before the servants of the family, for a considerable time, lest he should terrify them; and his persuasion was so strong that he was disqualified to appear in society, that my dear mother ceased to importune him on the subject. Unsupported, and I may add, friendless as we are on the side of connections, no efforts were made to combat opinions which were more the result of extreme delicacy and habitual indulgence, than of a still disturbed imagination. I was convinced that my father wanted only a stimulus sufficiently powerful to rouse his mind, and to recover his native powers of acting. About this time, we received Mr. Flamall’s letters, with his plan of your becoming an inmate at the hall. My father was extremely averse to the proposal. He affectingly drew a picture of himself, and with tears appealed to his wife to determine whether he was a fit object for the observation of a girl who had no acquaintance with misery, and who would shun him as an object of dread and disgust, or laugh at his eccentricities. Miss Flint’s wishes were answered with firmness. ‘He should quit Tarefield.’ I had arguments more potent.—Let it suffice for the present,” continued Malcolm with emotion, “that _I know Mr. Flamall_; and that my father knows him to be a villain. I urged, and seriously urged, that by his rejection of the proposal Flamall had made, you might fall into less honourable hands; that he might, by an apparent acquiescence circumvent designs, which, as originating in a mind devoid of every principle, must be liable to suspicion. ‘You may not,’ added I, ‘be able altogether to redress the grievances which this young lady will have to endure under the controul of such a guardian; but under your protection she will be secure. Convince Miss Flint, and let Mr. Flamall understand, that you are no longer the ‘idiot,’ ‘the lunatic,’ they have proclaimed. At no period of his life was Sir Murdock Maclairn better qualified to become the defender of innocence. My arguments prevailed, and his journey to London to receive you, was determined on. My poor mother’s spirits sunk into terror. She resolved to attend Sir Murdock, and urged with many tears, the danger of his going by himself; but I was resolute. It was indispensibly requisite to renew in my father’s mind a confidence in his own strength, and to permit him experimentally to feel that he was a rational being, and fully competent to the care of himself and of you. He departed alone; and with a solicitude and terror which I will not attempt to describe. I followed his carriage. I had the comfort of finding on the road, that although the singularity of his manners excited curiosity, no one called in question his faculties of action, or suspected he had been deranged. I lodged at the same coffee-house in which he did, and slept in the next room to him. I followed his footsteps, and watched his return from Counsellor Steadman’s by means of a young man who was in his office. From this gentleman I also learned,