"If you please," continued Jacky, "it's Mr. Ferguson, the Strathoran factor, gallopping up the waterside like to break his neck!" Mrs. Catherine started to her feet. "Take him to the library--I will be down myself in a moment. Are you lingering, you fairy? Away with you!" Jacky vanished, and Mrs. Catherine walked hastily through the room. "He will have gotten tidings!" And then she was still for a moment, in communion with One mightier than man, nerving herself for the "tidings," whatever they might be. Jacky stood at the open door as Mr. Ferguson gallopped up, but he did notice the unusual haste with which he was hurried into the library. A cold dew was on his honest forehead; regret and grief were in his kindly heart; the familiar ordinary things about him bore a strange look of change. The difference was in his own agitated eyes, but he did not think of that. Mrs. Catherine stood before him, calm and stern, in the library. "Mr. Ferguson, you have gotten tidings?" The firm, strong figure reeled in Mr. Ferguson's dizzy eyes. "Mr. Ferguson, you are troubled. Has the prodigal done his worst? Sit down and calm yourself. I am waiting to hear?" The factor sat down. Mrs. Catherine did not, but, clasping her hands tightly together, stood before him and waited. "I have bad news, Mrs. Catherine," said Mr. Ferguson; "worse news, a hundred times, than ever I suspected--than ever you could expect. Strathoran is fallen--ruined! No hope--no possibility of saving him! It is all over!" And the strong man groaned. "How and wherefore?" said Mrs. Catherine, sternly. "He has sold his estate--parted with his home and his land to some titled sharper in Paris. Sold! he has done worse--still more dishonorable and fatal than that, he has _gambled_ it away; what his father spent years to redeem, and set free _for him_, he has staked on the chances of a game. Bear with me, Mrs. Catherine, if I speak bitterly. The young man has disappointed all my hopes--ruined himself--what will become of him?" Mrs. Catherine stood with her head bowed down, but otherwise firmly erect, and silent. "What will he do?" repeated the distressed factor, "what can he do? land and name, fortune and character, all lost. What has he left, as he says, but despair--with his prospects too, his fair beginning. O, it is enough to make a man distracted! What have they done, that unhappy race, that they should be constantly thus--father and son, a wise man and a prodigal, the one wasting his substance and his inheritance, the other denying himself the lawful pleasures of a just life to win it back again." "Comfort yourself, Robert Ferguson," said Mrs. Catherine, bitterly, as drawing forward a chair with emphatic rapidity, she seated herself at the table, "there will be no son of the name again to waste years in building up the house of Strathoran: their history has come to an end--fitly ended in a rioter and a prodigal."