and being as determined under a restrainer as he ever had been under a retainer, he was a dangerous man for even a loving daughter to tamper with. But old fathers, probably with spectacles, are not good watchers of their love-stricken daughters; and Mr Plenderleith, knowing this, placed confidence in his old servant or servitor, (as these domestic Balderstones were then called,) Andrew Crabbin, and got him to keep an eye upon the outgoings and incomings, and companionship and letters of the unsuspecting Ailsie. On the other hand, she was inclined to place faith in Andrew--not that she let him know the name or degree of her beloved Frederick, but that she bespoke his secrecy in the event of his seeing her with a highly respectable young man, of genteel connexions, whom her father would be delighted to receive as a son-in-law, but who was not just yet in a position to present himself in the drawing-room. Which two confidences Andrew received together, and found means in his canny Scotch head to entertain both kindly, but with a foregone conclusion that he would make more money out of the rents and fees of his master than the pin-money of poor Ailsie. Yet Miss Plenderleith was so dexterous in managing her intrigue, that Andrew had for a time nothing to reveal; but opportunity comes at the end to patience, and this was the case one night when Andrew was busy cleaning his master’s long boots in an outhouse at the back of the dwelling-house; for as he was straining to get the article in his hand as bright as the “Day and Martin” of the time would make it, his attention was directed to a sound from the red-tiled roof. Whereupon, pricking up his ears, Andrew put his head out at the door, and what in all this wide earth does he see but two boots disappearing at Ailsie’s bed-room window! He had never seen any of the two or three pairs his master possessed going into the house in that way, and probably he did not need that fact to explain to him the wonderful apparition. Nor was it any question with him what to do. The hour was late, but his master was not gone to bed, if he was not yet engaged over his mulled claret, with a bit of toast done pretty brown in it.