"Ye ken who it is?--my one brother, Sholto Douglas," said Mrs. Catherine. "Look at him well. Do you see how strong, and full of health, and strength, and youth that face is, Alison? Look at him well." Alice looked again wonderingly at the fine face of Sholto Douglas. To her, as to Archibald Sutherland, it looked loftily calm and pure, removed far above all the changeful hopes and fears of this "pleasing, anxious being." "Alison," said Mrs. Catherine, "I want to tell you the history of Sholto Douglas. Sit quiet, and do not tremble, but listen to me." Alice tried not to tremble--she could scarcely help it. The ghostly inquisitive crag, behind which she could fancy some malicious elf watching them--the dark whins pressing close to the window--the dreary sough of the wind as it swept through the bare trees without, and the long passages within, moaning so _eerie_ and spirit-like--the calm, unmoved face looking down from the wall--the comparative gloom of this sacred and mysterious apartment--she could not repress the involuntary thrill of fear and wonder. "Sholto Douglas was my one brother--we were the sole children of our name," said Mrs. Catherine, her utterance so slow and marked the while, that it was easy to recognise this as the history of her great sorrow, "and I cannot tell you how dear we were to one another. You are a bairn, yourself, of too gentle and quiet a spirit. You cannot know the loves and griefs of harsher natures. "We were never separate a day; we were bairns; we grew up into youth; we passed to manhood and to womanhood hand in hand. In his earliest flush of strength and manliness, Sholto was arrested on the way. I am a woman now laden with years, and drawing near to the grave, but, bairn, there is no earthly motive that would rouse me to any work or labor like the remembrance of my brother Sholto, that I left lying in foreign earth, thirty years ago. "That is not the matter I have to speak of first. When Sholto Douglas was in the strength of his youthful manhood he was trysted in solemn betrothal, whereof I myself was a witness, to Isabel Balfour, the mother of the young man who came to my house last night. She was a gentle, pleasant, gladsome girl, like your own self, Alison Aytoun. I liked her well before for her own sake, and I liked her dearly then for Sholto's. The day was set for the bridal--the whole kindred were stirred to do them honor--there was nothing in their way, but joy, and blessings, and prosperity, as we thought in our vain hope. Alison! between them there was the stern and sore shadow of death, and they knew it not!