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 had but little reason to like them, he couldna brook that, and it clean broke the heart o' him, and creditors cam to Charnwood and cleaned out a' that was there he was never rich, the gude auld man, for be dow'd na see ony body want."

"He was, indeed," said the stranger, with a faultering voice, "an admirable manthat is, I have heard that he was so. So the ladies were left without for tune as well as without a protector?"

"They will neither want the tane nor the tother while Lord Evandale lives," said Jenny; "he has been a true friend in their griefs—E'en to the house they live in is his Lordship's; and never man, as my auld gudemother Mause used to say, since the days of the patriarch Jacob, served sae lang and sae sair for a wife as gude Lord Evandale has dune."

"And why," said the stranger, with a voice that quivered with emotion, "why was he not sooner rewarded by the object of his attachment?"