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 tell me when Lord Evandale's marriage takes place?"

"Very soon, we expect," answered Jenny, before it was possible for her husband to reply; "it would hae been ower afore now, but for the death o' auld Major Bellenden."

"The excellent old man!" said the stranger; "I heard at Edinburgh he was no more—Was he long ill?"

"He couldna be said to haud up his head after his brother's wife and his niece were turned out of their ain house; and he had himsel sair borrowing siller to stand the law—but it was in the latter end o' King James's days—and Basil Olifant, who claimed the estate, turned a papist to please the managers, and then naething was to be refused him, sae the law gaed again the leddies at last, after they had fought a weary sort o' years about it, and, as I said before, the Major ne'er held up his head again. And then cam the pitting awa' o' the Stuart line; and, though he