His eldest son had been killed in the 12th Lancers, at the battle of Goojerat; the other had died prematurely at College—a double loss, which had a most fatal effect on their delicate mother, then in the last stage of a mortal disease. Now the affection of the lonely Sir Nigel was centred in Cora, his only daughter, the child of his declining years; and thus he had a great regard for me as the son of his youngest sister; but he sorrowed in secret that his baronetcy—one of the oldest in Scotland, having been created in 1625 by Charles I.—should pass out of his family. Sir Norman Calderwood of the Glen, who had attended the Scottish princess, Elizabeth Stuart, to Bohemia, was the first patented among the baronets of Nova Scotia; and was therefore styled _Primus Baronettorum Scotiæ_, a prefix of which my uncle, as his ancestors had been, was not a little vain. "The estates are entailed," said he, pursuing this line of thought; "they were among the first that were so, when the Scottish parliament passed the Entail Act in 1685; and though they go, as you know, to a remote collateral branch, the baronetcy ends with myself. Cora shall be well and handsomely left; for she shall have the Pitgavel property, which, with its coal and iron mines, yields two thousand per annum clear. And you, my boy, Newton, shall find that, tide what may, you are not forgotten." "Uncle, you have already done so much for me——" "Much, Newton?" "Yes, my dear sir." "Stuff! fitted you out for the lancers—that is all." "You have done more than that, uncle——" "I have lodged the purchase money for your troop with Messrs. Cox and Co.; but most of this money must, under other circumstances, have been spent on your cousins, had they lived. So, thank fate and the fortune of war, not me, boy, not me. But there are times, especially when I am alone, that it grieves me to think that instead of leaving an heir to the old title, one boy lies in his grave in the old kirk yonder; and the other, far, far away on the battle-field of Goojerat." He shook his white head, and his voice became tremulous, his chin sank on his breast, and he added— "My poor Nigel!—my bonnie Archie!"