Feudal habits were extinct; and the days were long since gone, when bands of kinsmen, united in one great family, repaid hospitality and protection with more than filial veneration and love. Eredine had outlived three elder sisters, who for the greater part of a century had resided under the roof where they were born; and two younger brothers, who, after expiating, by thirty years of exile, their adherence to their hereditary sovereign, had returned to lay their ashes with those of their fathers. His eldest son had, a few months before, fallen a sacrifice to a West Indian climate; his second was banished from home by circumstances which I have already mentioned. The family, therefore, consisted of Eredine, his daughter, and myself; four men and seven women servants; Charlotte's nurse; a blind woman, who, being fit for nothing else, was stocking-knitter-general to the family, and served, moreover, as a humble substitute for the bard of other times; two little girls, one humpbacked, the other sickly; and three boys, two of whom were maintained because they were orphans, and the third because his grandmother had been the laird's favourite, some sixty years before; and, finally, Roban Gorach, Cecil's deserted lover; who, as the humour served, tended Henry's old white pony, or wandered to all the sacraments administered within sixty miles round, or sat by his torn oak from morn to night unquestioned. But these were by no means the only persons who daily shared in the good cheer of Castle Eredine. Besides several superannuated people of both sexes, who, for this very purpose, had been provided with cottages adjacent to the castle, we had stable-boys, and errand-boys, and cow-herds, and goose-herds; beggars and travellers by dozens; besides maintaining, for the day, every tradesman who executed the most trivial order for the family without doors or within. How was I surprised to learn, that this establishment was supported by an estate of little more than a thousand pounds a year! This family party was, for the present, reinforced by visiters of all ranks, who came to congratulate Charlotte's return. Among the earliest of these was my old friend Cecil, who recognized me with tears of joy. Recovering herself, she began to applaud her own skill in prophecy. 'I told you,' cried she, 'that ye knew not where a blessing might light; and there, ye see, ye're in Castle Eredine. And now Mr Henry will be gathered to you, and that will be seen.'