“They’re a fearfully respectable family,” said another golfer, with a great emphasis on the adjective; “but Tom Heriot was thrown away upon them. He was not of that mould. If anything’s gone wrong, or there’s a chance of revelations, I back Tom to be the hero. He was never one of your cut and dry men, foredoomed to be a Laird, and do his duty.” “He was a simple ne’er-do-weel,” said Mr. Seton, “like his friend Fanshawe, whom I saw in the town the other day, by the bye. They were an excellent pair. And there’s a sympathy among that sort of people. Miss Heriot, who is as proud as Lucifer, and looks down upon most people, was hanging upon that fellow’s arm. If it’s some peccadillo of Tom’s, no doubt Fanshawe was in it.” “I don’t see what Miss Heriot could have to do with any peccadillo of Tom’s,” said another speaker. “Whatever you may say against women, toleration of their brother’s peccadillos is not one of their faults. But Mrs. Charles, I hear, is making a bonny business at Pitcomlie, pulling down the house to build some fine castle or other. That’s enough, I should say, to account for old Charlie’s troubles. He’s like a hen on a hot girdle, fluttering about everywhere. God be praised, he’s engaged for a foursome at three o’clock with old Adam of St. Edgar’s, and the two Wolffs. A bonny time they will have of it. I saw him lose a putt yesterday that an infant might have played. And talk of putting----” Here the speaker went off into golf, and left the Heriots. Mr. Charles, however, fulfilled the prophecy in every respect. He produced the most unchristian temper in the partner of his game, and gave his opponents an opportunity for gibes innumerable. Up to this present date a description of the worse putt ever made on the Links, as perpetrated on that unhappy day by Mr. Charles Hay-Heriot of the Pitcomlie family, is told for the edification of beginners. The reader, who knows the reason why, will not blame Mr. Charles. He could not, as he acknowledged, get all these complications out of his head. His placid soul was torn by so many unforeseen calamities. The existing state of affairs was bad enough, and the personal contentions which lay before him, the struggle with “these young women,” in which Mr. Charles felt it quite possible that he might be worsted, would, had there been nothing else, have been enough to embitter his peaceful days. The other question, however, came into it with a painful excitement. It did not obliterate the first, as it ought reasonably to have done, since, if the second story was true, Mrs. Charles could have no authority or place at Pitcomlie. Some minds have a faculty for getting all the annoyance possible out of their surroundings, just as some others get all the sweetness possible. Mr. Charles hugged both to his bosom. He groaned over the possibility of having to insert a name never heard of before, and the record of an irregular marriage into the genealogical papers of the Heriots, which