"Mr. Norman came seldom back to Merkland after that. He liked Mrs. Ross but little at all times, and I think he reproached himsel for no being carefu' enough of Willie, though I never blamed him--no for a moment; but onyway he was altogether pairted from his ain auld hame--no that he forgot us; there was aye the tither bit present coming to me, at New-year's times, and his birth-days and the like; and many fine claes and toys, and things, to yoursel, Miss Anne, that ye didna get the half o'-- "So three years ran out, and ane day when I happened to be up at Merkland, on some errand concerning yoursel, ye came, to me, Miss Anne, wi' a paper in your hand, to let me hear ye read (ye were six years auld then.) So I got the paper--ye had slipped it out o' the lockit book-case in the library, the time your papa was writing a letter, and didna see ye. I mind the very words ye said--because I likit to see the papers--and so I did, to see what word there was about the war, and if there was ony tidings of Willie's ship. Sae I got it, and began to read it, the time Mr. Lewis and you were playing at my fit. "Eh! Miss Anne: I mind the bits of words that came in upon me now and then, when I was looking at that awful paper, as if I had heard them in a fever. There was the haill story of the murder in't; of how Mr. Norman and Mr. Aytoun had had a bitter quarrel the night before, and parted in anger--and how, the next morning. Mr. Aytoun was found lying dead in a lone place by a waterside--and how a man, gaun to his work, had met Mr. Norman coming, like from the same place, just about the time the deed bid to hae been dune--and there was mair than that still--a gun was found in the wood, and the gun was Mr. Norman's, and when the officers gaed to take him up, he had fled, no man kent whither. My e'en were reeling in my head, but I could read it for a' that--I didna lose a word; and in anither place there was mair news--the murderer, as they daured to ca' him, had been traced into a Holland boat, and there was certain word of it, that it was wrecked, and all on board lost, so he had come, they said, to speedy punishment. I ken not now, how I had strength to do it; but I rose up the moment I was done, and went down into the library mysel'--what cared I at that time, if I had met a' the leddies in the land?--to put it back secretly into the book-case again. Your father was sitting in the library, Miss Anne, a changed man; the white on his face was the white of death, and he was trembling like as with the cauld, and had the darkest woe in his e'e, that I ever looked upon. I put down the paper on the table, and he started, and looked up at me. There was never a word said between us; but we were equal in our terrible sorrow. He kent that, and so did I.