In his personal appearance, Malachi Hypel had but few pretensions to the gallant air and grace of the gentlemen of that time. He was a coarse hard-favoured fresh-coloured carl, with a few white hairs thinly scattered over a round bald head. His eyes were small and grey, quick in the glance, and sharp in the expression. He spoke thickly and hurriedly, and although his words were all very cogently strung together, there was still an unaccountable obscurity in the precise meaning of what he said. In his usual style of dress he was rude and careless, and he commonly wore a large flat-brimmed blue bonnet; but on the occasion when he came to the gate to receive Claud, he had on his Sunday suit and hat. After the first salutations were over, he said to Claud, on seeing him walking lamely and uneasily, ‘What’s the matter, Grippy, that ye seem sae stiff and sair?’ ‘I met wi’ a bit accident,’ was Claud’s reply: ‘Rob Wallace, the horse-couper, gied me sic a deevil to ride as, I believe, never man before mounted. I would na wish my sworn enemy a greater ill than a day’s journey on that beast’s back, especially an he was as little used to riding as me.’ The latter clause of the sentence was muttered inwardly, for the Laird did not hear it; otherwise he would probably have indulged his humour a little at the expense of his guest, as he had a sort of taste for caustic jocularity, which the hirpling manner of Claud was, at the moment, well calculated to provoke. On reaching the brow of the rising ground where the house stood, the leddy, as Mrs. Hypel was emphatically called by the neighbouring cottars, with Miss Girzy, came out to be introduced to their relative. Whether the leddy, a pale, pensive, delicate woman, had been informed by the Laird of the object of Claud’s visit, we do not thoroughly know, but she received him with a polite and friendly respectfulness. Miss Girzy certainly was in total ignorance of the whole business, and was, therefore, not embarrassed with any virgin palpitations, nor blushing anxieties; on the contrary, she met him with the ease and freedom of an old acquaintance. It might here be naturally expected that we should describe the charms of Miss Girzy’s person, and the graces of her mind; but, in whatever degree she possessed either, she had been allowed to reach the discreet years of a Dumbarton youth in unsolicited maidenhood; indeed, with the aid of all the prospective interest of the inheritance around her, she did not make quite so tender an impression on the heart of her resolved lover as he himself could have wished. But why should we expatiate on such particulars? Let the manners and virtues of the family speak for themselves, while we proceed to relate what ensued. CHAPTER VII ‘Girzy,’ said the Laird to his daughter, as they entered the dining-room, ‘gae to thy bed and bring a cod for Mr. Walkinshaw, for he’ll no can thole to sit down on our hard chairs.’