, tinkers, vagrants of all descriptions, roosted about his outhouses, or harboured in his kitchen, and the laird, who was "nae nice body," but a thorough gossip, like most weak men, found recompence for his hospitality in the pleasure of questioning them on the news of the country side.

A circumstance arrested Ellangowan's progress upon the high road to ruin. This was his marriage with a lady who had a portion of about four thousand pounds. Nobody in the neighbourhood could conceive why she married him, and endowed him with her wealth, unless because he had a tall handsome figure, a good set of features, a genteel address, and the most perfect good humour. It might be some additional consideration, that she was herself at the reflecting age of twenty-eight,