It is needless to trace all the steps by which the real heir of the Heriots was placed in such possession of his rights as a poor little orphan baby of three months’ old could attain. Before his young mother was carried to the family grave, where she was laid, under silent protest from her humble family, who stood aloof with a pride familiar to the Scotch peasant, giving up the child with a certain grim and indignant reluctance--the infant was taken to St. Andrews, and placed under Marjory’s care. This was done by Agnes, who all along had regarded Tom Heriot’s sister as her rival and enemy. She carried the child herself, scorning all aid, to Mr. Charles Heriot’s house. If possible, her peasant appearance--the air of a respectable maidservant, which was natural to her--was more manifest than ever. She would not allow it to be supposed that she wished to approach herself, by ever so little, to the “gentles,” with whom her sister had been connected. “I’ve brought you the bairn,” she said, confronting Marjory, with that defiant look which had never quite left her face; and she unfolded the sleeping baby from the shawl in which he was muffled, and laid him down upon the sofa, sternly repressing all sign of emotion. “He was to be mine,” she said, briefly, “I promised to be a mother to him, but it’s reasonable now that he should be in your hands. My sister, up to her last day,” and here a spasm crossed the resolute features, “never knew that he was the heir--nor my mother. They thought the bairn would be provided for, that was a’. I knew well enough--but why should I have troubled her innocent mind, that heeded no such vanities? And I allow that a bairn like this, born the heir, should be in the hands of the family. You and me will, maybe, never meet again--” “Agnes,” said Marjory, “you cannot think that I would wish to separate you like this from Isabell’s child?” Again Agnes’s comely face was swept as by a wind of emotion, and again she banished all trace of feeling. “I know you are kind,” she said. “It is your nature; but I’m of the nature that I canna bide kindness. I’ll take it from my equals--but no from you--and nothing else can be between us--- though I respect ye--I respect ye,” she added, hurriedly. “I’ve no a word to say. If I had been to choose, I would have chosen different. I would rather he had been a poor lad’s son, with little siller. I would have bred him up, and watched him night and day, and put my hope and my heart on him; but oh, being otherwise, it’s a blessing of Providence that it’s come to light now, and no later. Time makes no marks upon a helpless infant, as it would do upon a grown lad. It’s best to part with him now.” Here two tears, big and bitter, fell upon the child’s white frock, making two large spots, which Agnes, taking out her handkerchief, did her best to wipe away.