"Think not that I write this because I have served you with siller. Over the son of Isabel Balfour, the sister of Sholto Douglas has a right of succor and counsel, warning and reproof. Boy! if you had been my own--if in God's good pleasure you had borne the name of my own brother--the dearest name upon this earth to me--what is there that you might not have claimed at my hands? What is there now, that would be for your own good, that I would hesitate to do?--but far be it from me, who mind your mother's travail for the new birth in you, the which in all mortal seeming has not yet been granted to her prayers--to prop up your goings in a way of ill-doing. Of what good is it to the world, I ask you, Archie Sutherland, that you have been made upon it, a living man with a mind within you, and a heaven over you? Who is the better for the light that God has put into your earthen vessel? A crowd of dancing, singing fools, that know not either the right honor, or the grave errand of a man into this world. Shame upon you, the son of a stalwart and good house, to be wasting in bairnly diversion, the days you will never see again, till you meet them before the Throne. Listen to me, Archie Sutherland--return to your own house, and to such a manner of life as becomes an honorable and upright man, and I give you my word--the worth of which, you may be known--that for disentangling you from the unhealthful meshes of borrowed siller, the means shall not be to seek. "Unto your sister Isabel, I have ever been a prophet of evil; nevertheless, she bears the name, and, in a measure, the countenance, of Sholto's Isabel and mine. If she will not return to the lawful shelter and rule of her own house, let her come to Strathoran, or, if it likes her, to the Tower. Do you think, or does she think, that the very winged things that are about you, their own sillie selves, honor the wife for disregarding her natural right? The bond was of her own tieing; she liked him better than father and mother once--does she like him less now than she likes ill-fame, and slight esteem? If it is so, let her come home to me, her mother's earliest and oldest friend. Bairns!--bairns! there is more to provide for than the pleasure of the quick hours that are speeding over ye. Purity before God, honor in the sight of men: are your spirits blinded within ye, that you cannot perceive the two? CATHERINE DOUGLAS." CHAPTER IV. The festive morning dawned at last, a vigorous, red October day, and all about and around Merkland was bustle and preparation. "Duncan," cried Bell the cook, her face looming, already red and full, through a mist; "when was that weary man, Bob Partan, to send up the turbot?" "Punctual at eleven," said the laconic Duncan.