'Original sin,' _i.e._, the accumulated debts of a generation or two past, with his own mad extravagance in youth, had so completely impaired Sir Ranald's exchequer that, on a few hundreds per annum, the wreck of all his fortune, he was compelled, though not content, to live, 'vegetate' he deemed it, quietly in an old house in Hampshire; and times there were when in the great weariness of his heart--especially after the death of his two sons--he often thought, could he but see Alison provided for as he wished, he had no other desire than to be laid where many of his ancestors lay, a right which none could deny him, in the ancient chapel of Essilmont, where often he had with envy regarded the stiff and prostrate mailed effigies on their altar tombs, lying there with sword and shield, their faces expressive of stern serenity, and their hands folded in eternal prayer. Chilcote, his present abode, was buried deep in woods that must have been a portion of the New Forest or the relics thereof, and had been built somewhere about the time of Queen Anne. Thus a great amount of solid oak formed a portion of its structure; and in the principal rooms the mantel-pieces ascended in carved work nearly to the ceilings, while the jambs were of massive stone, with caryatides, like the god Terminus, wreathed to the waist in leaves, supporting the entablatures. The walls were divided into compartments by moulded panelling, painted with imaginary landscapes and ruins; the armorial bearings of the Chilcotes of other days; and beneath the surbase (or chairbelt, as it used to be called) were smaller panels, all painted with fruit and flowers. The windows were deeply embayed, with cushioned seats. One of these was, in the summer evenings, the favourite niche in which Alison was wont to perch herself with one of Mudie's latest novels. The furniture was all old, faded, 'shabby,' Alison truly deemed it; but in tone it seemed much in unison with the rooms, on the walls of which her father had hung a few family pictures, the pride of his heart, gentlemen in ruffs and cloaks, dames in stomachers and capuchins, and two there were in whom he loved to trace a fancied resemblance to his dead sons, Ranald and Ellon, for they were brothers, and bore the same names--Ranald Cheyne, who fell at the head of the Scots Life Guards at Worcester, and Ellon Cheyne, who had died previously at the storming of Newcastle; both men portrayed in the gorgeous costume of their time, and both looked to the life, 'blue-blooded Scottish cavaliers, pale, smooth-skinned, with moustache and love lock, haughty and imperious,' and each with an expression of face that seemed to say they would have thought as little of spitting a crop-eared roundhead as a lark, with their long Toledoes.