She was the one 'ewe lamb' of his flock, all of whom were lying by their mother's side under the trees in the old kirkyard of Lasswade, within sound of the murmuring Esk; and though the charm of Hester's society had been one of the chief reasons that induced Roland Lindsay to linger at Merlwood, as he had done for nearly a month past, he was loth to adopt the idea now being involved therein. Such is the inconsistency of the male heart at times; and he, perhaps, misconstrued, or attributed his emotion to compassion for her apparently lonely life and somewhat dubious future--for Sir Henry's life was precarious; and in this perilous and dubious state matters were now, while Roland's leave of absence was running on. Not that the latter was extremely limited. To the uninitiated we may mention that what is technically termed winter leave extends generally from the 15th October to the 14th of the following March, 'when all officers are to be present with their respective regiments and depôts;' but Roland had extended or more ample leave accorded him than this, owing to the sufferings he had undergone from a wound and fever when with the army of occupation in Egypt, a portion of which his regiment formed--hence it was that August saw him at Merlwood. And now we may briefly state how he was situated, and some of the 'features' on which his future 'hinged.' During his absence with the army his father, the old fox-hunting Laird of Earlshaugh, a widower, after the death of Roland's mother had rashly married her companion, a handsome but artful woman, who, at his death (caused by a fall in the hunting-field, after which she had nursed him assiduously), was left by him, through his will, all that he possessed in land, estate, and heritage, without control; but never doubting--poor silly man--that she would do full justice in the end to his only son and daughter, as a species of mother, monitress, and guardian--a risk the eventualities of which he had not quite foreseen, as we shall show in the time to come. But so it was; his father, who, at one time, he thought, would hardly have rested in his grave if the acres of Earlshaugh and the turrets of the old mansion had gone out of the family, in which they had been since Sir James Lindsay of Edzell and Glenesk fell by his royal master's side at Flodden, had been weak enough to do this monstrous piece of injustice, under the influence of an artful and designing woman! It was an injury so galling, so miserable, and--to Roland Lindsay--so scarcely realizable, that he had been in no haste to return to his ancestral home.